Body topology

#141

HI mr.Stahlberg,may be i’m late.
I see that the discution is already almost over but i wanna ask
What are you using for head modeling now?
Do you still use nurbs as you’ve written in your tutorials
Or you’ve found that poly and subdivisions is better?
This is important for me
Thanx

#142

the big plus im maya is that you have no limit - all the tools are there nurbs,poly, subd and you can easy switch between them
you can blockout things in nurbs bring them to poly to set the pieces together and define it in subd

nurbs + = u losing no volume and easy controlling - great for blocking out things

poly + = easy to put pieces together - easy to control the topologie

subd + = it combines the + from nurbs and poly but maya subd modeling has some weaknesses but its nice for tweak the mesh cause what you see is what you get (like a poly proxy) and you
can bring easy detail in the mesh without blow up the whole mesh

its to you - take the line of the least resistance i think steven goes not every time the right way but result is on his side and his output level is always very high - only that is important:bowdown:

#143

hello Mr. Stahlberg. As many have before me, let me just say your work is truely inspiring! It leads a person to ask, ‘how does he do it?’. And from that vantage, I would just like to reiterate DevLord’s question, as well as asking if your demo nurbs head modelling tutorial still exists? The closest I got was:
http://summersoft.fay.ar.us/pub/macosx/ch_tab.pdf
but it appears that cmagic doesn’t exist anymore(?).

I’m still digesting the info in your foot modeling tutorial, but would love to get the chance of your insight to head modelling.

Tusen Takk!!! ds

#144

Here is the status of my current female model:

and the mesh that generated it:

The facial topology is based on Syomka, and the body mesh is based on Stahlberg as closely as i could based on the pics posted in this thread. I tried to avoid being creative as much as possible, but in places where i couldn’t see the mesh clearly in the pics i’ve had to improvise. I have learned loads in the process.

There are still quite a few adjustments i’d like to make, but in the spirit of the thread i thought i’d post my mesh in its current state, including a series of mesh closeups that we can pick apart in an attempt to Reverse Engineer Stahlberg - or at least work together to analyze pictorially and in-depth the why, where, when and when not of mesh body topology.

#145

from the back:

and the mesh:

for whatever reason I have to make my original mesh much plumper than I want the resulting sub’d version to be. Or I would have to add more edges which is of course not cool. I suppose everyone has to do this as much I do, or maybe there’s some setting i missing in my conversion setup or preferences which would reduce this “Skinnying Effect” ?

#146

I LOVE your work, Steven. The female form is definitely the most inspiring subject for any visual art. Your models seem to capture the female personality. Great!

I’d love to see a wire-gallery for your models including heads, foot/ankle close-ups, etc.

#147

the neck region and the side going around to the back of the torso (but especially the neck) were areas i couldn’t see all that well on the Stahlberg, so there may be some funny looking treatment there. i did my best.

smoothed:

close views of the neck mesh:

any suggestions on improving the mesh - especially visual ones are welcomed. i’ll post more closeups tomorrow. hopefully we can eventually de-mystify the topology for every single part of the human body within this thread.

Cheers!

#148

Nice, Quizboy!

I really like what you did with the neck. The backs of the elbows look very nice too. :slight_smile:

Personally, on a model this slim, I tried to bring out the hips a little more to avoid “wasp waist.” Not sure I’m satisfied yet, though… any comments?

By the way, this is my first try at human modeling, and I have a SERIOUS problem area under the chin as the facial detail lines drop out to make way for the upper body which has a much less dense mesh. Could you show the neck of your model including under the chin. That would be super-helpful. :slight_smile:

Anyway, here’s what I have so far:

#149

here is a clear shot of the seam between the neck and the head:

just to be clear these are two completely separate geometries. I imported my head mesh and cut it the way Stahlberg appears to cut his - under the chin, up toward the ear and straight around back. But since the head topology is one i am already happy with, and runs more vertical lines than the neck of the body mesh, i had to improvise a bit to get the lines to match up.

#150

Beautiful. I’m jealous! :slight_smile:

When I made my head, I had like 20 vertices running across the lips, and 14 of them ended bunched up where the chin meets the neck. I’m now redoing the whole head, because the first one has way too many vertices but not much real detail. Anyway, I really like what you did with the neck muscles and collar bone.

A couple questions:
-you seem to have more verts on the back of the head and on the back of the neck. I guess those lines run across the top of the head and stop… where? Inside the nose?
-you have a couple of star formations along the jawline. Does the jaw look ok when you smooth it? Usually I end up with stars on the cheeks and near the nose, but that makes animating expressions kind of hard because things don’t flow right.

#151

thanks for the compliment, bennyboy2. when i made the topology for my head i referenced the head mesh topology of Peter Syomka. You can find it here:

Peter Syomka Topology Work

Look under the WIP section and click on “Anna.”

It’s a proven topology, and on his site he’s got enough great closeups to decipher what’s going on in almost every nook and cranny. I would guesstimate my head mesh to be roughly 93.4% Syomka.

If you’re redoing your head mesh anyway I would strongly suggest trying to get your mesh as close to that one as you can. I’ve only been doing 3D now for 9 months, which still makes me a newbie compared to some, so to achieve results i think the best approach is to follow the masters as closely as possible and with as little innovation as possible until that point which I am forced to.

#152

there’s the jawline smoothed:

and a face mesh shot, where you can see that in principal only one of the lines from the back of head - the third from the middle - actually makes it all the way around and over the upper lip. the first one runs over the nose tip and into the little v shaped valley above the lip (i forget what that valley’s called,) only the second drops into the nostril, and the rest into the eye.

Actually if I were to redo my head, knowing now how the body mesh will turn out, I would take that line reducing installation of polygons which you see at the back of my neck right now, and I would slide it way up to top back of the head somewhere. The back of the head doesn’t really need to have all those lines running for the entire length. This would reduce some polys on the head, and the seam of the head at the back would turn up with exactly the number of edges needed to meet my neck.

This could be something you could consider as you rebuild your head.

#153

Thank you so much. For me, this problem of head and body with different vertex densities is kind of my holy grail.

My first solution was to tuck everything under the chin. So 14 lines went to 10, then to 6. But if I ever want to raise the head up on a fairly close shot, it’s impossible, because those lines can’t be smoothed with Artisan.

The only thing I’d change about your head is something easy. I’d grab a few verts and sink them to the middle of the head for the earhole. But it might just be the angle I’m seeing here, too. :slight_smile:

Thanks for the Syomka link. I’ll definitely keep it in mind as I redo the head. Wish me luck!

#154

Excellent work Quizboy. The face topology looks very clean and nice, maybe a tiny bit too dense for my own tastes. I posted some more comments and pics about face topology here

I’ll post some screenshots in a little while, bit busy right now…
DevLord I find polys and SubD’s to be better than NURBS for this stuff.
Yes Joe Saltzman who ran cmagic lost it to his wife in one of those worse-than-bad divorces… he’s up and running another site now, but it’s only XSI so far.

#155

Originally posted by Stahlberg
I never said I was the creator of a method.

I understand.

Thanks for your crits.

I have just seen some of your last works. Great as always. Congratulations.

#156

Thanks very much Mr. Stahlberg. That tells me i’m headed in the right direction. I think on a second generation of the head I will certainly look to thin out the mesh, and for now I will continue forward momentum in the workflow by finalizing the body mesh and getting it all rigged and textured.

whenever you have a chance to post pics it will of course be welcomed…we all know you’re really busy judging by the quality of that fantastic pic you’ve got riding the front page right now. Congrats!

bennyboy2, keep me up-to-date with progress on your head. later i will post more bodymesh closeups so we can further continue optimizing the mesh.

#157

I’m trying a slightly different approach to poly modeling using photo textures. I’d love to hear what you guys think about the process, and about what features I should be focusing on.

I’ll apply one of your topolgies (probably Stahlberg’s) soon and see how this work out. :slight_smile:

Come help bennyboy!

PS it originally started as a texturing thread, so if anyone has some ideas about photo-texturing, please drop by too. :slight_smile:

#158

Okay here’s a closer wireframe, of the upper region, also a face there now, a character for an upcoming TV commercial (in Malaysia).

screen18.jpg987x728

Rendered, slightly stylized (with no textures, and some outlines done in MR).

#159

Beautiful! Everytime I see your work, I’d forgotten how impressive it was last time I saw it. It reminds me of the idealized women from the covers of 50’s and 60’s glamour mags-- gorgeous!

I’ve used Bunk’s loop-mesh so far, but now you have me wondering about the differences, especially with the animation problem-areas you mentioned before. Have you animated this girl yet? Any parts particularly difficult with the mesh you have now?

If you feel like helping a newb, I’d live to hear from you on my WIP thread:

#160

After looking at your wire of her face I’m starting to seriously consider deleting a bunch of edges from the one I’m working on.
She looks great. There’s only one thing that bugs me… seems as if there’s a lot going on with her neck-- like her neck is under a lot of strain.