ok ok i post some more links, you know i had them 
http://news.cgland.com/index.html?code=view&no=1551&category_1st=3&category_2nd=700000&start=0
Mirai videos by Martin Krol
wiroās website, some good modeling tuts
http://www.cg-art.i12.com/pictures.html
Julian_J website, some inspiring works and wireframes
Here are some new researches:
Hereās a research on top of Phreaknastyās excellent topology:
Hereās one on top of Stevenās excellent topology:
And hereās my latest base mesh, result from studying faces, and other peopleās mesh:
This one is just the base, but itāll should be a good road map for more detailed splits.
Cool! Great links guys, keep em coming!
I have a question now-- what about spirals?
I have noticed that many models end up with edges that run in a spiral shape up around the eye. I have several in my own head models right now, and I noticed Lunatique is doing something similar with his.
Is this okay, or should we try to make closed loops?
The spiral in mine just came naturally when I start to trace the contour of the eye-socket and nose bridge. I think itās pretty natural. I donāt see any practical reason to close the loops unless you have plans to break off certain parts of your face model and transfer it around a lot?
Spirals versus edge loops, IMHO: you can easily add more detail to edge loops by beveling one of them, or by connecting a set of edge rings.
But if your edges are spiraling, itās quite hard to add more geometry. Iāve just had such a situation with the leg of a model here and it required many extra stepsā¦
Yup, spirals are a huge pain. They donāt hurt your model at all, they just make it slightly more cumbersome to work with (having to select edges one at a time rather than with a single key-stroke). I donāt know at what point the mesh itself becomes more important than my patience, my milage varies depending on my mood 
:bounce: can you guys do a screen capture tutorial, modeling a head for ppl like me who want to learn??? pleasseeeee!!!
Originally posted by Laa-Yosh
Spirals versus edge loops, IMHO: you can easily add more detail to edge loops by beveling one of them, or by connecting a set of edge rings.
But if your edges are spiraling, itās quite hard to add more geometry. Iāve just had such a situation with the leg of a model here and it required many extra stepsā¦
Thatās a good point. Maybe I ought to make some changes to mine. 
Hi,
I just put up a few pages on Modeling for Articulation. I hope to get more done this week.
http://www.hippydrome.com/ModelArt.htm
On the eye spirl thingie, I try to have my directional change (a point that is shared by five polys) happen in the same plane (front view). Example on this page below. Look at the corner on the inner part of the eye. You can see the direction change happen on the lower part of the brow and directly below that by the bottom eye lid
http://www.hippydrome.com/EyeLidsUD.htm
Crazyā¦
Have a nice day.
HippyDrome
Thatās a great resource, Hippydrome. Thanks for making it available. One thing, thoughāIām a little confused about your definition of āspanā.
Hi,
I use āspanā as the line that connects a row of ponts (CVās).
Hope that helps.
Thanks,
HippyDrome
Originally posted by jenga
can you guys do a screen capture tutorial, modeling a head for ppl like me who want to learn???
The problem with that - in my case - is that my work style isnāt totally clean. I tend to rework parts of the model, jump between different areas without any logical reason, and so on. I donāt think you could learn much from that, other than how to model that exact kind of object.
The more important things to learn are guidelines and rules; why you should or should not do something; or how you should do it. I belive that the easiest way is to learn by trial and error, by doing this stuff again and again. You model a head, texture and animate it, then compare it with the work of others to find differences. You try to explore new approaches, you re-read lots of stuff again, after youāve gained new perspective through experience, and so on.
Oh, and a good eye is also important; you must be able to really measure up your work and detect problems and glitches. You have to train your sight for this, which once again requires a lot of practice 
HippyDrome, your site is very interestingā¦
The topology of your control mesh is pretty clean and ordered - itās actually very similar looking to a bunch of NURBS surfaces patched together. So it seems that you only make use of one advantage of subdivs; that it is one single surface without heavy mathematics to keep it in one piece. But you give up the other very important advantage and that is to localize detail (however you can do it with hierarchical editing). This implies that when you want to add more detail into an area, youāll end up adding vertices to other areas as well. For example the elbow and knee areas of your mesh are very dense; and you still donāt have too much definition there. I can see your reasoning behind this, that you most likely want to have a very smooth derived surface; I sometimes end up reworking my meshes for the same reasons. But I wouldnāt give up on localized detail for many reasons; like, my machine is quite slow
A few areas on your model that could use more localized detail are for example the eyebrow (it has detail, but itās continued in the skull area too) and the corners of the eyes on the face; and the nee/elbow areas lack definition as Iāve mentioned above. All IMHO of course.
Also, the size of your datasets can become pretty important as well, more vertices mean larger scene files and longer render times. Iāve just seen a character yesterday that had a 200 MB RIB file (no mistake, 200 megs for one character!) - had it been built with such a ācleanā mesh, it wouldāve taken at least two times as much space. And all this data has to bee sent to the renderfarm machines on a network, many many timesā¦
By the way your skinning looks pretty nice and clean. Can we please get some insight to your methods? Iām about to skin 5 human characters in Maya and we can say that Iām really scared about itā¦
I want to thank Lunatique for starting this thread and ThirdEye_01 for dragging me in. Without it I would never have forced myself to come up with a - for me - new mesh. It was quite a tour the force to keep all those trĆes under the carpet manipulating an old mesh. Looking back it had probably been faster if I had started all over.
Although itās now more or less similar to what everbody else uses, Iām pretty content with it.
http://www.bunk.cistron.nl/plaatjes/mesh_development.jpg
Cheers,
bunk
Hi,
If you use localize controls how do you assign the cluster wt groups to them in the low cage version?
Thanks for your coments Laa-Yosh.
I use hand wted clusters to drive the points into postion. The skinning is just using translation before rotations of the bone. I set up indvidual translation cluster sets for the x,y,z(alot of time they might not be exact) and hook to the bone rotation.
Cheers
HippyDrome:
Jeez, setting up clusters for facial animation would be too much for me
I use blend shapes, for individual areas of the face like yo do, so for eyebrow, eye, mouth, cheeck and so on. you can then combine them to create various expressions, and can have almost full control over each vertex. Iām quite sure that this method could be taken a bit further by creating transitional shapes (especially for mouth movement) that are activated automatically.
Also, localized detail can be put to good use with this method as I can model relaxed and activated poses for each wrinkle area on the face, and can precisely define how each vertex is moving to create the effect of skin sliding over muscles and bone.
Hereās a shot from some initial shapes. Eyebrow targets will be taken apart for left and right side; same could go with blink and mouth shapes if needed.
Originally posted by bunk
[B]I want to thank Lunatique for starting this thread and ThirdEye_01 for dragging me in. Without it I would never have forced myself to come up with a - for me - new mesh. It was quite a tour the force to keep all those trĆes under the carpet manipulating an old mesh. Looking back it had probably been faster if I had started all over.
Although itās now more or less similar to what everbody else uses, Iām pretty content with it.http://www.bunk.cistron.nl/plaatjes/mesh_development.jpg
Cheers,
bunk [/B]
Nice new mesh Bunk, your workās always amazed me, Iām happy you came in this thread 
Hi Laa-Yosh,
That is a neet idea with your blend shapes but I articulate using clusters to move around points and do not use blend shapes. Just a different approach to the problem. :o)
Cheers,
HippyDrome
when you use clusters are you using them in Maya or Soft. I use Max and blend shape seems to be the only real option for facial animation.
