Topology research

[P16]

I am new to 3D, and am researching edgeloops. I was guided here however I can't seem to find a definition of edge loops. If anyone could help me here i would appreciate it. thanks

[oxyg3n]

P16,

Edge loops are concentric rings that follow the underlying muscle structure of the body and face. Look at some of the wire frames in this thread and you will notice them especially around the eyes and mouth.

[AdamT]

Originally posted by allenatl
I agree with Lunatique. I've seen lots of head topology discussions but hardly anything on body topology. I'd like to see samples of what's considered good body topology especially for areas like the shoulders.

Ditto here. I always seem to struggle when it comes to arm attachments.

But just for the heck of it here's a wireframe of a character I'm working on:

http://www.3danvil.com/Grinch_Wire.jpg

[allenatl]

An interesting discussion on body topology and breaking the "rules" a little.

Body Topology (http://www.cgtalk.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=108412)

[SirManfred]

This is kinda late maybe. But i just thought i'd post my head that i've made. Maybe i could get some comments on the topology?
http://www.freds3d.com/3dgallery/imgs/bloke11facewire.jpg
There it is.
Great stuff in this thread, btw. Cheers

[SirManfred]

Bah... damn doubble post thing... sorry :)
-----------------------------------
EDIT: I'll just use this doubble post to show you another picture of a different face i made
http://www.freds3d.com/Secret/wip20wire.jpg

[Neox]

you may get some problems with the lower lip when animating it should have the same number of subdivisions as the upper lip, just a thing i noticed when doing some morphtargets :)

[bignateyk]

Please comment on my topography...

right now its just a spline, but i was just fooling around trying to practice making good topography.

anyway...

http://www.steelcitycs.com/topography.jpg

[Lunatique]

Since I mentioned a lack of body topology here before, I should post one: http://www.cgtalk.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=115338

[Pillboxx]

here is an update to my head topology. I have incorporated some of the ideas here. The changes made are in the skull, chin and neck.

http://homepage.mac.com/pillboxx/.Pictures/Wires/image81.jpg

http://homepage.mac.com/pillboxx/.Pictures/Wires/image82.jpg

http://homepage.mac.com/pillboxx/.Pictures/Wires/image83.jpg

[lerpiedood]

After seeing the intrest in body topology now, here's a wire of one of my models, first body actually, came out better than expected, what do you think?
http://www.qone12.com/~lerpiedood/monicaWire04.jpg

[nickz]

Here is a generic male head that I have been working on. I just finished the model and I am looking for feedback before I begin making blend shapes for animation. If anything sticks out like a sore thumb let me know your thoughts.

I think that I have put in all of the ground work for some good facial animation but if you see a loop that is missing please point that out as well!

Thanks for the thread!

Nick Z.

http://www.pinwire.com/nickz/LR_Version_3/html/art_html/art/3d/hi_res/topology_study_hi_lo_and_wire_01.jpg

Peace!

[toonman]

This has got to be one of the most useful threads I've read. Thanks a lot all for the helpful and valuable info. I've got two questions regarding poly modeling with deformations and sub-d rendering in mind...

First, I've always tried to stay away from triangles. No tri faces whatsoever. I've always divided these to get quad polys (I use 3ds max), using Tamas' method. However, I've noticed that modelers of other apps (particularly Mirai/Nendo/Wings3d), such as Bay Raitt, are not as discriminative with triangles. I do know that they should be avoided for areas of deformation, and that long triangles are a no-no. But how far should I go with these "kill-tris" philosophy? When are they acceptable?

Second... I've also seen modelers like Bay model their characters in more relaxed, sculptor-like poses, instead of the more common Da Vinici pose... any benefits of this method over the other? The only reason I can think of, is that maybe once the character is rigged, raising the arms, will result on a different pose based on the weight of the edgeloops, that will hopefuly give a better simulation of underlying muscles and fat tissue. Is this the case?

Thanks a lot for any help. Keep up the great work guys. I'll upload some WIP's later on. Cheers!

[Ziah]

here is mine after studying this thread tried to inlcude most of the info i got..crits welcome

[Lunatique]

toonman- I think you already answered your own questions.

Go quad when a smooth surface/deformation is required, and leave the triangles and ngons when it's not important, or when you want a little bump/pinch. I leave the triangles exactly at where I want wrinkles and bumps(Stahlberg taught me this).

[toonman]

Thanks a lot Lunatique. I'm definitely getting some ideas from most of the pics on this thread. I'll also experiment a bit with the relaxed pose technique and see if it makes any difference when skinning. Thanks!

[D-3]

hy guys.. this is my contribuction!! hehehe
not is good but work.. heheh

http://www.chtabajara.uaivip.com.br/d3/loops04.jpg

[Ziah]

lunatique i have study both yours and stevens work alot however..u guys are both great interms of certain areas of the body ... i however have a probelm with your model around her waist gut and thighs to right about the kneee and her shin..they seem some how to become un-proportional sorry if a newbie like me sounds stupid just my opinion however with that said the amount of detail you did put into some it it helps as a great reference for people like me ....i would not choose to make ceratin muscle groups in the legs and above the knee in a woman so slim so define( above the knee suits fat woman more) but becuase you did your model allows me to see that conform should be modeled to be made possible when animating time comes :thumbsup:

[Dreamabyss]

I just found this excellent thread. Too bad most of the links in prior posts are broken making the references useless! I wish people would keep their links updated since this is a sticky thread. But I suppose that's too much to hope for...:cry:

[Stahlberg]

About the Bind Pose, some people like to make that the neutral pose, others are restricted (by for example mocap software they plan to use, like say MotionBuilder) to a T-stance... To further complicate matters, neutral pose means different things to different people. It can mean the pose we'd end up in, if we were sleeping in zero gravity... or it could mean "halfway between extremes". Or it could mean the pose your character will most often be in. It's a judgement call.

Here's a thread (in the Maya forum) about body topology, 3gons and 5gons and such.
http://www.cgtalk.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=108412

[Ziah]

steven being a big fan( lol i lke to think i could be a student after all the studying i ve done on your models lol) studying your work and techniques i notice something maybe minor your breast in some of your earlier works they seem to be bigger now you have more of a very perky kind of breask going on..not much sag/slope on them is there a reason for this?

[Stahlberg]

I've noticed that this character has a more petite torso than some of my earlier ones (just turned out that way), that may contribute to breasts looking bigger. As for perkiness, don't know, hadn't really paid much attention to it; breasts are relatively easy, compared to shoulders for instance, so I've been paying much more attention to other parts. For instance, I'm not totally satisfied with thighs and neck - I think they're both a tad too long. Well, work in progress.

[Ziah]

i kinda see what you mean but i think its good but if you wnayed to have that real wire frame bikin model look yeah ..i think the look you have right now is fine it look proportionally realistic....how come you have your shoulder bone a.k.a scapula so define is that for reson i think thats bin a porblem area 4 me a little special when build the arm seperate then attaching it

[Ziah]

actually after doing some more studying on that area thats really good steven the scapula that is.

When you animate does it deform well?

[kryoboy]

Simple topology, but effective and clean.
about 2 hours work on topology, and another hour with hair and texture testing, but only posting the topology here.

:beer:

http://www.internetdex.com/ani.gif

[Ziah]

here are my wires..the only area that bothers me is where the scapula is connected to the humerus i have my loops following differently it animated kool when i tested it but im think i might have some probelsm later becuase you guys all have urs differently and it has to be for a reason

[ivo D]

eej nickz, nice head..

well .. i think you could make the lower forhead a little more rounder, at the hight of the brows,, i looks kindah flat, that could be an improvement..
and above the lips,between the noce.. that part sticks a little to much forward.. gives him a ape like attitude..

i think that would do..

[nickz]

Here are the newest versions of my male generic head model. I’m thinking that the wrinkels in the forehead will be accomplished affter the poly smooth is applied. Smoothed the head a bit here and there. Thanks for the critiques!

http://www.pinwire.com/nickz/digital_human_male/sourceimages/working/renders/jpg/face_lo_and_hi_composite_03_L.jpg

http://www.pinwire.com/nickz/digital_human_male/sourceimages/working/renders/jpg/face_lo_and_hi_composite_03_R.jpg

Peace,

[ivo D]

looks nice..

only needs some more eye and cheek definitian.

here is my head im working on ,around 14 y old boy

http://www.iownjoo.com/freeimghost/ivo_d/compulation-boy-wip.jpg?PHPSESSID=fef291f5eac1550098189799329c5740

[fast4ry]

hi ,this is my first head,c&c please

http://picserver.org/view_image.php/547873/256

http://picserver.org/view_image.php/547817/256


http://picserver.org/view_image.php/547873/picserver.jpeg

[RichSuchy]

Looks like a nice start. I'm unsure of a few areas. a 3/4 view and a frontal view would confirm those areas. Also a 3/4 view of the mesh would be helpful.

Rich

[Ziah]

concerned with the lower jaw bone area how it attaches any pointers help tips are welcome

http://ee.domaindlx.com/ziah/face/final.jpg

If that link does not work try this one


http://ziah.0catch.com/final.jpg


appreciate the feedback thanx

[RichSuchy]

Originally posted by fast4ry
hi ,this is my first head,c&c please

http://picserver.org/view_image.php/547873/picserver.jpeg

I would focus on refining the eye shape, and the lower lip toward the corners, as to how it merges with the face. The chin seems a little square compared to the jaw and cheak bones. I would considder making it smaller.

I'd lower the brow a little, and take some of the bulgyness out of the upper lip. It's a bit two round. Re-consult your reference for fine points like the ones I mention, On the whole its a good head, But could use some refinement.

Also the ear angle, It's possible within normal human variation, but do you want it to aim back at that angle?

On the whole it looks good.

Rich

[madmac3d]

First post on this MIGHTY thread... good stuff, and thanks to everyone for so much invaluable info!

I've been working on this on and off for the last year ( it is my first full-detail head study ), and I'm beginning to hit a brick wall!

The topology still has plenty loops that need terminated, but I'm still trying to achieve the right 'look' before I fully clean up the mesh.

As you can see, there is a likeness, but not enough to make it obvious who the character is... so any help in sorting out the proportions/definitions would be gratefully received!

(please don't waste your time commenting on the hair, and back of head.... I am concentrating on the face at the moment :) )

Some earlier views.... here (http://www.patrickmacdonald.plus.com/bb/SADDAM/WIP/110.jpg)

The latest rendering....
http://www.patrickmacdonald.plus.com/bb/SADDAM/WIP/112.jpg

and the wires....

http://www.patrickmacdonald.plus.com/bb/SADDAM/WIP/111a.jpg

http://www.patrickmacdonald.plus.com/bb/SADDAM/WIP/111c.jpg

[ivo D]

ooh.. lol hehe

but eej looks nice.. but you really have to much loops aroundthe eyes.. just use polys where needed, not just to do every flow of skin, i would say start of with a low polys mesh, cut in all the detail and wrinkles later on..

go and try what you have learned or will learn from this thread in new head..
:D

[Stahlberg]

Ziah wrote:
When you animate does it deform well?
It's okay. The biggest problem around the scapulas for me isn't the topology, but how to rig and deform the shoulders nice, smooth, realistic, predictable and easy to tweak etc...

[someone13]

Hi!
Lunatique thanks for starting this awesome thread also thanks to all of you guys :-)
it's a pitty i can't see lots of pics that were posted here
well, what can you say about this topology?
http://someone13.nm.ru/topology.jpg
I would love to hear crits on this
I'm planning to make kind of base model for boy characters out of this

[ivo D]

yea look good.. you will need some close lines at the corner of the mouth and some at the eyes.. and lots more of that stuff but you will see that allong the way,

topology is just about the few loops, that are very easy , when you know them.. and i see you figured them out, now it is just about playing with it,

what can be done, and what not.. have funn with it..



typical.. im busy with that guy as reference to.. you have that boy from the loomis book right?.. here you have him 3d.. still some tweaking to do at the head etc.. but ill tweak allround when the model is done

good luck with it!!

[someone13]

:bounce: Thanx for the reply Ivo D I really appreciate it :)
yes, that guy is from loomis book,
i guess he is popular :D

[madmac3d]

I've made some improvements.... please tell me what you think....

If anyone can give me advice on any problems I may have when animating this ( in particular the wrinkles, and folds of skin ), I would most appreciate it. I will be applying a flex modifier to produce secondary motion on the flabby skin.... (should I place the flex modifier before or after the meshsmooth?)

The other issue is whether I am going down the right route with the facial hair.... currently it is a seperate object, but I will probably weld it into the main head mesh somewhere down the line...

There are more images and wires on this (http://www.cgtalk.com/showthread.php?s=&postid=1200198#post1200198) thread...

http://www.patrickmacdonald.plus.com/bb/SADDAM/WIP/125.jpg

If anyone thinks I am veering from the main topic of this thread, feel free to tell me where to go! ;) ... I wouldn't want to spoil the flow of this thread :beer:

I had hoped this model was of some interest to this thread with the way it deviates from the standard edgeloop structure to accomodate the jowls.

[ivo D]

looks good, but i saw your whire a while back, after that you have tweaked lots i see, but i am more interested in the whire than the shaded view.

and dont get me wrong, but the humps, and wrickles have to flow with the edgleloops to, its all muscle dependent;)

[madmac3d]

cool.... here are the wireframes... still a bit cr@p in places I'm afraid...

http://www.patrickmacdonald.plus.com/bb/SADDAM/WIP/123.jpg

http://www.patrickmacdonald.plus.com/bb/SADDAM/WIP/124.jpg

[ivo D]

you could get rid of all the tri's that make those pinches in your model, at the neck and sides of the mouth..
and at the corner of the eys those tri's and above the nose

make the bridge under the nose a little round, its straight now..

[madmac3d]

Thanks for advice! :)

Ok.... I think I have finally got the topology for the face under control (all quads).... but I think it still needs pulled around a bit to get the look just right....

The texture is just something I knocked up to get a better feel for the skin....

Hair and back of head still needs work....I've not sorted the edge loops or defined the shape properly! I'll probably sort it out once I start breaking the symmetry of the model

Rotation Animation Quicktime Sorenson 3 (http://www.patrickmacdonald.plus.com/bb/SADDAM/WIP/42.mov)

http://www.patrickmacdonald.plus.com/bb/SADDAM/WIP/127.jpg

http://www.patrickmacdonald.plus.com/bb/SADDAM/WIP/129.jpg

http://www.patrickmacdonald.plus.com/bb/SADDAM/WIP/130.jpg

[keltuzar]

Please check out mine and tell me what you all think...
http://img22.photobucket.com/albums/v66/keltuzar/body1.jpg
http://img22.photobucket.com/albums/v66/keltuzar/body2.jpg

[fast4ry]

to rych suchy thanks for your coments,now i know that fix the problems of the head can be hard because my topology is bad,now im making another head but this time with polygon ,not with spline like the last,i hope make a better work for the this.

[Luki]

so here is my face topology what do you think?

http://www.lelumpolelum.3d.pl/topology_girlie.jpg

[ivo D]

k quick crit, dont have much time.. so this sint offensive, because its short..

nose seems pointy

lower lip corner, : you proabably know what i mean.

upper eyelids is to flat, round it a little.

flow from eye to forhead seems a little to hard, could be little softer, its a young girl to so

but it looks very nice

[Pillboxx]

here is my exploration in to topology. And since I have never animated anything I have no idea how it will deform. I have been trying to keep a clean a mesh as possible while still getting the shape I want.

I have been drawing out the meshes on paper for each part I will begin work on. I will also make sure I have a very good idea of the next part and the edges need to make it.

Once again I really don't know what I am talking about, but should I let that stop me...

http://homepage.mac.com/pillboxx/.Pictures/Wires/Wire01.jpg
http://homepage.mac.com/pillboxx/.Pictures/Wires/Wire02.jpg

The only part so far that has eluded my clean mesh insanity is the ear. I have never really had a dislike for individual body parts, but now, I hate ears.

[fast4ry]

hi,this is my second head,this time i made with poligons
let me now if you see errors or something.


http://usuarios.lycos.es/neuro1/composicion.jpg

[ivo D]

damn its late here, so this will be a quick post.

its a good head for a second head.

but here come the things that can be adjusted.

*the upper and lower eyelid need to be separated in the outer corner(upper over lower

*the point of the nose is a little flat. make the tip a little rounder

*make the whole head a little round, now the forhead is a little to flat, espacially you see it in the side viewq, cheecks go till behind the eyes, and the brow bump to.

*lower eyelids can be a little further down, and than more eased out, now they are pretty hard.

if its a female: make the chin smaller, now its to wide.

* the inside of the lower lip is straight, that can be more in an arc, and the lower lip could be a little thicker in the middle. so its
rounded

*front view : make the nose tip ,little smaller so its more dot like a little now, its to triangeler

happy tweakin ;)

make something beautifull of it:thumbsup:

[fast4ry]

thank you ivo.i made the cahges that you say and something more,but i cant do the changes on the tip of the nose because i dont know wat is this.you say its a good head for be the second,with the first peopple tell me goog for be the first,thats signifi is not a good head? i hope someday peoople say hey good head,only good head.i want be a good modeller.

i go for realism what i need?more polis for more detayl?


i hope you can stand my english


http://usuarios.lycos.es/neuro1/composicion2.jpg

[ramma]

Great Stuff here!

BTW, 1st Post! :)

[Serial Killer]

Nice thread I'm basically a newbie on this stuff, aobut edgeloop, but what I find weird here is that nobody even maxers hasn't discus about Michel Roger's (joan of Arc tutorial)
topology which seems to work great in all models, I have model famale and male char with his technique, even some cartoon heads with some reduce of poligons

here are some wires of him (I hope he doesn't mind)
http://mr2k.3dvf.com/graph/in_progress/etudes_tete/image14.jpg
http://mr2k.3dvf.com/graph/in_progress/etudes_tete/image20.jpg
http://mr2k.3dvf.com/graph/in_progress/etudes_tete/image13.jpg

[Serial Killer]

Some more of him

http://mr2k.3dvf.com/graph/tutorials/joan_of_arc/part02/tete/image119.gif
http://mr2k.3dvf.com/graph/tutorials/joan_of_arc/part02/tete/image118.gif
And here one of my cartoon faces
http://www.iespana.es/SerialKiller/Render.jpg
http://www.iespana.es/SerialKiller/Wire.jpg

[fast4ry]

some changes here bu i think something is bad,i think is the jaw but im not sure maybe im crapping the model and not fixing fails.
please coment ,critic, insult.
http://usuarios.lycos.es/neuro1/10compo copia.jpg

[Keith Young]

Actually, that's looking pretty good - the jaw looks fine from the front, though maybe it could come back a bit further (towards the ear) on the side, the hinge/back of my jaw is only about an inch from the bottom of my earlobe, it looks like the one you have here is more like 2 inches away.

The spacing and proportions of the rest of the face elements looks pretty good too... the one thing that might be off a bit is either that the eyes are too big (wide) or there should be more room from the outside corner of the eye, to the side of the temple. The (general) rule of thumb is that the face (at eye level) is 5 eye-widths wide, so there should be one eye-width between the eyes and one eye-width between the outside of each eye and each temple or side of the head.

[Troll]

Nice stuff you got here people:)
I didnt read it all but I thought I'd contribute with a wire of the head of my latest model. Its low-poly so I didnt have to think about keeping it in quads, but I think I got the edgelooping nailed down pretty good.

Cheers:beer:

http://hailandkill.com/kunt/3d/klown-head-topology.jpg

[RichSuchy]

Originally posted by Troll
Nice stuff you got here people:)
I didnt read it all but I thought I'd contribute with a wire of the head of my latest model. Its low-poly so I didnt have to think about keeping it in quads, but I think I got the edgelooping nailed down pretty good.

Cheers:beer:



That has a nice flow to it. Good work.

Rich

[RichSuchy]

Originally posted by Troll
Nice stuff you got here people:)
I didnt read it all but I thought I'd contribute with a wire of the head of my latest model. Its low-poly so I didnt have to think about keeping it in quads, but I think I got the edgelooping nailed down pretty good.

Cheers:beer:



That has a nice flow to it. Good work.

Rich

[Troll]

Hey thanks alot:)
I've learned what I know (still a n00b to the game tho) by studying other people's wireframes and am happy to share my own stuff.

Here's a little compilation of morph targets i did the other day to see if the topology let me play with the face. I guess I was lucky.:hmm:

http://hailandkill.com/kunt/pics/04-04-02/12.jpg

[MRAY]

Heres my head set up (topology) check out the link below
C&C welcomed :)

My first head WIP (http://www.cgtalk.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=140651)

-Mray-

[fast4ry]

goood work troll,good work mray.:thumbsup:

[fast4ry]

hi,the second head with more little eyes and 2 variations,maybe i always make eyes too much big.



http://usuarios.lycos.es/neuro1/Compo14.jpg

[kryoboy]

two images of current wip, secound is a nice little render. sorry for the seems =P

http://www.ona1r.com/jason/arms02.jpg
http://www.ona1r.com/jason/skin.jpg

[fast4ry]

please comment critic.





http://usuarios.lycos.es/neuro1/tia 3.jpg

[TyCha]

Hi everybody.
Here is my first real try at head modeling. It's an early wip done without any reference in approximatively one hour. I was just trying to setup the main standard head features.
Any comments ( tips, corrections etc...) are welcome to help me to improve my modeling skills.

Thanks
Philippe

http:///www.ifrance.com/TyCha/images/h01.jpg

[TheUnkind]

TyCHa: Bro, i see no image..... :hmm:

[spaz8]

I consider myself a decent modeler but havent really found any info out there im looking for.

A about a year ago there was a great website www.hippodrome.com taht had all this info on "modeling for articulation". it had infor on building legs, knees, heads, arms etc. :< the site seems defunked now.

Does anyones know of any good books, dvds, websites, or just free knowledge of how to make models that deform well. ie shoulders, etc. _thanks Ken

[Yorgo12345]

...A about a year ago there was a great website www.hippodrome.com (http://www.hippodrome.com/) taht had all this info on "modeling for articulation"...
actually that site is called hippydrome.com and yes it WAS one of the best explanations of "modelling theory" I've ever seen.

lucky for me I made a copy of the site while it was still up.

and yes hippydrome seems to be down, ...how long has it been down for? hope it's not gone for ever, that would be a terrible shame.

[spaz8]

Ya, i realized the typo after the fact. I made copies of alot of the info on hippydrome too a few years back, but alas cant seem to locate the info on areas other than the face. I'm afraid its all on an old computer with a HD that wont mount.

So if your willing to share the info u grabbed, or know of similar info out there taht would be greatly appreciated. I'm looking for information on modeling the body for movement, deformation, articulation, however u wanna say it _ken.

[Yorgo12345]

Spaz8 ...just PM'd you

[canndis]

I can mail you the Articulation Theory Stuff from hippydrome.com i u still need .

[Padmus]

would you mind sending me that information too Yorgo. Thanks in advance

[ray]

try this also


http://web.archive.org/web/*/hippydrome.com

[HippyDrome]

Hello,

I hope to have my new Modeling/Articulating site up by November but I did not give permission to Archive.org to copy my site over to
there web site. Archive.org is in copyright violation.

I have got some cool stuff on the way.

HippyDrome

[mitralone]

Hello all,

Sorry if this was posted and I could not find. I am trying to find examples of face topology that I can at least apply to general head models. I searched for more that 3 hours in cgtalk but could only find joan of arc.

Can anyone suggest anything?

Best to all

[flingster]

Hello all,

Sorry if this was posted and I could not find. I am trying to find examples of face topology that I can at least apply to general head models. I searched for more that 3 hours in cgtalk but could only find joan of arc.

Can anyone suggest anything?

Best to all
check out the early pages of this thread thats what its all about? there are loads of excellent references for you and discussion.:shrug:

[ray]

Hello,

I hope to have my new Modeling/Articulating site up by November but I did not give permission to Archive.org to copy my site over to
there web site. Archive.org is in copyright violation.

I have got some cool stuff on the way.

HippyDrome
Hey HippyDrome,

looking very forward to that new site!

Archive.org stores every website that ever existed (well...almost), several versions at different points in time ---here's an early version of cgtalk,
http://web.archive.org/web/20011216132344/http://www.cgtalk.com/

For my part I like archive.org's concept of building an internet archive-although I see it's kind of bending the copyright thing. Maybe they have a "delete my site" function somewhere on theirs.

Cheers,
Ray

[HippyDrome]

Hey Ray,

I just emailed Archive.org and they were cool about it and took my web stuff down right away.

cheers,

hippydrome

[spaz8]

I was wondering what ppls thoughts were about posing models prior to rigging.

Theres the classic Diavinci pose of arms out to the side plams down, plams 90 up, legs spread, legs together.

Theres also knees bent and arms forward and then bent at the elbows.

Or the arms down and forward. Obvioulsy modeling in those poses isn't very intuitive so as far as i know youd model arms out legs straight, then rotate the geom and pull points.

Any thoughts on the subject? I understand the concept is to try and pick a middle of the range of motion position. Just wondering if its all a matter of taste? since im talking about humaniond examples ive seen and since we generally have a similar range of motion. But id love to hear ideas about posing animals/creaures etc if someone has a universal theory or rule. _ken

[ivo D]

pfff back from vacation.. and back in school again..
whohaa! :S

oke spaz8: at first its just peoples taste.. many start with the cross pose arms and legs straight.

to play it safe.. so your geometry is easy for any pose you could best give him little bend arms and legs.

if you allready know his specific character and way he will stand than its always best to give him a medium pose of that.

but in the end i think losening up the joints is the best.

[florian]

Wonderfull job kyroboy

so here's mine:
http://img19.exs.cx/img19/4165/femWire.jpg

it was originally posted in my final3d thread, so crit was missing a little bit.
If anyone knows how to improve the topologie, please let me know.

[D-3]

hi guys a litle contribuctions (my models)
thanks

http://www.d-3studio.com/wip/irobotwire.jpg

http://www.d-3studio.com/wip/mantis/mantizwip0002.jpg

http://www.d-3studio.com/tutorial/edgesloop/loops02.jpg

http://www.d-3studio.com/tutorial/edgesloop/loops03.jpg



http://www.d-3studio.com/tutorial/edgesloop/loops01.jpg

i´m post more soom
cya!!

[crossbones]

I know it might be unrelated but you guys might want to check out www.reybustos.com (http://www.reybustos.com) and look at the 3D anatomy skeletons he has which could definately help this area of topology research.

[Stahlberg]

Excellent link.
Here's a couple images I already posted in the Maya forum. Since I've never seen anyone do this at the corner of the eyes, I decided to post it here and see what you think about it.

Conventional edgeloop wisdom says we should make edges that run all around the eye connecting in circles. That works okay for the upper and lower lids, but at the outer corners I think it would be a better topology-fit if the loop coming from below the eye took a turn and headed sideways toward the temple, like this.

http://www.androidblues.com/eyelidtopol1.jpg

Reference:
This is not a terribly good photo, just look at yourself in the mirror you'll see what I mean.

http://www.androidblues.com/squint2.jpgThe problem continues down the cheek for most artists too, with the infraorbital fold - edges should run from the inside eye-corner down to the jaw-muscle (masseter). As you can see in the photo above, and even more so in this one:
http://www.androidblues.com/squint.jpg
But instead most artists put a pole on the cheek, or both sets of edges are slanted at 45 degrees to this reference. I've been doing a bit of that too, but I plan to change it in my next model.

Also note the down-slanting wrinkles on the nose, sure you should do fine wrinkles like that with a bump map, but why not try to get as close as possible with the topology too? Certain extremem expressions on certain characters (werewolves for instance) :) may have bigger wrinkles there that need some real volume.

[j3st3r]

That`s OK, but I think, that the radial structure should be maintained. As you attached the last image, you see the old man`s lower lid has a well defined radial structure. When I look at the skin structure it also shows the radial structure (as far as I remember)

[Stahlberg]

I was at a wedding tonight, and saw a whole group of Asian persons, most with very thick lower lids, smiling and squinting so I had a good chance to check it out... :)

Damn that outer eye-corner is tricky. If the lid isn't thick enough, like on me, the wrinkles usually look like my sketch above, and you need those S-curves below the lower lid, and maybe above too. But when the lid is thick enough, that curve often runs up into a loop around the eye. So the question is, which one of those 2 topologies can more easily be made to look like the other (and so be used for both)? Probably the loopy one, if any, but more research is needed.

About the cheek and nose, though, I haven't changed my mind yet. :)

[azazel]

i tried something like that a while ago... not perfect, but it proved to be enough...

[Laa-Yosh]

If the lid isn't thick enough, like on me, the wrinkles usually look like my sketch above, and you need those S-curves below the lower lid, and maybe above too. But when the lid is thick enough, that curve often runs up into a loop around the eye. So the question is, which one of those 2 topologies can more easily be made to look like the other (and so be used for both)? Probably the loopy one, if any, but more research is needed.

See why some of us say that there's no generic topology that fits everyone's face? :)))

Of course lots of things are very similar or even the same for a lot of people. But there are always differences, and so it's always better if the topology is customized for the character you're working on... at least IMHO.

[Stahlberg]

Yes... but if this tiny issue - an area smaller than a 10 cent coin, and whether to take an edge straight up, or slant to the side - is the biggest problem, I'd say it's still a viable tactic. I think I can make this work once I get to actual modeling.

However, redoing all 40 - 50 morf targets from scratch would only take me a few days, so I see no insurmountable problem with customizing faces, if there's call for it. Even big changes, no problem, as long as I'm redoing all the targets anyway it doesn't matter whether the change is small or large. I'm not scared of work, modeling is fun, I just don't have time to spend on fun anymore.

[prana]

Hi,

Making a good high poly body is very hard so I would need examples and method.

I can't find a good tutorial about high poly topology. All of them are approximate.
Joan of Arc is an excellent tutorial but it's about low poly body modeling.

There are many tutorials and wireframes of heads but the making of a body remains an expert secret.
Any advice ?

Thanks in advance
Hervé -

[Stahlberg]

If you manage to plow though this huge thread
http://www.cgtalk.com/showthread.php?t=108412
you should find lots of alternatives on how to do it. I started the thread, but it soon turned into a communal showcase.

[bruiser]

Actually one of the differences between man and other animals is that man creates art. Animals do not make art.

[FatAssasin]

Actually one of the differences between man and other animals is that man creates art. Animals do not make art.
http://www.elephantart.com/catalog/splash.php

[lewissatini]

how the topology flow and how it related to the muscle structure. i try to follow the anatomy book as a reference to truthly understand and model it with polygon but i don't know how to get it flow in the right direction. is there anybody can help?

[j3st3r]

Check the muscle direction, and that`s the main direction of the loops. Anyway in many cases the skin`s folding is very obviously displays the topology. I`d suggest that instad of the muscles you should use skin folding (and the miniauture wrinles on skin) as the basis for topology

[depleteD]

What methods do u guys use for the head?

I find that subd-ing a box for speed.
plane and extrudeing edges for accuracy.

Ive notice that it seems only peopl eare focusing on the head. Any chance to move on to other parts of the body?

EDIT: Just found the body topology page. Go me.

[Grey]

This is my fourth generation topology. I've spent a lot of research time on it, it's a big improvement on the last version; it seems to work very well so far. There is one thing that always puzzled me about modeling the human head. Why are they consistently modeled with the eyes open? I would think that it would be easier to rig an animateable eyelids if the model were rigged with the eyes closed. Please explain if I'm wrong :D

next question: when you create a new mesh: do you UV map it to match the UVs of previous meshe's you've made, or do you simply start from scratch each time on your textures?

[ivo D]

here is my wire.. it aint the finished version, but its just the ears that are missing..

[ivo D]

Grey there is a very simple answer to why, mostly the eyes of modelled heads are open.

everything modelled is done in a neutral pose, character with arms straight as a cross etc.. for the head you model the most neutral expression you want. and when someone looks at you nrmally, he wont shut his eyes.

a lot of people have typical eyelids etc, would be hard to get that effect, when modelling the eyes closed, and than put that in a morph target.. when you maybe just want a still.

also how it looks when the eyes are closed is not so important.. it goes so fast, you wont barely see it. so its more important to get the right look on the head when the eyes are open.


and for texturing, i always start from skretch, i dont know anyone who saves uvws of heads, it could be done, but its a little tricky.

its hard to paint also, because the wire wont match your model, so when you want a sharp edge around the eyes.. you cant say.. o that line is the one i need, caus its another wire that you have in you mapping.

[Grey]

ivo D, I think you're right. After thinking about what you said. I originally posted the note with bones or other deformer in mind rather than morph targets.

Stahlberg said he's prone to using control meshes to create his figures, as in a single mesh which he adapts to make who he needs to make. He's certainly not the only one that does this. It makes a great deal of sense to me.

My question concerned that mesh and the UV. I'm curious as to if he sets up his UV on the control mesh and uses that as a standard for his characters as well, which would fit in with the philosophy of a standard control mesh.

[ivo D]

well.. every controll mesh iis different.

it really depends what sort of character you want, if you want to do it good.. i recommend building the best topology for it.

but oke if you do use the same base mesh.. thanits still not suited to use the same uv''s

because one character has a narrow had for instance and the ather a wide thick one.
the uv unwrap will be totally different, it just wont fit.

you also want all your base mesh lines to line up with your model when you project the unwrap on your mesh, so every freckle you make will be placed on that exact spot on your model.


And true there might be a way to do it.. but youll have lesser results in the end.
and its wise to do modelling from scratch and uv unwrappinng as much as you can, when time lets you, caus it will take your speed up, to another level.

and speed is imporant, but still creating a good head takes some time

[Stahlberg]

Ivo D, looks good.
I haven't reached anything resembling a standard UV mapping for a human yet. There are so many different ways to approach them, none of them perfect... I started doing UV's much later in my career (used only nurbs for many years), and Maya's tools for it were really bad at first, so only recently am I starting to get really confident with them.

[eek]

how the topology flow and how it related to the muscle structure. i try to follow the anatomy book as a reference to truthly understand and model it with polygon but i don't know how to get it flow in the right direction. is there anybody can help?Um, it takes a long time to work out how the mesh topology flows properly against muscle topology. Its not a clear cut case of just following muscle flows as certain muscles of the face pull in certain directions. Also muscle insertions pull differently to there exit. I.e from one end they pull differently to the other. This is important, as more detail is added at diferent ends. Also you have to form an even balance of poly distribution, as you may get tearing and shearing.

Also you need to put more work into the crease lines of the face, e.g to put more detail in the creases of the face, middle of brow, crows feet. In terms of facial setup small crease can be produced via displacement. The theory i go by is wrinkles are displaced(with a map), but creases are modelled.(in a neutral state i.e flat)

This is some underwraps, facial topology im working on, this is based off muscle topology, and relys on a muscle model to deform it:

http://www.eekstudios.com/cgtalk/fmt.jpg

Hi Ivo,

Sorry for the delay. Looks very nice! and should deform very easily. As to discussing visimes ive come up with a pretty nice layered system. And the possibility of generating poses from visimes. But thats another story in a different thread.

If you've got some more questions do hesitate to ask. I can discuss more on facial muscle topology against edgeloop topology whenever.

eek

[j3st3r]

IMO the topology should be the result of the muscles, and the skin. The muscles drive the skin, and skin folds are the visible effect of the muscles.

So it`s relatively easy to define the facial structure, just pick up a mirror, and study your face and make faces.

[eek]

Correct (imo), but the hard part is bridging the gap between muscles bunching together, against the smoothness of the face. Muscles compress and bunch up, Generally the overlaping skin constrained to it through a fat layer is smooth. Where this doesnt happen is the smiling, anger, sqininting, snarling. These areas of the skin are pretty flush to the muscles pulling them. eg. creasing in your forhead.

The cheek is driven by about 4 muscles 5 including oblisc (circular muscle around the lips), there also an order of muscle strength to the other.

So creasing is dependant on the thickness of the fat layer, how many muscles are have an affect on the skin and the order of the muscle movement.

so topology should be a fine balance of understanding the underlying muscles, how they work in that area and The fat layer to the skin (ie thick or thin). Also the ration of skin to bone. E.g the cheek is loose and stretches between the jaw,buchinator,4 cheek muscles and the lips. The key is to follow the facial topology but also look at how the underlying bone/muscle works.



eek

[Julez4001]

Has anyone ever seen/heard of a basic generic topology image for the human body.

[Stahlberg]

so topology should be a fine balance of understanding the underlying muscles, how they work in that area and The fat layer to the skin (ie thick or thin). Also the ration of skin to bone.
imo muscles only play a significant role on the body. In the face their actual shape and volume is negligible compared to the surrounding tissue and the effect they have on it. In fact, imo wrinkle topology and muscle topology doesn't really coincide very much there, which means that following the facial muscles for topology can be quite misleading. I think the safest approach is to rely 100% on what we can see of the surface.

[Grey]

imo muscles only play a significant role on the body. In the face their actual shape and volume is negligible compared to the surrounding tissue and the effect they have on it. In fact, imo wrinkle topology and muscle topology doesn't really coincide very much there, which means that following the facial muscles for topology can be quite misleading. I think the safest approach is to rely 100% on what we can see of the surface.
for the Muscle fitness guys they'd play a very significant role, but on normal folks, you're absolutely correct. Bones (ribs, hip, Knee, etc) play a far more significant role. as do tendons (behind the knee, top of feet and hands).

[Grey]

Has anyone ever seen/heard of a basic generic topology image for the human body.
YES! Michealangelo worked one up. Later they became known as Facial and Body Planes.

Burne Hogarth used those techniques in his drawings, refining Michealangelo's techniques for pencils.

[Grey]

you also want all your base mesh lines to line up with your model when you project the unwrap on your mesh, so every freckle you make will be placed on that exact spot on your model.


And true there might be a way to do it.. but youll have lesser results in the end.
and its wise to do modelling from scratch and uv unwrappinng as much as you can, when time lets you, caus it will take your speed up, to another level.

and speed is imporant, but still creating a good head takes some time
It would help if you showed a uv plan for your one of your models.

Such companies as DAZ produce models which have standardized UV for all their human figures, making UV interchangeable between male and female figures. Of course, they're not SubD models, so the technique may not work very well on SubDs... I'm not sure... but I'm struggling to figure out why it wouldn't. I think I'd have to see it.

[eek]

I would never model wrinkles, there way too finite. I would however model creases.

which means that following the facial muscles for topology can be quite misleading.I think the safest approach is to rely 100% on what we can see of the surface.
Im not trying to be misleading, im just staying its good to know how the muscles under the face work, as there the things that pull the face around! Studying the muscles gives you better understand of how the skin on top works, why it creases, why it wrinkles up.

In any event the key is to make it look right, thats the be end and end all. Im just following the muscle route.

imo muscles only play a significant role on the body.
So frowning, smiling, anger,shy,sorrow,speaking, blinking,squinting arent all results of muscles compression and extention?

In the face their actual shape and volume is negligible compared to the surrounding tissue and the effect they have on it.
Without muscles in the face, nothing would happen!, you pull out the jaw muscle and it would just hang!. They play a massive role in the face:

http://www.cgcharacter.com/cghuman.html-there quite a few muscles going on in there.

Even when you model mouth shapes, you gotta pay attention to muscles, say you smile, your cheeks bunch up and raise, your eyes squint, the corners of you mouth raise and stretch. Your looking at the result of muscles!

So even if you do base your topology on the face at skin level your baseing it off muscles!, i knew someone who modelled a leg, like a grid, following no curviture, of the leg muscles, or anything. When it was skinned it was just a mess!

So following facial topology your 80/90% there, understanding things like what happens when we bring our brows together to crease in the middle, is really important i think. Understanding what muscles come together to crease, gives you a better understanding of where to add extra detail.

http://www.cs.siue.edu/wwhite/siggraph/Diary1998/Image25.gif

For instance, in Geri's game they modelled in the crows feet, the forehead wrinkles, even the wrinkles around the eyes!

eek

[Grey]

For instance, in Geri's game they modelled in the crows feet, the forehead wrinkles, even the wrinkles around the eyes!

eek
Wrinkles happen where the skin is thinner, as opposed to thicker, and more often closer to bone than muscle.

Crows feet are an excellent example of this, as is the forehead. There's very little muscle tissue under the forehead's skin, yet it tends to wrinkle.

The same with the nuckles, under the nuckles, the cheek lines, etc.

You're right in that Muscle tissue will tell you the location of wrinkles, but most often they'll tell you where wrinkles are NOT rather than where they are.

[ivo D]

Wrinkles happen where the skin is thinner, as opposed to thicker, and more often closer to bone than muscle.

Crows feet are an excellent example of this, as is the forehead. There's very little muscle tissue under the forehead's skin, yet it tends to wrinkle.

The same with the nuckles, under the nuckles, the cheek lines, etc.

You're right in that Muscle tissue will tell you the location of wrinkles, but most often they'll tell you where wrinkles are NOT rather than where they are.
its just how you look at it, i think they just tell you where the wrickles come.

aldo without discussing to much about this, it all comes rather obvious, the poly layout should flow over and with the big muscle groups, and around the basic visual structure you want to create in the face. wrickles will ocure, between muscles, and at spots where primary motion occurs and, in a way ends.. for examples, making a chewing move with the jaw, that will push the cheeks up and make the lower eyelids squish etc.

in a way it very difficults but also easy at the same time, thats what makes it tricky in my opinion, we see it every day, its right in our faces, literally.. but still when it comes to its, its very hard to duplicate right.

maybe it still isnt done right.. seeing gollum for example.. is that the best is it really natural.. now we could say yes it is.. but maybe in 10 years we will just think of it as a classic.. the beginning of good facial movement..

for one.. it allmost never happens, that people model all the primary wrinkels

under the chin, at the sides of the cheeks, on the lower eye lids, and next to the lower eyelids.

ow now i see theres also some muscle in the forhead.. i can move some stuff at the ends of my brows.. funny shape occurs, not even a wrickle.. hhm. .. will we ever get the skill ";)

[Laa-Yosh]

Andrew Camenisch's great site, the human head, is unfortunately offline again. He had some very good and thorough writings on modeling faces for animation... a most valuable resource, I hope he'll get it back online again.

Anyway, the basic premise is that skin does not stretch as much as one would assume; it will slide above the tissues and bone instead. Compression does not happen either, so where you'd create this effect, the skin will form wrinkles instead.
If you look at the various areas of the face with this in mind, you'll be able to identify areas where you want sliding, and where you have to align your loops paralel or perpendicular to the main direction of the motion; and you'll also see where wrinkles and folds are forming.

I got to agree that muscles aren't really guiding your topology, the more important thing is how they move the skin...

[Stahlberg]

Without muscles in the face, nothing would happen!,
Hm, seems I have to explain a bit more. It's like Laa-Yosh wrote. Muscles in the face are never directly visible as on the body, except the muscles near the ear used in chewing, in certain conditions and extreme poses (gaping wide, clenching teeth). Try to flex the corrugator, so you can see it, like you flex a biceps - impossible.
The human face has evolved into tv screens, emotional signalling devices that are to be viewed from the front; and the main ingredient of these signals are the folds, outline of the mouth, outlines of the eyes, and the position/shape of the eyebrows. Everything else is quite unimportant to communicating a particular emotion. So the muscles have grown tiny and thin there, while fatpads have grown, to create deeper and more visible folds.

So I use this way to visualise this signalling system. A table, that represents the skull, on that a thick sheet of foam-rubber representing all the soft tissues of the face. A string attached to it on its underside - the muscle. Pull the string, you'll see an effect, but you won't see the string, on the top surface. Wrinkles will form - or creases, or folds, if you will. But depending on how the sheet is attached to the table, these folds may not form perfectly perpendicularly to the strings path, and indeed they may not even be very straight and symmetrical. There's usually a definite starting position, and a definite ending position, with a linear progression inbetween. So, the Blendshape becomes the ideal tool to mimic this behaviour. And to create the Blendshape we have to study the surface of this sheet before after and during the motion.

Now of course it may be useful to know the names of all the muscles and what they pull, if for nothing else then for easier communication of which Blendshape we're talking about between artists etc. But imo they can safely be abstracted to vectors of force, which simplifies life a little for the artist. :)

[j3st3r]

That`s what I`d liked to express with my rusty, awful english...The best way to explore the topology you need, is to study the face, or a similar face you`d like to model. And study it`s movement.
I`m almost sure, that different face archetypes needs different topology, although they may be derived from the same basic topology.

[eek]

Ahhh, haha Stalhberg,

I think were both coming from different sides of the same mirror. In not saying you follow the topology of the muscles of the face(explicitly), you just make shaw your aware of them. And the result they play on the face. Muscles are never directly visible on there face in an explicit form.(other than the oes you mentioned) But there results are, and yes your right they dont compare to the explicit muscles of the body, tricep,biceps, calf etc etc.

So I use this way to visualise this signalling system. A table, that represents the skull, on that a thick sheet of foam-rubber representing all the soft tissues of the face. A string attached to it on its underside - the muscle. Pull the string, you'll see an effect, but you won't see the string, on the top surface. Wrinkles will form - or creases, or folds, if you will. But depending on how the sheet is attached to the table, these folds may not form perfectly perpendicularly to the strings path, and indeed they may not even be very straight and symmetrical. There's usually a definite starting position, and a definite ending position, with a linear progression inbetween. So, the Blendshape becomes the ideal tool to mimic this behaviour. And to create the Blendshape we have to study the surface of this sheet before after and during the motion.
Ive got a great book on this subject.


Laa-Yosh,

exactly.


Now shouldnt we get back to topology research, and not muscles insertion point, flexors, tendons and whatnot.

eek

[Julez4001]

YES! Michealangelo worked one up. Later they became known as Facial and Body Planes.

Burne Hogarth used those techniques in his drawings, refining Michealangelo's techniques for pencils.
hahhaha- "funny"

There is a wireframe topology flow of the face. It very simple poly count but show very correct edge flow loops, I was asking if a body was ever done. Has anyone heard of it.

[Grey]

:D I was, however, quite serious. Hogarth's book, Dynamic Figure Drawing, has some of the best work in it relative to 3D from pencils.

This Wireframe Flow for the face you speak of, is it viewable online?

[Julez4001]

http://www.elysiun.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=21066&start=0&postdays=0&postorder=asc&highlight=

This is whati mean. basic and great start for edgelooping.

[ivo D]

yes this is a good example..,but dont we all use this topology flow.
this is the first thing you should learn when modelling a head anyways.

thats why joan of arc tutorial still is the best tutorial for beginner i think.

[StephanD]

http://www.elysiun.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=21066&start=0&postdays=0&postorder=asc&highlight=

This is whati mean. basic and great start for edgelooping.
I understand what you're looking for but I don't think you have to be as tight with your loops on a body as you have to be for say around an eye/mouth since it's rather of a flexion than skin sliding or deformation.

It pretty much depends where/if you want creasing or folding to happen and add the geometry there preferably flowing in the same direction.Nothing really set in concrete.

It's useful to be able to rig after defining the lowpoly cage then go on with modeling,you'll see what needs improvements according to the results and your objectives.That's why I recommend box modeling over poly by poly to make bodies...For heads it's fine and fast since you know where you're going.

Sorry if that's not really what you're looking for but that's something I've been wasting time on in the past when it all comes down to 'Does it look like you want?' and 'does it work like you want?'

[Grey]

http://www.elysiun.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=21066&start=0&postdays=0&postorder=asc&highlight=

This is whati mean. basic and great start for edgelooping.
Thank you Jules!!

[Stahlberg]

http://www.elysiun.com/forum/viewto...r=asc&highlight (http://www.elysiun.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=21066&start=0&postdays=0&postorder=asc&highlight)= Very clean and smooth, I'd like to tweak it a bit though, mostly upper cheek. But then again, in the near future normalmapping may make all worries about details and topology obsolete, when we simply paint-sculpt the shapes we want on quite simple geometry, like Taron did in his recent Zbrush-Messiah test. Then I guess this is the kind of geometry we might start with.

Ive got a great book on this subject.
Which one?

[crossbones]

Not to come in with a completely different mindset. Topology in my opinion is definately a thing of the past after seeing Taron's neckling animation from a very very undefined form. With Zbrush and sub pixel rendering being the future then I think its time to move on from this talk of edge loops. You can now control so much by painting in displacement maps and indicating muscles underneath the skin using something as easy as texture deform. I see this being very under utilized and I am surprised very few people are venturing this route.

For those of you that do not know anatomy, I would stray from those figuring drawing book and go right for the hardcore anatomy those illustrators studied from to draw your own conclusions. I've listed a website earlier, www.reybustos.com (http://www.reybustos.com) , look at his ecorche and imaginatomy sections, you can rotate the sculptures. Remember bones are priority in understanding anatomy, they are even more crucial then muscles. When you understand how the mucsle lay ontop of one another and how they work you can apply it to just about anything and create your own systems that work for your designs.

After seeing some of the crazy meshes on this long post its really wierd to see people building stuff point by point, spline based etc "some" only looking to the technical aspect of the programs or the techniques and not the actual principles behind what it is they are trying to recreate inside of a computer.

[Laa-Yosh]

I'm just asking here, Steve - do you think that we could also paint the skin sliding? That's the hardest part to get right in my experience, and also the one that depends the most on good topology...

[crossbones]

You paint the displacement and attach to the weight of a bone that can stretch (i.e Messiah's MetaEffectors & muscle bones). Check out Taron's neckling and changing example. Topology is going to be a thing of the past really soon because your not going to persay model an eye, an ear etc. Its all going to be handled with the displacement.

[Laa-Yosh]

You probably don't understand me. To get the sliding effect, you need geometry that you can control somehow. Whether it's a bone or a blendshape, the vertices have to be there.
At least that's how I think about it after doing some face rigging work...

[StephanD]

Too little amount of underlying geometry will limit the shapes that can be accomplished...Like Taron's model,assuming the control cage is what he uses to animate.

[ivo D]

you cant animate stuff that isnt there.. the displacemnt.. can give you the effect of skin sliding.. but if you havent modelled a good mesh under it, it just will not deform properly.

you cant skip the modelling, you have to have a good layout underneath, else otherthings will stretch and pull with some parts that you dont want to.

the future may lie in zbrush like working, but without a good underlying model, you are just getting a nice still, and not more.

zbrush for me is just adding detail to your model that normally wouldnt be easy to model, or get to dense. for the rest i think the program isnt developed enough, to do everything from zbrush, its a pain to model a head in zbrush from scratch, eye lids etc.

i think modelling as we do now, will also be one over 20 years. its just something, thats a basis of making your art. the rest is just xtra's, the final coating , not more.

[crossbones]

You guys look at Taron's example he's animating an ear that came from 3 polygons and an eye that came from 2. I don't think there needs to be anything more said about it. The eyes on the neckling are all painted displacement as with everthing else you are seeing.


If you want to know how this is accomplished
http://www.cgtalk.com/showthread.php?threadid=190944
its layed out fairly loosely to the point that most of you can model fairly quickly without any pain.

Verticies only have to be there at Render time,and since we are talking about displacement, its going to be there at render time.

[crossbones]

I wanted to mention that when he's modeling, he's only modeling to indicate where things are for the most part.

[Laa-Yosh]

And how do you control local XY space movement for a vertex that isn't there? I'm still waiting for a specific answer. Pulling the skin on the cheeck or compressing the lips are quite complicated tasks and I can't imagine a way to precisely control it with displacements that are usually only possible in local Z direction. I'm ready to see the light though, as modeling dozens of mouth blend shapes and corrections for them takes a lot of time...
And I've seen Taron's video, it looks cool in that size, but I'm still more convinced by Gollum, the Hulk, and such CG characters; partially by the results and partially by our testing of their methods in practice.

[ivo D]

tarron also used blendshapes :D.. blendshapes wont go away that easy...
in a year or 3 face rigs will be more used i guess.. or maybe longer..

[crossbones]

Again these displacement techniques really depend on the software you are using. Messiah has functions for these effects via how their animation tools link to their rendering tools. One such function is the Texture Deform (available in 2.0C).

A great deal of things can be faked, as many of them are in the characters such as Gollum and the hulk. Some of which have custom tools that have been created for them which are slowly trickling down to the end users. I.e we are just now seeing proceduarly shaders for eyes as Gollums eyes were Prodceduarl.

If you have questions like the one you are posting (which is a good question) ask Taron in his own post, go to the source.

[Laa-Yosh]

You completely ignore the questions I've raised :)

And Taron is still using blendshapes. The face might look like a stretching silicone mask instead of real flesh when viewed up close. As much as I admire his work I still keep in mind that he's in part advertizing Messiah (no we won't change our pipeline because we can't replace parts of it like this :). Not that we couldn't hook up PRMan displacements to animation controls - it just doesn't sound good to manage multiple 4K textures for every character. And what about cartoony characters, like the Incredibles; or even non-humanoid toon characters?

It's good stuff, really, but it has yet to proove it's better for complex facial animation than existing methods.

PS: I'm quite sure that Gollum has lots of painted eye textures, procedural fractals can't look that good. Just as his skin is so cool simply because a few guys kept hand painting it with a tablet for many many lon nights.

[crossbones]

Bay actually passed it on that Gollums eyes were proceduarl much like the Messiah Eye Shader. Proceduarls can look amazing and hold up amazing and no matter what distance.

I can't answer your question because I am not using your particular animation/rendering software. What is a blend shape really? The translation of points?? What says that data can not be kept put some place else such as a displacement map where point count is irrelevant? Using facial rigs to control these displacements has been Taron's experiment of the last 4 years.


These methods that Taron are showing are breakthrough whether one wishes to acknowledge them or not. I can't speak for him, but its showing what can be done at a very simple level only to imagine what can be done at more complex levels. Its far easy to paint displacements then move points around, suit yourself. He's not going for realism with his tests.


Just as a 5 years ago no one was using facial rigs and now its quite common. These new technqiues will break through and change things for the better.

[Laa-Yosh]

I think you might be confusing some things here...
A complex eye shader doesn't mean it uses procedural textures. I don't think Weta decided to experiment with layering various fractal textures instead of letting one of their very talented texture painters to create them... The only famous procedural eyes I'm aware of are used by Pixar for a long time; for almost every realistic character it's better to paint textures.
Just as 'facial rigs' existed for more than 5 years ago - I'm sure Toy Story 1 used such a thing as well, because a 'facial rig' just means the various controls, expressions and other stuff for animating a CG character's face... basically any animateable face has a facial rig...

[Stahlberg]

do you think that we could also paint the skin sliding? That's the hardest part to get right in my experience, and also the one that depends the most on good topologyI don't know. I see this test as a first proof of concept, and as the first it's a big step, pretty impressive, a kind of quantum jump if you will. But I'm not going to run out and buy Messiah and Zbrush just for this, for the same reason you stated, I run a company now and changing the pipeline in the middle of a production is too dangerous and expensive, especially for a small one. Also I'll want more than this before I jump on the bandwagon.

But I do like the idea of painting my Blendshapes. I just wish I could animate normal/displacement/bump maps as easily as that in Maya... well maybe version 7 huh? :)

edit:
I think Taron exaggerated the effect on purpose, to sell us on the concept, and that's why he used such an extremely low-res geometry. We can see at the ears that the method doesn't allow any 'over-hang', so it would probably be better to start with a face more like the link provided above, as I mentioned, a little higher res but still very simple. This should still allow us to do skin-sliding etc.

[eek]

Very clean and smooth, I'd like to tweak it a bit though, mostly upper cheek. But then again, in the near future normalmapping may make all worries about details and topology obsolete, when we simply paint-sculpt the shapes we want on quite simple geometry, like Taron did in his recent Zbrush-Messiah test. Then I guess this is the kind of geometry we might start with.

Which one?
Cant remember the name, but it shows you how every muscle of the body works, its placement incertion, the power it gives, the shapes it forms with every other combination muscle. It discuss, how muscles work, the tendons. Also how much tention they give on there corresponding joint. And how they move the joints. Very very good.

I spent ages looking for a specific type of muscle book.There either to badly drawn, or too literal i.e photos, which just dont help.

Just as 'facial rigs' existed for more than 5 years ago - I'm sure Toy Story 1 used such a thing as well, because a 'facial rig' just means the various controls, expressions and other stuff for animating a CG character's face... basically any animateable face has a facial rig...
Toy Story's, facial rig used AVars, which are basically animation variables. It comes from Tin Toy where the baby had 52 custom AVars, controlled by primatives. Basically they group vertices (using geppeto) and apply expressions to them. The expressions control other expression in a network. If i remember Woody had 380 in Toy Story, but that may have been Toy Story 2. They great thing about this system is that if an animator needs a new shape, the Td just adds it to the bottom of the list. The hardest part is trying to make every combination work, and not break.(what im currently stuck on)

http://www.eekstudios.com/cgtalk/mm.jpg


This is the muscle model i was telling you guys about, this is why i was coming from the muscle view. This comes from a similiar approach by Pixar, vertices controlled by expressions, via a skinning aproach. The nice thing with this is you can add as little or as much as you want.Also you can rip the rig off and apply it to another.

So the topology of my model, relies on this, not explicitly but certain key topology lines.

I went off the idea of using blendshapes, as back in the day of max 2.5/3 they were terrible, so i followed this appoach. As to animated displacement maps, i certainly looking into it - gollum used this on finite wrinkes around the eyes etc etc.




eek

[ivo D]

Crossbones., first of all.. i get yuour point, but dont tery to defend it so much, as we see that its just a test, and has a lot of obsticals.

for one having controll points etc.. you have to have a good base mesh, what taron did was good in its own way, but wouldnt be profidabe; at this stage.

*and dont even try to defend stuff, if you dont know anything about it, if you dont even know what blend shapes are, than you dont know much... *

so do not, overlook our comments and try to brove your point so much, caus we allready get it, but we are not so confident about it all yet.

displacement maps ,are hard to make correct, when painted, tarron, also didnt paint them, he modelled in zbrush, and so made displacemnt maps to load in maya or max. and tweak it there, and go, to the other program to animate.


procedural textures are good, but obvious when you dont mix it wiselie, also it is not true that you can zoom in to a procedural endlessly, that isnt related to it at all.

[Julez4001]

http://www.cgtalk.com/showthread.php?t=190944

Neckling morphing

New thread with video

[crossbones]

Hey Juilez! If that ain't proof I don't know what is that this is break through!. It would take forever and a day to do this with point to point morph targetting.


I know what blendshapes are, better know as morph targets in other packages for the non-maya world. I think that its the inexperience of most to play down displacement mapping in this way. Yes displacement maps are painted because remember that data is held inside of a texture. If you look at his prawn animation from 2k1 or his Sealien from 2k2, his Mummy in 2k4 you can see he was using photoshop for all the diplacement maps. He has actually used these technqiues in a fair percentage of the films & spots he's worked on. If you haven't seen the spot from the Reeker go check it out, its rendered at HD and it holds up.

For those not open to change I guess this guy can lead the pack:
http://www.suchyworks.com/tfinetoon.html


To accomplish the effects of what Taron's doing can be done in most software packages that allow you control in this particular way.

[Stahlberg]

To accomplish the effects of what Taron's doing can be done in most software packages that allow you control in this particular way.
He's using 'joint-mapping' which I certainly don't have in Maya. Also to crossfade between 2 displacement maps is damn tricky and slow in Maya, not to mention to crossfade between more than 2... I've tried it just with bumpmaps in the face, and everything slowed to a crawl, even in the modeling windows. Maya default renderer is crap with dispmaps, MR is a bit better but still much slower than messiah. So I guess I'll have to wait until I can justify getting messiah, to try this.

[crossbones]

"He's using 'joint-mapping' which I certainly don't have in Maya. Also to crossfade between 2 displacement maps is damn tricky and slow in Maya, not to mention to crossfade between more than 2... I've tried it just with bumpmaps in the face, and everything slowed to a crawl, even in the modeling windows. Maya default renderer is crap with dispmaps, MR is a bit better but still much slower than messiah. So I guess I'll have to wait until I can justify getting messiah, to try this."

For all Alias's worth(with far more employees) you'd think it be able to do something near this. What would happen if you just had 1 displacement map fade in opacity just for the sake of a brow wrinkle. For two I wonder if you did a difference map between the two via photoshop and tried some other kind of displace what the result would be. If you look at the earlier works (pre-2004) Taron had creatures which did this crossfade between 2 displacement maps or more (prawn has it all over the place). http://www.projectmessiah.com/x2/vids/gallery/taron_pron_divx.avi

he achieved this sliding skin effect long before normal displacement mapping even locked itself to world coordinates in LW.

The other character was the Sealien which used animated displacement maps.
http://www.taron.de/Storage/Images/Creatures/Sealian_trio.jpg

[Stahlberg]

Sorry, I meant to say, you can crossfade between bumpmaps, it's not that hard to figure out. One, two, even three maybe ok, but I tried to have 7 in the face (left and right for Smile, Anger, Sneer and another). The updating of connections whenever a vertice is moved which has this shader assigned to it just has to be seen to be believed, even in the modeling window. And as I said, displacement rendering is dog slow, for this reason alone I've always staid away from it.
And - Taron writes in his explanation that he didn't use plain old UV mapping, but mapped the image to the surface via a bone or more... not sure how that works but if it's what it sounds like, it's a great idea... which there's simply nothing similar at all in Maya. Yet.

[RichSuchy]

Cant we parent a projection map to a bone? I haven't tried it but if I'm not mistaken a projection map has a transform.?

I think I may have to look into this, There may be a way to do this indirectly if what I have suggested wouldnt work.

Rich

[LetterRip]

Thank you for this superb resource,

We'd be interested in your feedback on the face topology of this mesh. Specifically if you could offer insight on areas that might be problematic for things such as facial animation, creation of morph targets (both animation targets, but especially the morphing of topology to provide alternative head morphologys, ethnicities, gender, age, and characterizations), or simplifying the model for usage in games or web plugins.

http://www.dedalo-3d.com/images/new_head2.jpg
http://www.dedalo-3d.com/images/new_head8.jpg
http://www.dedalo-3d.com/images/new_head6.jpg
http://www.dedalo-3d.com/images/new_head4.jpg
http://www.dedalo-3d.com/images/new_head3.jpg

This mesh is intended to be the new base mesh for the MakeHuman project (a project which provides a Free (GPL licensed) system of components similar to Pozer (R) functionality, but for the Blender modeling and animation tool). Thus we desire to have as flexible and powerful a base mesh as possible while keeping the mesh density to a reasonable minimum.

I can provide additional reference photos if needed, also for those who would like to examine (or work on) the mesh directly I can provide an obj or blender version of the mesh. The original version of the mesh was modeled by Kaushik Pal, with some subsequent additions by Manuel Bastioni.

Manuels additions were based primarily on ideas by

Stahlberg
http://www.androidblues.com/topology.jpg

and

Bunk (I'd previously misattributed this idea to Laa-Yosh)
http://www.bunk.cistron.nl/plaatjes/poly_regions.jpg

While this posting focuses on the head topology we are interested in feedback on the entire mesh, and I'll be posting a related post in the body topology thread.

http://cgtalk.com/showthread.php?t=108412

Thank you for your time,

Tom Musgrove
LetterRip

[Larky]

Hi all.

I am hugely interested in researchnig facial topology, mainly because of this thread. I've read through it more than once, and finally decided to post a small piccy.

Picture removed.

This is about 45 mins work so far, and I'd like crit if you'd be so kind. I know it isn't anywhere near great, and although I can spot some problems looking at it constantly has made me go blind to it, so I thought I'd bring it here.

Many thanks for all the help and adive, links etc on thsi thread thus far. This is, without doubt, the best thread I think I've ever seen on any forum, anywhere.

Regards.

Larky.

[ivo D]

nice start larky

but.. im going to shoot some crits ad it for you:eek:
going blind over your work sucks,, i have it to most of the times.

ill start at the top

*
the bridge of the nose goes to far up into the forhead.
to make this go right , and get it fast, you could build the forhead shape with 4 polygons in widt, than weld the row of forhead polys to the head (part right above the eye)

so first build the forhead , and not build it from the eye sockets and nose part. try it

*the upper eyelid is not so defined, in the outer corner of the eye, there are no polys/ edges
that make a bridge between the upper and lower eyelid, yours just goed round, and that will be a problem when you go for some realism.
also with most people, there is a little crease at the top of the upper eyelid, where some skin hangs over it.

*the nose, the tip of the nose is now narrowed. it almost never is. at least not the tip.. when you want a narrow nose, you should build it narrow.. the nose as a whole, and than the tip shpould mostly be a little roundish. the nose wings now are to separate from the rest. they stick out , instead of forming a whole wih the rest of the nose. but its just some pooling for verts.


*mouth area: right under the nose you have 3 polys, narrow ones, that are in a row. but after that you quited, and made a poly going down, i think its best to continue following the end of the nose, and let the polys go up, along side the nose wing, so they create a poly line, where you can adjust the sharpness with, of how fluid the nose comes out of the face.

and also the tri, thats under the nose, should go, you could just make a ring of polys around the mouth. and if youve changed the polys right under the nose to follow through, you could make sure that way, that i wont be to many polys going around the mouth, caus i think you where afraid of that.
also have a look, at how people make the dent right above the upper lip.. you could adjust the polys for that as well there.


* the mouth i see you have used 4 poly ring to create the actual mouth, the way you did it is oke.. but it can be easyer when using less poly rings for the mouth, try 3. and make sure that they dont all go as much inward. like in the corner of the mouth, the wont go as far to the back, also you have to make some adjustments there, so it wont look so sharp at the corners.

thats all ;) good luck modelling:thumbsup:

[Larky]

Hi.

Many thanks for the critique, I agree with everything you said. I don't get al of it, but I'll do what I can and post a update in the morning.

It seems my mesh is geting a little dense, I was hoping to keep this much cleaner and add detail later. Ahh well, the curse of the high-res hardbody modeller has come back to haunt me!

Larky.

[Phrenzy84]

nice work larky, i remember seeing a quick head you did on the silo forums and compared to that, this beats it 100 times over.

[Larky]

ed Hi all.

Here is a quick update. I am going to kill the entire mouth, again, and rebuild, again! I can't get mouths to look correct, never have been able to. I will succeed, I will I will I will!



Any crits on the the eye especially would be usefull.

thanks Phrenzy. Yes, this mesh is much cleaner. I have to say I'm amazed at the difference between modelling the type of stuff I always have, and modelling heads. I can model ears, it's the rest I can't do!

Larky.

Edit: I think I got a mouth sorted, finally!


And another update:

[JIII]

look at stalhbergs meshs at the beginning of the thread that might help you with your mouth lol. can't helpe but loook at the masters stuff.

hehe

[h4sh]

Larky, don't wanna be the bad guy here, but the topology of cheecks/mouth kinda sucks. It doesn't flow right+ you stuck 2 triangles in the most deformable places.

[Larky]

No dude you are right, I shall fix that now.

Update:



This thread has taught me so much, many thanks to everybody who contributed.

Larky.

[ivo D]

well since i have nothing better to do.. well i have.. but dont havce time to 3d to much homework aaah!!! but after tomorrow i have.. so because i want to be busy with it. ill just made some edits to your mesh larky.

you have to interpret them yourself, i dont have time to explain all , but this will have you going for a while.

scanner wasnt working, sjeez.. so crappy picture:S

[Leshiy3d]

Hi dudes, here is my geometry. No triangles and five sided, only quads.

http://img83.exs.cx/img83/9036/nhead8cu.gif

[johanflood]

I started of following some of the guidelines which stahlberg showed us all and then I went berzerk in maya trying to do a black guy. I started of with a neutral pose and then I started to deform it into a smile. By then I realised I needed more rows so I added and tweaked a lot. Please feel free to comment !

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v473/johanf/black_thug.jpg

and later on like this

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v473/johanf/black_smile_02.jpg

[Laa-Yosh]

Magnificient work, very expressive. Congrats.

I'll repeat myself again though :) If you would try to use this model as a fully textured character, and start to make blendshapes for animation, you'd probably come to the conclusion that a messy topology would produce messy results when you'd want to slide the skin around on the cheeks or near the mouth. Probably... at least I've had this experience.

[Julez4001]

Surprised you called the image "black Thug", this guy looks like Bill Cosby.

[johanflood]

Laa-Yosh: thanks for the critiques and I think I have to do a major cleanup as you said to get the edgeloops in place etc.


Julez4001: I think the neutral pose looks like tupac more than bill cosby but for the smile yes very mush the mimic of Bill Cosby. Do you think they are to diferent to be realistic ?

Maybe this is a Maya specific question but I ask anyway. When I do a face in a neutral pose and then a morphtarget and I realise I need more edgeloops etc. can I add that to the morphtarget without loosing my neutral pose in some way ?

[Laa-Yosh]

Maybe this is a Maya specific question but I ask anyway. When I do a face in a neutral pose and then a morphtarget and I realise I need more edgeloops etc. can I add that to the morphtarget without loosing my neutral pose in some way ?

There is no built-in way to do this, edits will destroy the blendshape AFAIK.

But here's a trick:
1. keep your old neutral head and the original target; and copy the target to work on it
2. create a blendshape on the old target, using the neutral head as the morphtarget
3. put it aside somewhere (like save it or hide it)
So no you have a head with the old topology that you can morph back to the neutral pose.

4. work on the new target, add changes as you need
5. copy the new target as you'll need it later
6. now, create a wrap using the old target (with the blendshape) as the base object, and the new target as the wrap
7. apply a weight of 1 to the blendshape, this will morph the old target back into the neutral head
If you're lucky, the wrap will pull the new target back into the neutral pose. Probably not perfect and you may have to adjust the wrap's max distance a bit... then delete history, fix any drifted vertices, and voila, you'll have the morph and the neutral pose as well, both with the new topology.


I hope it's clear enough ;)
So in the end you'll have a netural head and a morphtarget as well, with the new topology.

[augustus]

This thread was here when I was modelling my very first human head and still active. Lots of info:thumbsup:

Johan: Really good smile. He looks more chubby than neutral pose though.

Here is my latest wip. I'm full open to advices.

http://august.f2o.org/temp/plate.jpg

[augustus]

Here is a deformation test:

http://august.f2o.org/temp/deformation.jpg

[dmonk]

Augustus and Johan , those are Excellent models! Great job.

[augustus]

Thanks dmonk.:)

To comment my own work: After the test above, I saw side lines of -err- eye borrow area a little misplaced. They needed to move to much to form this pose, as much as central part if not more. I should slide these a little bit, and maybe one more cut (argh!!'). Also there are some slight shape problems on the neck, forehead and ears too (don't worry, I will not turn this thread into a wip thread :))

[johanflood]

I am still not really happy with the model but I decided to try with a blendshape.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v473/johanf/morph_test.jpg

augustus: interesting model and only way to know if it is good is to test i guess ;)

[Julez4001]

Bill Cosby all the way even in the neutral pose, look at Bill when he is not smiling and there you go. You might want to go with a more hard and chiseled jawline.

[johanflood]

My aim was not to do Bill Cosby and if you actually look at some photos of Bill Cosby I think you will find more that is different :)

[augustus]

Johan: Looking good. Except -probably you already aware of this- between eye borrows. These part looks like a shell.

Here is my (i hope) final topology. It became too dense, because the renderer I use (3delight) didn't like the poles on the forehead and cheek.

http://august.f2o.org/temp/wire-side.swf
http://august.f2o.org/temp/wire-front.swf

[alexpaiva]

The head has some tri sides faces, but I didin't have any problem with it.

http://www.alexpaiva.com/wirefacetri.jpg

[johanflood]

Alex Paiva: all I can say is that you do not have much deformation going on around the ear anyway and a slight movement upwards wich you have in a big smile for example is not going to mess up your tris there. In the beginning of this thread you find a lot of useful information how to build for animation if that is what you are doing. I see straight away some areas were you will have problems if you build blend shapes for expressions.

I am sorry if I am turning this thread into a work in progress. My generic head is quite fast to work from now and by adding some edgeloops I got this one :

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v473/johanf/black_grin_wire.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v473/johanf/black_grin.jpg

[crossbones]

I am looking at all this topology and I am wondering why you need so many polygons. You probably need 1/4 of what you have. As Zbrush is becmoing more capable of genereating the details you see here. Even more targets can be accomplished this way. Just curious is all.

[Laa-Yosh]

It's definitely not too much. There are many things that you cannot yet do with displacement maps, most important of these is the effect of skin sliding over muscles and bones as the face moves.
Zbrush is great for adding static detail, but if you want to animate it, you'd better put it in the control mesh.

[crossbones]

Did you see Taron's animated short he did for Pixel Logic? He has skin over muscle using displacment maps along with bones that stretch . In my study of anatomy I mostly noticed that skin stretches rather then slides. It wrinkles perpendicular to the muscle fibers (brow wrinkles for example).


Having so much mesh its not necessary, why bother using Sub Divisions on heads with so much mesh.

[johanflood]

Crossbones: You have streching and contracting of musles in facial animation and with that comes sliding of skin. Displacement mapping is along the normal direction only and I do not see how you can use a displacement map to replace blendshapes/morphtargets ?

[StephanD]

Having so much mesh its not necessary, why bother using Sub Divisions on heads with so much mesh..

Let's see:


1:Not to lose all the volume when subdividing even only once,

2:Spikey low resolution control cages can be a pain for Riggers and animators where vertice may have to overlap to make a decent crease,

3:You don't 'feel' any Mass and Form when working with such a lowrez mesh(of course,there isn't any)

4:You can resolve a deformation problem rather quickly if it's directly on modeled your mesh

5:You get direct visual feedback in the viewport

6:More polygons is still faster than Dmapping

[StephanD]

Alex Paiva:I like your flow and yes,this triangle on the nose wouldn't affect much since there is a natural crease in this part of the face.

One thing people misunderstand though about using edgeloops with quad only surface is that it gives you the freedom to either add or remove geometry.

Sorry for using your image as an example Alex,I hope you don't mind.



-You can keep it that way and have a groove on the surface in that spot(look from upclose in FlatShaded from different angles) because the edges directions are changed abruplty on this vertex.One thing to overcome this is being able to edit the mesh at the subdivided level.

Or:(see attachment)

1:Make it Quad and Add Detail

2:Make it Quad and add MORE detail

3:Make it Quad and Remove detail

Hope this helps someone

[johanflood]

I do not have all quads but still the concept of adding/removing edgeloops is very nice when going from hires to a lowres model for example aka changing density.

[StephanD]

I do not have all quads but still the concept of adding/removing edgeloops is very nice when going from hires to a lowres model for example aka changing density.

Yes I don't use polygon crunchers but if they could alternatively work well with edgeloops and poles,since most modelers use this kind of setup,it would be a nice way to play with your levels of density.In fact,most tools(sof selections for instance) should be adapted in some way to accomodate the edgeloop workflow,I don't think it's going to go away soon.

[ivo D]

Did you see Taron's animated short he did for Pixel Logic? He has skin over muscle using displacment maps along with bones that stretch . In my study of anatomy I mostly noticed that skin stretches rather then slides. It wrinkles perpendicular to the muscle fibers (brow wrinkles for example).


Having so much mesh its not necessary, why bother using Sub Divisions on heads with so much mesh.


i know what you mean, but what he did with zbrush and displacements maps is nice to do as tests etc. but it takes way to long to setup, for now using polygons is a lot more efficient and faster.

+ it works in every aplication.

do what taron did may be the future,, it wont be like that, more polygons than he used is always better, his cage had not enough polys, the animations where minimal, he didnt do much with it for nothing. for really good expresions, you need polycounts like this, and that wont go away for a long ,long time.

[johanflood]

For me it is just strange the polytools in Maya does not really do the work with edgeloops and you have to use MJ polytools or similiar to get around this. How is the workflow in other programs for this ?

When it comes to adding smaller details I get the impression zbrush works quite well. When people started to say that my model looked liked it was made in zbrush I knew I had to clear up the geometry :)

[ivo-D]

in max you have loop selection and you can easaly cut away in your geometry. i dont even use the scripts for max that much that make it, easyer than it already is, meshtools etc.

i think zbrush is more and extend of 3d than an option to take to model something for real.
now t still the best way in animation, to really animate your poly model and just use zbrush displacement for the rest. I also think that when you just model the tiny details in a program like max or maya, it will result in better deformation than zbrush can, because its really there in the geometry, those detail will really live, when animating the cheek for example, all creases will tighten and stretch, and get closer, and bulge etc. this is something that is a lot harder to get with zbrush involved.

So when you got for a solid peace of work.. that can be widely used for animations and morphing it, and reshaping, adding and deleting detail also, than i think zbrush still wont cut it.

surely its nice to make displacment details in your model, and you can get convinging results fast. but i think it aint as usefull and convinging in the end.

[florian]

I hope someone is still subscribed to this excelent thread. I learned a lot from you guys.
thanks:thumbsup:
Pleeease. Could someone comment this wires.
I already opened my project thread but nobody cares:shrug:
http://www.cgtalk.com/showthread.php?t=212195
I feel really stuck with it.

http://img168.exs.cx/img168/5238/jamie7gj.jpg
http://img115.exs.cx/img115/9223/test143cd.jpg

[johanflood]

I can just say it looks really good but you need someone like steven stahlberg with a long experience to pinpoint details I guess :)

I really like your work and if you have not done so do a simple smile or something to check your topology.

[Ibah]

I hope someone is still subscribed to this excelent thread. I learned a lot from you guys.
thanks:thumbsup:
Pleeease. Could someone comment this wires.
I already opened my project thread but nobody cares:shrug:
http://www.cgtalk.com/showthread.php?t=212195
I feel really stuck with it.

http://img168.exs.cx/img168/5238/jamie7gj.jpg
http://img115.exs.cx/img115/9223/test143cd.jpg


there are some tweaks that can be done, especially the flow from cheek to ear, that has to flow over, now there is a dent.
the corner of the lips are sharp in your model now, round that out,(upper lip)

check some ref for ears, maybe just redo it. there are many things not rigt with it yet. its all to sharp and edgy now. inside to the nose must be a bump . now its flows over into the inside of the nose.. look at yuor own nose for instance.. great ref :D just a mirror, works all the time..

good luck, and keep us posted

[jariullah]

Salam (In english.. it means HI)
My name is Jariullah and I am 16 from Pakistan. I am working on my first head model. The link to its WIP is http://www.cgtalk.com/showthread.php?t=210766 . Please give your comments. I am posting a screen of the topology of the model. Please comment on it as well.
http://www.geocities.com/jansoft88/Topology.JPG
http://www.geocities.com/jansoft88/TopologyFront.JPG

[HapZungLam]

compare the topologys that we've talked about in this thread with the one you have.

You've rushed too far into detail before you nail down your basic shape and topology.
My first stage of the head is around 300 poly
2nd stage is 1000.
3rd stage is the detail stage which will be out number of polys. But since I have nail down my basic shape, so I don't have much to tweak with. I can concentrade on the detail til then.

[jariullah]

Salam
Well .. it is my first Head Model. I shall try to shape the head in a low poly stage next time. Also that I have a 56 K connection and very small time of access to the internet. That is why I have not been able to go through this thread entirely. On the first upcoming holliday I shall go through this thread.

[Ibah]

jariullah: you have to redo the sides of the mouth and under the nose.. those spots look a little of, it probably wont look good when animated, and maybe it doesnt even look oke when smoothed, really weird what you have there. first try to do the basic lines ,than ad detail later. also when you poly model.

[jariullah]

Salam
My exams are coming nearer day by day. I shall work on it tomorrow InshaALLAH. I shall try to do what you have said. And have you visited my thread in WIP. Please go there. I have done a jaw rig test. You shall find images of the smoothed mesh there. Please visit it and pass your comments. Thankyou.

[tal flint]

my latest character.
stiil a WIP

http://www.talflint.com/gallery/blk_head_5.jpg

http://www.talflint.com/gallery/blk_head_5_Wire(3).jpg

http://www.talflint.com/gallery/inner_mouth.jpg


Tal

[katon]

Whats up guys,
I have been looking at this from time to time for a while, and thought i would post my latest model I am working on. I am now at a stage where i am taking this into zbrush, i will keep you guys posted on that, most likely i will make a wip page or something. Also, I would have not used alot of the edge loops i have in there, but I am making this for a guy who is going to make a very advanced facial rig and he wants to have some of the edge loops around the mouth and cheek area I would have most likely not keeped. but we are wanting to make a sweet facila rig, and do some displacement map intergration into it, kind of like taron did. Hopefully it will turn out cool. Anyways, here are some wires and such of my mesh, hopefully it wil help some people, if you guys want to comment that is more than welcome. Also, it is all quads, it should be, if i missed one please let me know.

Tal it looks like you are doing somethign simalr to me, with all the teeth and such, very cool. I did not take much time on my teeth as you can most likely tell, were as yours look a little more thought out. Do you have good reference for the inside of the mouth? Also, your flow looks pretty nice, however i would say that, it looks like you modeled the front of the head in the fornt view, because it seems normal width in the front camera, but when you go to the perspective it seems thin, i would look into that, alot of people seem to make that mistake, and dont realizer that the front camera has not perspective and it looks funky because of that when you look at it in perspective. Also, the haed seems to to not be long enough from front to back, it appears every thin. Roughly most peoples heads are as long as they are wide, not always but for the most part it is close. Keep it up guys.

Peace

edit. So i was looking at the model tonight, cause when i brought it into zbrush it said i had some 5 sided polys, and I found some very obvios 5 sided polys that i cant believe i missed, anyways, they are there in the model, so you dont have to point them out if you find them, cause they are now all eliminated.

Katon
http://www.coloradoweddingcompany.com/katons_website/pics%20for%20posts/headwire.jpg

http://www.coloradoweddingcompany.com/katons_website/pics%20for%20posts/head2.jpg
http://www.coloradoweddingcompany.com/katons_website/pics%20for%20posts/head3.jpg

[tal flint]

Hi Katon

first of all - thanks for the comments.
i modeled it in all views.i think it looks a bit odd because when i posted the image i sisn't size it proportionaly.

but i will take another look at it.
your model has a very nice poly flow.will be interesting to see it rigged and animated.
guess we do have the same ideas :) .i also want to build it a good facial rig and a body rig with some muscle simulation to it.

i'm still looking for good mouth references. if i find any i'll post them here.

[Leshiy3d]

I agree with katon
And I think a teeth should be full shape geometry.

http://img51.exs.cx/img51/5182/jaws8xl.jpg

[Neox]

those don't look like teeth... teeth and the flesh around them are seperated from another, so you should model them as separte parts

[StephanD]

Neo's right although they do look like teeth :P

Depending on the kind of shot and the distance from camera you can easily get away without it or by coloring the area,no big need to remodel in such a case.

[Neox]

ok they don't look like real teeth :)

[tal flint]

an update of my character.
still not happy with it

http://www.talflint.com/gallery/blk_head_7.jpg

[Neox]

he is looking like he wants to kiss someone ;)
basicly i'd say you should move the whole jaw /with lips a bit back to get a more realistic look

[3mm]

hi

this is my last character done with max6 polygons

http://xs22.xs.to/pics/05133/final-01.jpg


and wire:

http://xs22.xs.to/pics/05133/wire3.jpg


the topology based on gollum wire frame
i wonder how make morph target with this model.....:D
no tri ploy find in this ........:scream:

i will post some other view of model soon...

[JanKen]

I Like This topic

[ares623]

hello,
great thread :bounce:
here's my head. no refs. im still pretty new at this. crits would be appreciated :) here's an orho:
http://img109.exs.cx/img109/313/ortho5nk.jpg

[ares623]

here's an update. ill texture him next. any last comments before i unwrap? are the proportions correct? and is the topology ok? :) thanks!
http://img68.exs.cx/img68/2316/ortho9so.jpg

[Fudge]

hello, sorry if this have been covered allready.
Iv scanned the thread quickly but couldnt find anything, here goes; I have a picture of a face in front view, and i want to take it into photoshop to draw some topology on as a guide.
though im having real trouble doing it, iv been studying anatomy and other peoples works for a while, I have an understanding of topology. Its just i cant draw it in photoshop, are there any specific rules to follow, or an order which to do things? also if anybody knows a tutorial that covers my question please link.

[Mikp11]

Hi,

Could anyone take a look at my model and look for any problems that could be caused by bad topology. I'm still new to creating a good topology for my models. I'm relatively happy with the look of my model in this pose, now I want to rig her and get animating. I just want to make sure the topology isn't too bad before I move on!

Are there enough divisions around the joints to get good deformations or do I need to add more?

So far I have been trying to keep to poly count relatively low so I haven't cut many extra loops in. In the final rendering this character will have a meshsmooth modifier applied to her.

Any helps, tips or pointers would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks

Mik

Ooops might help if I added the pic!

http://cgi.ozbourne.plus.com/upload/Female%20topology%20copy.jpg

[tgn376j]

One of my problem areas is the side of the mouth where the lips become chin. Any tips on a good workflow? Start from the inside mouth and cut out to the chin, or work from the chin? Its a hard question, but how do you guys do it.

[whiterat]

tgn376j: Maybe you work it out, if not there´s a timelapse

http://www.cgtalk.com/showthread.php?t=155357&highlight=timelapse

It help me out maybe help you out too.:)

Miguel

[Vedic-kings]

Wow, awesome thread!!

I am wondering what you guys think of song's edgeloops on the body?

Heres the link >>> http://www.cgtalk.com/showthread.php?t=218063&page=3&pp=15

[nickz]

Here is the latest head that I have built. The head is around 3256 tris on the cage model without the eyes. I still have some work to do ont he ears that might dive up the poly count a little bit more. I think it has what I need to meet my animation needs. Hope you all like!

http://www.pinwire.com/nickz/forums/resurfaced_head_combo_001.jpg

Peace,

NickZ. :P

[fast4ry]

hi,here is my last.


http://usuarios.lycos.es/neuro1/old 1.jpg

http://usuarios.lycos.es/neuro1/old%202.jpg

[jeb]

hey fast4ry

you have a very nice mesh there, but i have some crits for ya...

ears need very important anatomy check, look at some ear references, a tip for ears is that you better start it from zero, not from the actual head, it will give you better poly flow. also its cool when the ear has some nice thickness..specially if you are gonna use 3s shader. Right now it is too planar from the side too.

just as the ears look better thick i also recommend adding thicknes to the eyelids (wich are very nice)

Something i´ve noticed when using 3s shaders is that the model should be closed from all the sides, so try to close all the holes (like nostrils, eye sockets, bouth, ear) to get better shader results.

cool work

oh and this thread is really good.

[fast4ry]

thank you jeb,its the first coment after some days posting,thanks i try to doo what you say.

[DJ_Lizard]

Re: 3mm

for controling such complicated mesh, you could use wrap skin modifier. It lets you use a lowpoly cage to modify your hi-poly mesh... :rolleyes:

[Acemax]

Hello to all.

I´m working on this character, and I would like to ask you on your opinion. Also any critiques are welcome. It´s my first complete character and I´m still learning.

Thx.......

http://www.volny.cz/jakub.cihal/_Master_Servant_/test_render_04.jpg
http://http://www.volny.cz/jakub.cihal/_Master_Servant_/test_render_04.jpg

[emirastudios]

Hey , guys is this thread's still working 'cause I just read it yesterday 2nd of July and I was amazed with the sum of data it contains about face modeling and topology ,
I did face modeling 2 times in max and now as I'm working in maya I'm doing a face modeling
again
I spent the last month studying many books and tutorials untill I came with a way I'm comfortable with, but I would like to know is there's a standard way for modeling a face for
lipSync , as I saw in some articles some said the edge looping tech is the greatest for face topology, if so I would like any body to help me to give me the standard way for modeling the anim face with edge looping tech.

My way:
1- modeling the eyes and mouth with nurbs curves each with four curves as it gives better visulaziation for the organic topo than polys, but as much as possible keep it simple.
The eyes 14 spans and the half mouth 8 spans.
Then loft the surfaces and convert to poly
2- modeling the nose and ear with poly as giving more control than the nurbs and preventing
the mess of faces when converted to poly
3- then the rest of the topo is just conecteing the surfaces
n.b. connect without combining the polys to reveal the best placements and cuts
4- Combine and merge vertices, edges and append polys
5-finaly make your cuts with split poly tool in the needed places

this procedure i take about 12-14 hour in the charcter face modeling
But I still need help and understanding and it will be much appreciated

Thanx everyBody for reading.

[DaveKW]

This is my donation to the thread. Hope it inspires, informs, whatever! :)

C&C more than welcome.

http://img183.imageshack.us/img183/4489/face6fg.jpg (http://imageshack.us)

[3mm]

for controling such complicated mesh, you could use wrap skin modifier. It lets you use a lowpoly cage to modify your hi-poly mesh... :rolleyes:

thanks DJ_Lizard

but i work with max ver 6 , skin wrap modifier come to max 7 .

some test without skin wrap modifier ,just moving the vertex.:)
early morph test:

[DJ_Lizard]

Snakeye could you post non smothed version of this model ???

[DaveKW]

Non-smoothed as requested :) It's still very WIP at the moment. That's why it isn't just made of quads. Learning as i go though!! Here's the full thread: Self portrait thread (http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?p=2506735#post2506735)

http://img15.imageshack.us/img15/3516/persp0012nt.jpg (http://imageshack.us)

http://img15.imageshack.us/img15/663/front0014uf.jpg (http://imageshack.us)

http://img37.imageshack.us/img37/3990/side0011or.jpg (http://imageshack.us)

[FantaBurky]

Damn, this is such a great thread! Sad to see all the images going offline :sad:. It should have been archived or something:shrug:

Thanks for the great info.

[Vedic-kings]

Damn, this is such a great thread! Sad to see all the images going offline :sad:. It should have been archived or something:shrug:

Thanks for the great info.

I downloaded all the images on this thread sometime ago. Would you like me to send them to you?

Theres 91 images.

[FantaBurky]

YEAH! Thanks alot! Much apreciated :love:

You could send it to: Jet_Kawa@hotmail.com :D

[Vedic-kings]

YEAH! Thanks alot! Much apreciated :love:

You could send it to: Jet_Kawa@hotmail.com :D

Check your inbox:)

[javierdl]

VK, could you please send them to me too? :)
javier @ javierdl.com

Thanks in advance,

DPC

[Vedic-kings]

VK, could you please send them to me too? :)
javier @ javierdl.com

Thanks in advance,

DPC

Sure, check your inbox:) Its javier@javierdl.com, right?

For anyone who may ask for this folder ( 91 images), is 8MB.

[isolated vertex]

Could I please also get these images? I could always use more reference images. My e-mail is adepew07@yahoo.com

Thanks so much.

[Vedic-kings]

Could I please also get these images? I could always use more reference images. My e-mail is adepew07@yahoo.com

Thanks so much.

Check your inbox:)

[FantaBurky]

Recieved the file, thanks alot m8!!! Really helpfull! :bounce:

[Vedic-kings]

Recieved the file, thanks alot m8!!! Really helpfull! :bounce:

No problem, glad I could help:)

[FantaBurky]

There are still some images missing, and I would really apreciate it if somebody could provide them? Perhaps the ones who posted them in the first place, or mabye someone has archived this thread as it was active?

These are the ones missing :sad: , which are quite alot of images which probably could provide alot more information:


Page 1

LUNATIQUE - http://www.enchanted.prohosting.com/temp/xsi_female_head.jpg (http://www.enchanted.prohosting.com/temp/xsi_female_head.jpg)
RICH SUCHY - http://www.cgsculpt.com/images/facetopology1.jpg (http://www.cgsculpt.com/images/facetopology1.jpg)
RICH SUCHY - http://www.cgsculpt.com/images/facetopology2.jpg (http://www.cgsculpt.com/images/facetopology2.jpg)
RICH SUCHY - http://www.cgsculpt.com/images/facetopology3.jpg (http://www.cgsculpt.com/images/facetopology3.jpg)

Page 5

LUNATIQUE - http://www.enchanted.prohosting.com/3d/topology_research/prototype-topology.jpg (http://www.enchanted.prohosting.com/3d/topology_research/prototype-topology.jpg)

Page 6
RICH SUCHY - http://www.cgsculpt.com/images/facetopology2.jpg (http://www.cgsculpt.com/images/facetopology2.jpg)

Page 10
LUNATIQUE - http://www.enchanted.prohosting.com/temp/ceql-fix.jpg (http://www.enchanted.prohosting.com/temp/ceql-fix.jpg)

Page 11
ICO D - http://lightning3d.250free.com/3%20heads%20FPS.jpg (http://lightning3d.250free.com/3%20heads%20FPS.jpg)

Page 12
NEOX - http://neox.gfx-scene.de/public/advices/head_topology.gif (http://neox.gfx-scene.de/public/advices/head_topology.gif)
MUSHROOMGOD - http://www.mushroomgod.com/images/headtests.jpg (http://www.mushroomgod.com/images/headtests.jpg)

Page 13
WALEE - http://www.maya-xtools.com/walee/WALEE_MISTERYGIRL_WIP_wireframeHI.1000_453.jpg (http://www.maya-xtools.com/walee/WALEE_MISTERYGIRL_WIP_wireframeHI.1000_453.jpg)
WALEE - http://www.maya-xtools.com/walee/WALEE_MISTERYGIRL_WIP_wireframeLO.1000_453.jpg (http://www.maya-xtools.com/walee/WALEE_MISTERYGIRL_WIP_wireframeLO.1000_453.jpg)

Page 14
LOTEKK - http://www.lotekk.com/lotekk-head-low.jpg (http://www.lotekk.com/lotekk-head-low.jpg)
LOTEKK - http://www.lotekk.com/lotekk-head-high.jpg (http://www.lotekk.com/lotekk-head-high.jpg)
LOTEKK - http://www.lotekk.com/lotekk-head-fat-low.jpg (http://www.lotekk.com/lotekk-head-fat-low.jpg)
LOTEKK - http://www.lotekk.com/lotekk-head-fat-high.jpg (http://www.lotekk.com/lotekk-head-fat-high.jpg)

Page 15
VISGOTH - http://members.rogers.com/rtrska/misc/images/basehead_3view.jpg (http://members.rogers.com/rtrska/misc/images/basehead_3view.jpg)

Page 16
ELCTROFIRMA - http://www.electrofirma.com/image_host/cgtalk/topology/topo_wire1.jpg (http://www.electrofirma.com/image_host/cgtalk/topology/topo_wire1.jpg)
PILEDOTNET - http://www.redpixel.hpg.com.br/semref001.jpg (http://www.redpixel.hpg.com.br/semref001.jpg)
PILEDOTNET - http://www.redpixel.hpg.com.br/semref002.jpg (http://www.redpixel.hpg.com.br/semref002.jpg)
PILEDOTNET - http://www.redpixel.hpg.com.br/semref003.jpg (http://www.redpixel.hpg.com.br/semref003.jpg)
PILEDOTNET - http://www.redpixel.hpg.com.br/semref004.jpg (http://www.redpixel.hpg.com.br/semref004.jpg)
PILEDOTNET - http://www.redpixel.hpg.com.br/semref005.jpg (http://www.redpixel.hpg.com.br/semref005.jpg)
EVAN - http://homepages.ihug.com.au/~iamevan/forums/gollum_wire02.jpg (http://homepages.ihug.com.au/~iamevan/forums/gollum_wire02.jpg)
LERPIEDOOD - http://www.qone12.com/~lerpiedood/monicaWire03.jpg (http://www.qone12.com/~lerpiedood/monicaWire03.jpg)

Page 17
PILLBOXX - http://homepage.mac.com/pillboxx/.Pictures/Wires/Image34.jpeg (http://homepage.mac.com/pillboxx/.Pictures/Wires/Image34.jpeg)
LAA-YOSH - http://www.metagons.com/images/SI0429.jpg (http://www.metagons.com/images/SI0429.jpg)
LAA-YOSH - http://www.metagons.com/images/SI0421.jpg (http://www.metagons.com/images/SI0421.jpg)
LAA-YOSH - http://www.metagons.com/images/SI0107.jpg (http://www.metagons.com/images/SI0107.jpg)

Page 18
BIGNATEYK - http://www.steelcitycs.com/topography.jpg (http://www.steelcitycs.com/topography.jpg)
PILLBOX - http://homepage.mac.com/pillboxx/.Pictures/Wires/image81.jpg (http://homepage.mac.com/pillboxx/.Pictures/Wires/image81.jpg)
LERPIEDOOD - http://www.qone12.com/~lerpiedood/monicaWire04.jpg (http://www.qone12.com/~lerpiedood/monicaWire04.jpg)
D-3 - http://www.chtabajara.uaivip.com.br/d3/loops04.jpg (http://www.chtabajara.uaivip.com.br/d3/loops04.jpg)

Page 19
KRYOBOY - http://www.internetdex.com/ani.gif (http://www.internetdex.com/ani.gif)

Page 20
SOMEONE13 - http://someone13.nm.ru/topology.jpg (http://someone13.nm.ru/topology.jpg)
KELTUZAR - http://img22.photobucket.com/albums/v66/keltuzar/body1.jpg (http://img22.photobucket.com/albums/v66/keltuzar/body1.jpg)
KELTUZAR - http://img22.photobucket.com/albums/v66/keltuzar/body2.jpg (http://img22.photobucket.com/albums/v66/keltuzar/body2.jpg)
PILLBOXX - http://homepage.mac.com/pillboxx/.Pictures/Wires/Wire01.jpg (http://homepage.mac.com/pillboxx/.Pictures/Wires/Wire01.jpg)
PILLBOXX - http://homepage.mac.com/pillboxx/.Pictures/Wires/Wire02.jpg (http://homepage.mac.com/pillboxx/.Pictures/Wires/Wire02.jpg)

Page 21
SERIAL KILLER - http://www.iespana.es/SerialKiller/Render.jpg (http://www.iespana.es/SerialKiller/Render.jpg)
SERIAL KILLER - http://www.iespana.es/SerialKiller/Wire.jpg (http://www.iespana.es/SerialKiller/Wire.jpg)
TROLL - http://hailandkill.com/kunt/3d/klown-head-topology.jpg (http://hailandkill.com/kunt/3d/klown-head-topology.jpg)
TROLL - http://hailandkill.com/kunt/pics/04-04-02/12.jpg (http://hailandkill.com/kunt/pics/04-04-02/12.jpg)

Page 22
KRYOBOY - http://www.ona1r.com/jason/arms02.jpg (http://www.ona1r.com/jason/arms02.jpg)
KRYOBOY - http://www.ona1r.com/jason/skin.jpg (http://www.ona1r.com/jason/skin.jpg)
TYCHA - http:///www.ifrance.com/TyCha/images/h01.jpg (http:///www.ifrance.com/TyCha/images/h01.jpg)

Page 25

EEK - http://www.cs.siue.edu/wwhite/siggraph/Diary1998/Image25.gif (http://www.cs.siue.edu/wwhite/siggraph/Diary1998/Image25.gif)

Page 31
MIKP11 - http://cgi.ozbourne.plus.com/upload/Female%20topology%20copy.jpg (http://cgi.ozbourne.plus.com/upload/Female%20topology%20copy.jpg)

[Laa-Yosh]

I dunno about the 3 links to Metagons, but here's the Vig image from John Feather:

http://maxrovat.sns.hu/subdiv/vig_control_cage.jpg

[FantaBurky]

Very nice, thanks, the more the better :)
I wonder if someone has allready thought of archiving and has everything from the beginning? I hate when you spot the great threads when its too late :shrug:

[cman2k]

hey, is there any way i could get that archive of images? i'd really appreciate it. :love:

[Stahlberg]

Okay, I fixed most of those dead image links on my site, sorry about that (moved to a new domain). Just a few of those images I can't find, but if I recall right you're not missing much. :)
If you want to see more topology from me here's my old Maya thread:
http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?t=108412
Sorry there are so many pages to search through... here's a screenshot of my latest body topology, from page 100:

http://www.androidblues.com/body7testscreen1.jpg

http://www.androidblues.com/body7testscreen2.jpg

[FantaBurky]

Thanks alot Mr. Stahlberg! Do you think you can find the full rez of the topology2.jpg image you posted?


I found this on google and I think it mite be it? (second image from the left at the bottom)

http://images.google.se/images?svnum=10&hl=sv&lr=&q=topology2.jpg

You said it was your male topology version.

[Vedic-kings]

Stahlberg, very nice!

I have a question, what are your inputs on the 3 & 5 sided faces?

Thank you for your time.

[Stahlberg]

I can't find the male one, but it was obsolete anyway. Here's a more recent female one, I use the same topology for the male and the female. Except maybe a more pronounced nasojugal fold (the one that runs from just under the inner eyecorner down to the jaw muscle).

http://www.androidblues.com/facetestscreen.jpg


I write a lot about 3 and 5 sides in that thread I linked to above, but briefly: most software are fine with triangles. They create bumps in otherwise smoothly curving surfaces, but this can be used to your advantage. 5-sides do that too (more subtly), but they are tricker in that some software can't take them at all. But if you keep the res low enough, you can Smooth the surface once (or twice) at render-time (SubD's, Smooth Proxy, CSP whatever), and this will give you all-quads.

[FantaBurky]

Hey, thats the topology you showed in d'artiste character modeling right? I havnt read everything yet, but its way more then I payed for! Especially your section of the book which I will read over and over again :love: .


Though the reason I want the images here is (mainly for me to learn :rolleyes: ) but also to archive this thread as it's a very good resource for future character modellers. I've also archived the one you linked: Body Topology, which as you know is 104 pages which meant alot of right- clicking and saving pages for me :scream: . Even more time will be spent to try collect the images offline over there :sad: . Also I'm gonna archive the skin shading topic you started some time ago. Anyway thats the reason I am asking for the images, cause I bet I could learn enough if not more topology in the book :D.

[katon]

would someone please email me the pics as well? I am curios to see all of them. Thanks

Katon

Katonc at hotmail dot com

[FantaBurky]

You can find most images Lunatique posted by searching google as I did, allthough an easier way would be to just enter his new site(?)

I think this is it: http://www.ethereality.info/ethereality_website/3d/topology_research/topology_research.htm

I am not sure where to find the other images he posted, which are alot :shrug:

[FantaBurky]

Come on people! PLEASE update the images :sad:

[Stahlberg]

Hey, thats the topology you showed in d'artiste character modeling right?
Yes, I think that's right.

Come on people! PLEASE update the images
Some of them aren't here anymore, I think keltuzar for example isn't. The others, maybe they're just not visiting this thread, in that case maybe some PM's would do the trick? :)

[FantaBurky]

Yeah :thumbsup: , it worked. Or at least with Lunatique (fixed 3 of his images, waiting for a reply on the other two :P). Though Kryoboy hasnt answered. I'll pm everyone else as well then. Thanks for the tip :)

P.S. You havnt found the topology2.jpg (male version) or Squint2.jpg (guessing same as the first one you fixed, but another person) or?

[Stahlberg]

The male topology2 is no good, obsolete, I'm past it. It would be misleading to beginners to post it, and I can't find it anyway. :)
The squint2 I can't find either, it was just a small image I Goggled, similar to these:
http://images.google.com.my/images?q=squint&hl=en&hs=CWh&lr=&safe=off&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&sa=N&tab=wi

[FantaBurky]

Heheh okay, well thanks anyway for updating the other ones :)

Oh, and if someone who has archived this thread earlier (when it was started) drops by not knowing about the list, please let me know :shrug: :rolleyes: