I am trying to get my head around ear modelling, this is what I have come up with so far:
Anything obvious wrong with this topology? One concern that I have is that it is a bit too high poly around the outer edge of the ear, which will cause difficulty stitching this to my male head mesh.
Critique welcome, for example how to reduce the polygon count around the outer edge of the ear, to make it easier to stitch to a head mesh.
regards
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Brian
Overall its a really good ear. The area around the tragus (little bump at the front of the ear) there looks like you have some strange shape quads, or tris there. This could be consildated into quads that flow. You want to avoid poles, in visible areas. In areas that are hidden you can hide your tris and poles. 
The hole that leads into the ear is where you will want to hide your topology annoyances! Although to totally avoid problems it would require heavy planning. Over at cgtalk, check out the Journey begins 3d entrants work Jedi-juice. His ear is almost perfect topology wise.
http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?t=323208&page=5&pp=15
womball, I’ve used that pic from Jedi-Juice as a background image, and remade the ear:
Looks more ear like, but I’m not happy about how heavily I realied on the background image from that cgtalk thread.
So another rebuild in order, but at least I’m now getting a feel on ear topology.
cheers
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Brian
Having redone my own ear topology several times now (with mixed results), I’m obviously following this thread with a bit of interest. I was under the impression that triangles and poles were primarily an issue with regard to deformation during animation, and as such wouldn’t matter a great deal on a human ear since it’s typically not going to be deforming at all. I realize that it’s possible to introduce inconsistencies in shading, but the few quirks that I’ve run into have been neglible from a practical standpoint.
rgn, that’s interesting to hear about the poles / triangles not really affecting the shading much.
Like I say, I’d like to rebuild the ear again, this time trying to match the polygons from my head mesh around the ear.
Poles and triangles are acceptable in some places. For an object of complexity like an ear attached to the side of the head (low complexity) there will always be some form of compression to reduce the number of lines. The trick is to hide poles and to keep stars flat, with evenly distributed angles. As was already mentioned, don’t put poles and stars where you will animate.
You’ll notice that in my ear, there are some “problems”. But I’ve had no problem in use. So then, good enough is good enough.
Both your ears are very good. The topology on the second is better (than mine even).
The lower lobe is very rounded in both models… Are you looking in the mirror when modelling these? It looks better in the first --it is just a little thick methinks. There should be some degree of flatness as the ear comes down and forward and connects to the head, then some part that ‘hangs’ below that (the part that gets pierced for earrings).
Hope this helps.
Here’s my most recent topology. There are still a number of poles, as you can see, and a few other issues here and there, but I’m reasonably content with where it’s headed as a whole. Suggestions for improvement would be welcome.
Just wondering, could anyone explain what a pole is please?
Thanks.
Comparing rgn’s ear to rndrdbrian’s, you can see that the tragus is smaller in the latter one. This makes it look less real. That’s the biggest issue I can see.
Thanks, but dear god that’s confusing! 
OK, a short anwer then:
Understanding the pole is important if you want to do organic modeling on an all quad mesh.
the topology of the ear really is not that important. it only needs to describe the form accurately. generally, the ear is not subject to deformation during animation and so it really doesn’t matter about poles or tris, as long as they don’t interfere in a noticeable way with the subd algorithm.
rgn, your ear is fine, however the ear that douas posted has a pole that is so severe it is actually interfering with the form, and which could easily be removed.
here’s my most recent ear:
Yes, you’re right :o… it is an awful pole. I hadn’t really noticed it before. Like I said, when rendered it is not noticeable. The point is that good enough is good enough. Perfect geometry is often overkill. If it looks fine and animates fine, then it is OK.
Having said that, I have to say that rgn’s ear is the cleanest ear I’ve yet seen.
BTW. nice ear, but another really-rounded lobe? I haven’t studied too many ears but I always thought that the lobe dropped more. But most of the ones I’ve ever seen in 3D seem to have very round ones. Hmm…
BTW. nice ear, but another really-rounded lobe? I haven’t studied too many ears but I always thought that the lobe dropped more. But most of the ones I’ve ever seen in 3D seem to have very round ones. Hmm…
i tried to follow the reference as closely as possible, but if i had been paying more attention i would have noticed that the lobe on this particular ear actually runs back into the head instead of drooping down.
there is wide variation between human ears. the most important thing is not the topology, but obtaining a credible form for your particular model.
Thanks for the explainations! I think I sussed it all out from that thread, but trying to make all-quad meshes is very difficult.
Any ideas how, if I have two edges, joined at one vertice, how I can quickly join them together without creating a face inbetween, and without just using remove doubles? Thanks.
Making an all quad model is easy. If you are left with triangles somewhere along the way, they can be easily be converted to quads (the penalty is that your mesh will get denser localy). The hard thing is controlling your loops (i.e. poles).
I don’t understand your last question fully. You want to merge 2 edges that share 1 vertex? In what situation? Just merge the verts on both edges then. On a quad mesh (subdivided plane for example) you are left with a 6-edged pole. Anyway, the command is “W-key” –> “Merge”
Say I have a plane, and I extrude two adjacent sides outwards, the two new faces have two edges that face each other in a “V” shape. I can join these two edges by manually moving the vertices and then removing doubles, but that gets difficult when working with planes at odd angles to each other.
I’ve put in some pics of what I mean… the second pic has just been manually moved, like I mentioned just now.
Thanks a lot.
OK, like I said before, select both outer vertices and W-> Merge -> at center.