Another Stupid Sculpted Head [newbie with questions]

Artwork Works in Progress
1

I finally decided to take the plunge and try out this new-fangled sculpt mode thingamabob. My previous experiments doodling malformed buttcracks on unsuspecting spheres had yielded rather unimpressive results but the growing number of amazing works coming out of this forum convinced me that there might be more to this tool than I previously thought.

So I made my “ball of clay” out of a subdivided cube and went to work.

After a few hours pushing, pulling smoothing and pinching I was left with this:

http://img371.imageshack.us/img371/2307/bahead01kf4.jpg

Not bad for a first try, but it looked like something that was hacked out of a lump of wax with a kitchen knife, then left out in the sun for a few hours. Also, the sheer amount of geometry necessary to achieve this pitiful level of detail had sent some primitive part of my brain into hysterics. At this point I had to make some camomile tea and go lay down for a while.

When I came back I decided that while this is a pretty good way block out shapes and experiment with ideas, my computer could not possibly handle the number of subdivisions necessary to make it into a finished piece.

This was a task for the retopo toolset. I started to rebuild the model using TorQ’s excellent face tutorial (http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?t=20448) and came up with this:

http://img371.imageshack.us/img371/7696/bahead02lj4.jpg

Much better. This placed the denser geometry where I was likelly to add the most detail, making is so I wouldn’t have to add so many level of multires to get the results I wanted (it also provided me with a nifty blank head I can modify and use in other models.) The final result can be seen here:

http://img111.imageshack.us/img111/7433/bahead03zn7.jpg

There are still some problems with it. I should have extruded the mouth further into the head so I wouldn’t get the split lips. And the ears are crap, I messed up on the base geometry and was too lazy to fix it.

So here are my questions:

How do I get rid of the creases caused by the instance mirroring in the middle of the model?

http://img76.imageshack.us/img76/1298/bahead04ns0.jpg

I ended up having to smooth them down after applying both the subdivisions and the mirroring, and could still not get rid of all of it. I’m hoping there is an easier solution. Trying to smooth them down before I applyed the mirroring only seemed to accentuate the creases.

And what is the proper method for using the texture brushes? I tried a few different projections, but the textures kept getting deformed by the geometry.

Any suggestions will be much appreciated.

(Sorry about the wordiness of the post. This is the first head model I’ve ever done that I am even moderatelly happy with. Also, I was afflicted with “too much free time syndrome” this weekend.)

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I just wrote a long-winded thing about your problem and erased it, bah.
well, blender can be pretty fickle occasionally about mirroring your mesh. What I like to do is start at either the extreme top or bottom, and make sure your Mirror modifier is set to “edit mode” (Triangle icon). Start lining up the vertices with each other on the z axis. Some of the vertices will just click straight into place, but some just decide to be annoying and refuse. If you wiggle them around, you can usually find a point they decide is their merging point, and from there you should be able to simply push them down (Ensure you drag on the z-axis only (g -> z) to keep the vertices properly aligned.
If your mesh is going to remain fairly low-poly (Subsurfs aside, as long as they aren’t Applied), you could simply up the Merge on the mirror modifier from the original 0.0010 to a more suitible value. The only issue with this is on a higher poly mesh, you may end up merging too many vertices.

It may take a couple of minutes to iron out, but it should do the trick. If you still have odd creases or such, you may want to w -> remove doubles, it’s usually a good check to do anyways.

The only issue I could really see with your head would be the eye seem a little small, but styles weigh more heavily on that than most features anyways, so I can’t really comment too much.

You have a very nice usage of the Retopo, I haven’t gotten to try it, but I think you convinced my to have a go at it some time.

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Oh, also. I think another variation on your problem is if the mirror modifier is AFTER the subsurf. Which would explain the folding around the mouth and nose, too. Cause the surbsurf rounds off all the edges, and if it gets to the mesh before the mirror modifier, all the vertices at the corners will be too far away for the mirror to merge.