Week 3 Continued...

Creating the Head

Before we start anything more in 3d Max, we need to create more topology reference plates for the back of the head, very similar to how I did in the first instance, I have included a finished topology image to give you the idea of what I'm talking about, We basically need to follow the lines and contours for the side picture so we can use this to match our vertices to when we recreate the side/back/top of the head in 3d Max.













Ok so after creating the mouth and lips, the next task is to create the rest of the head, we can do this by creating a sphere from the 'Create' and 'Geometry' options and then matching it up with the skull so it lies in the same angle as the curvature of the forehead, then rotate the sphere so the top and bottom where all the vertex points come into one point are in place of roughly where the ears should be, as I have demonstrated in pictures below:




























Now the polygons closest to the center and half of the sphere need to be deleted as half of the sphere will be duplicated with symmetry once we attach it to the mask. We need to delete the inner most rows of the sphere because not only are there lots of triangles, but having this setup would not flow with our topology for the side of the head, But before anything can be deleted, this sphere needs to be converted to an editable poly by right clicking and choosing the menu option 'Convert to' - 'Editable poly', this then enables you to be able to select 'Polygon' from the modify menu so you can delete the appropriate polygons:
























































So after deleting the required polygons you should have something similar to the above, this is ok, but we need to match the amount of rows in the top half of the sphere to how many there are in the left side of the head and reduce if necessary, what we need to do is count how many there are in each and use the 'Polygon' Selector to delete some if they're too many. However in mine there happened to be the right amount, just the width was incorrect, so I adjusted this using the scale tool. So what I have done here is to slowly adjust the size and position of the top of the sphere so it is in the same curvature as the top of my head and placed it also at the top of the forehead.
























































Now the next step is to join up the vertices to the head so they're touching, even though they wont be attached properly until later, and the easiest way to do this is to right click on the 'snaps toggle' button' and adjust it so that vertex is ticked and Grid Points isn't. Then using the Vertex Modify option, click the target weld button to attach each vertex onto each corresponding point at the top of the forehead as you should have the same amount of points on each.









































Do the above for each point until the whole top is joined:














Now the next task is to reduce the amount of rows of polygons in the sphere to add a bit of texture to the top of the head, so first of all, take of Vertex points that you put on earlier and put Grid points back on. Select 'Edge' from the Modify panel and select one edge from the end row which should be the row connected to the mask, then we need to use the 'loop' and 'ring' tools which will give you the effect I have shown you in screenshots below:










Select every other edge around the inside



































































And in doing so it should collapse (remove) all the vertices that were selected, leaving us with a chunkier, more natural looking head.














So now we want to bring back the side reference image and select the edges near the neck area to allow us to drag out some more polygons, this is done once all the end edges are selected and holding down shift, while you drag downwards each time holding down shift and letting go of the left click when you roughly reach each topology reference line you drew on the neck in photoshop. and keep doing this to the base of the neck so you end up with something similar to this:




























Now the neck areas need to moulded and this is where Eric Maslowski stops his tutorial and jumps way ahead to the completed head all joined together, so although I may not have chosen the quickest way round in doing this, it was definitely an interesting learning experience trying to join it all up and make it represent something like a neck/throat and shoulders, so what you will see below are screenshots of my editing, playing around with the areas and manipulating the polygons to try and get my finished result. You will need to add more polygons for the side of the head where the ear goes and its best to try and follow the lines of topology reference if you can, remembering to keep in mind that 3 sided polygons are a bad thing here.

This was the first method I tried when connecting the neck and I found it didn’t really work all that well, so I decided to clone these two polygons by dragging them out holding shift

And just follow on like I have done here in the photos, above is me creating a Polygon and then cutting it to add more vertices, after some work of doing exactly the same procedure for the rest of the side of the head, it looks like this:

The above is the side of the head completed now, it has some odd looking shapes, but they're all 4 sided which is the most important thing. In this next image I have started to shape the neck and chosen 3 edges to draw out and use for the front of the throat:




























And then connect the vertices up to the mask again because you need to do this all the way round the face, if there is not enough vertices, just cut them in as I have done above:




























Here I have just been playing with the vertices on the neck to mould the shape, also with a render thrown in to show what it would look like at this point:






























Ok so it doesn't look perfect here, but once MeshSmooth is added, it will sort out all the iniquities and little knicks of the structure.


Attaching the two together

Ok, so the next stage is to attatch the two together so they become one and also so that the head will take shape and take on the modifier Symmetry. Selecting the mask and turning off and smoothing effects at all, we need to click the settings box next to the Attach button:

then choose the name of the object to attach, in my case (Sphere03) and click Attach






























And the head should now become one and all the same colour and entity:

















But the vertices are still not attached to each other, much like in the very beginning when we were connecting the vertices together to create the mask, so if we choose the paint option on our toolbar:











and then select 'Vertex' selection from our modifier panel so we can paint the vertices that will link the mask and the rest of the head as you can see that I've selected here:






















Now use the 'Weld' settings button:










Now if like me you have any stray vertices around that didn't attach such as this one:






















Just simply use the 'Target Weld' button to click and attach like this:























and it will become attached:












Also, like me if you have any odd vertices that dont need/want to connect to anything, in my case, by the forehead, just select the offending vertex and press the backspace key

























not the 'Delete' key otherwise it will delete the whole polygon, pressing backspace will delete just the vertex and should link up the rest of the polygon and attach it automatically;














So now we have the mask sorted it should look like this with the Symmetry back on:














Before taking this screen shot I took see through off and just edited some of the vertices to make the top of the head flatter and to bring the side of the head out to more of a curve because it was dead flat.

this is the head with turbosmooth on at this point of my work