Female Head [1st attempt]

Artwork Works in Progress
1

Hello!

I am new at the forum, so first of all: hi everybody!

I’ve been using blender for about 2 weeks, and this is my first attempt of a human 3D model. I started out with the adrianna face tutorial, and did the rest of the head on my own (except from the ears which I probably have to work a lot with… :p).

What can I do to improve it (apart from giving her ears)? I think the back of the head need some adjustments, but I am not entirely sure…

All comments, tips and critics are welcome! :smiley:
Thanks.

EDIT: I will add some textures later; when I’ve learned how to :stuck_out_tongue:

http://folk.uio.no/jonmd/blender/render1.jpg

http://folk.uio.no/jonmd/blender/wire1front.gif

http://folk.uio.no/jonmd/blender/wire1side.gif

http://folk.uio.no/jonmd/blender/wire1back.gif

/JMD

2

all in all the head looks good, nice edge loops running thorugh out it, however, to me (i dunno what other ppl think) it looks more male than female, i would sugest making the jaw and chin more narrow (chin more pointed aswell) and perhaps lowering the forhead abit, and lastly the nose seems a bit male, so maybe narrow the bridge of the nose and bring it to more of a point. but like i said its lookin good, and you seem to have the knack just a case of refining it some.
peace.

3

The back of the head needs a little work.
http://img165.imageshack.us/img165/6632/render1wi7.th.jpg
I’d suggest moving this part in toward the center of the head a bit.

I disagree with Pork about your head not looking female. Faces are all different, there’s no need to exaggerate the typically female features.

4

wow, hope that I can do stuff like this in a week and a half. cool. I don’t know whether this helps or not and… maybe you’ve allready seen it but nevertheless: http://kokos.umcs.lublin.pl/MIRRORS/apieceofstring.com/kos/tutorials/ear/ear_tutorial.htm

5

I can’t say whether the head is more “male” or “female”, but, having worked on Adrianna myself, it is a good likeness. The hole you’ve left for the ear is a bit large and too low. You could fill in the bottom two rows (yellow), split the new faces(red) and move the front edge back a bit, and the whole hole up a bit.

http://i69.photobucket.com/albums/i64/Orinoco_guy/wire1side.jpg
wire1side.jpg548×529

The ear, viewed from the side, will wind up about where the green ellipse is, but the hole in the head is shown by the smaller blue ellipse. Complicating this is that the back edge of the blue ellipse is closer to the head’s centerline (seen from the front or back) than the front edge is. That’s the part Pizzadude suggests moving in toward the center.
If you build the ear separately according to BleedForMe’s suggested tutorial (a good one, highly recommended) then using HKey to hide selected vertices (like the whole head except for the part near the ear) or Alt-Bkey (to show only a limited view) are invaluable tools to make the attaching job manageable.
Great job for a first attempt. Actually, for any attempt. Looks good. Welcome to BlenderArtists.

6

Hi!

Pork: I have tried to do those minor changes you suggested; I’ve made the nose a little more narrow, lowered the forehead a little, and tried to make the jaw and the cheek less wide (still trying to make the cheek “stick out” a little). Thanks for the tips.

Pizzadude: tried to fix the back of the head as you pointed out. Thanks.

Left: new, Right: old

http://folk.uio.no/jonmd/blender/render2.jpghttp://folk.uio.no/jonmd/blender/render1resized.jpg

BleedForMe: I didn’t know about the ear tutorial you linked to. Thanks for telling me. On the other side do I allready got a ear tutorial. Mr_bomb’s videotutorial which took me hours to download (190MB @ 20kb/s)… lol
Can be found at http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?t=74163.

Orinoco: I am currently working with the ears. The thing with Adrianna is that I think she has her face a little too high, so that the ears falls down or something. Take a look below. Allthough I will try to raise the ear a little be moving the backgroundimage(s) up a small amount…

Thanks for the tips on how/where to place the ears!

http://folk.uio.no/jonmd/blender/wire4adrianna.jpg

I’ll post another update when I am done with the ears.

/JMD

7

your update looks MUCH better dude, i tihnk on well on the way to having a kick ass head, and good idea about the cheeks sticking out a bit, i get what u mean, keep it up!

8

Pork: Thanks a lot, man.

I added the ears. 1 wireframe + 2 renders below.
Please tell me what you think of them!

http://folk.uio.no/jonmd/blender/wire3ear.jpg

http://folk.uio.no/jonmd/blender/render3.jpg

http://folk.uio.no/jonmd/blender/render3side.jpg

/JMD

9

She is looking up slightly. It’s clear in the profile - cover her ear and the back of her head with your hand, the face is clearly looking up toward the light source. Which means the ear has to move down about half an inch. It’s a nice ear, though. I’ll have to check out the Mr. Bomb tutorial.

10

Orinoco: I fixed it by moving the ears down, and tilted the head a little forwards. From workspace:

http://jondrange.googlepages.com/head4.jpg

11

Your head model is about 200x better than what I could make. However, I’d complain about the ears a bit. I think that the lower part of the ear is not “hanging down” enough. [Of course, it all depends of the “reference”, ears are very different from person to person, but people around me “normally” wouldn’t have ears like this.]

Look at this pic:

http://www.olegvolk.net/gallery/d/1186-2/ear.jpg
ear.jpg1200×800

12

daredemo:

Thanks.

You got a point there with the earflips. But I must say I disagree with you on that one. There are people who has their earflips connected to the head. (I am one of those :p)

On the other side; I have a feeling that there is something wrong with the ear on the lower part. Maybe I should try to make it “hang” a little more, as you said, but still have it connected to the head.

I think I’ll just play a little more with it…

13

New small update. Changed a little bit at the lower part if the ear. Is it better now?

http://jondrange.googlepages.com/ear5.jpg

14

As I said, ears are very different depending of the person. For me “your ears” look strange, since when I look in the mirror, I see something different. Just making sure you know what you are doing :wink:
If you say this is how it has to be, then that’s how it would have to be (even if I made it differently) :stuck_out_tongue:

15

Seems to me you’ve turned a good ear into another good ear. As daredemo says, “ears are very different from person to person…” About one third of people have attached earlobes, like yours, and two thirds have hanging earlobes, like daredemo’s. Of course, since it’s a genetic thing, distribution isn’t uniform at all places in the world.

One of the ways I check my work is to fire up the Gimp and overlay a drawing on my model.


Here’s a drawing of Loomis’ teen aged girl (http://www.fineart.sk/show.php?w=116) added to your model of Adrianna. I made the drawing a negative to get the white lines, adjusted the scale (and the tilt, only 1 degree), set the layer to “addition” and cut the opacity down to around 50%.

As you can see, Loomis has the eye and ear a bit lower, but the really big difference is in the back of the neck and, to a lesser extent, the back of the skull. Not surprising, since Adrianna has that part covered with her hair in your reference photo.

Whether you “fix” the eye and ear height is up to you: some skulls are long and narrow, some are short and wide, some are in-between, and eye sockets can also vary a bit up or down. So what you’ve got is human, even though it doesn’t match Loomis’ girl. But you should fix the back of the neck. That’s too far off to be normal variation.

16

daredemo: I get your point. We are different. I think I leave the ear as it is for now, and concentrate on the back of the head (which clearly needs a LOT attention ;)) …

Orinoco: Wow! That was a huge difference. I don’t know much about the human proportions and as you said that part covered with hair, so what I had wasn’t much of a reference! I will use Loomis picture to try and make the skull better. I think I leave the eyes and ears for now. That was really helpful! Thanks!

Thanks a lot to all of you. I appreciate your help. :smiley:
/JMD

17

First of all, wonderfully modelled head! I love the proportions and the edge-loops are spot on! Great job!
Great job on your edge-loops in the ear! Your mesh looks twice as good as what I did for a ear!
The topology of the ear is a bit strange, however. I agree with all that have stated that there are many different types of ears (and people), the 2 pics above are good examples. I did a quick paint-over to illistrate what I feel could be changed to help give the shape that I have observed that most ears have. That’s not to say you have to follow the exact shape I have painted (obviously), just the general physiology (i.e. in the same way that there are general proportions for a head, there are the same for ears…).
The folds of the ears (especially at the top) are not quite running right.
I hope you see what I mean.
Again, great job! Great attention to detail. I look forward to seeing how you do with the texturing!

Attachments


18

Soter: Thanks! I have tried to make my ear look more like you sketch, as you probably can see on the pictures below. About the texturing: Well … eh … this is probably going to be the first I am going to texture something as well :stuck_out_tongue:

I have also tried to make my model more like Loomis girl. While doing this I suddenly thought of a great reference for modeling the skull correctly: Natalie Portman in V For Vendetta … hehe. Natalie got a somewhat different (that is smaller) skull than Loomis girl, so I tried to make my head a little larger than NP, and little less than L’s girl.

I have also done some other updates: made the ear smaller (but still it’s 10-15% larger than NP’s ear), minor changes on the nosetip and the upper lip (trying to make it point more out), and made the outline of the head seen from front a little better.

Some new pictures:

Render:
http://jondrange.googlepages.com/render7.jpg

  1. Old , 2. Update 1 , 3. Current version
    http://jondrange.googlepages.com/ears.jpg
    ears.jpg700×350

Natalie Portman VS Loomis girl:

http://jondrange.googlepages.com/head7portman_loomis.jpg
head7portman_loomis.jpg700×431

/JMD

19

The topology is quite nice, although still a bit light (not enough density on some points)

As for the reference try to have 2 view from the same person.

2 different people face ref means 2 different facial anatomy, 1 hell of a headache…

Try the so called “beauty mask” on this link :
www.beautyanalysis.com

edit : here is a link where you can see what it is all about… as the previous link doesn’t seems to respond at the moment…

Although it might be based on pseudo mystical gibberish about the mythic Golden Number, it gives a clear reference when it comes to the position of the different facial features… Orthographic, and without the noise issuing from photo references…

:smiley: hope it helps

20

Photos are basically perspective. In the NP photo, the ears appear significantly smaller than Natalie’s real ears because they are behind the face plane. Switch your front view to perspective (NumPad 5 toggles perspective and orthographic) and you’ll see what I mean. People who take photos of heads for 3d modelers (like fineart.sk and others) take care to make the photograph as much like an orthographic view as they can, but photos from other sources usually don’t bother with this.

So now the ears appear too small. The ears you had yesterday were spot on for size, although Soter’s suggestions about the topology that you’ve implemented are good. #3 is your best ear yet. (But if you want a detached lobe someday, don’t move the lobe down, move the attachment point up.)

I’ve had some experience with starting a head using one reference, then switching to another midstream and my best advice on this is: Don’t do it. I suggested using Loomis’ girl for the parts of the head the Adrianna reference didn’t show well, not to start you down the path of modifying Adrianna to look like Ms. Loomis.

If you want to model Natalie Portman (and who doesn’t? She’s gorgeous) here’s my advice (and don’t let this make you crazy…) Start over.

You had a good likeness of Adrianna two days ago, and, except for the work on the ear and the back of the head, you’re just tweaking a good face into another good face. The time spent tweaking would be better spent practicing building new faces from scratch or in learning new tools in Blender, whichever new ground you feel would be more fruitful for you to explore at this stage in your Blender/3D Modeling education.

Just as in 2D art it helps to step back from the canvas or paper to get an overall view of the work-in-progress, so in 3D art it is helpful to (metaphorically) step back from the screen and assess your progress. Three fundamental questions to ask yourself: “What (exactly) am I doing?” “Why am I doing it?” “How does it help me?”

You may find the answers to these questions validate your current efforts, you may discover you are spinning your wheels and need to make a course correction. Either way, you go back to work with renewed confidence that you’re making progress.

And, of course, the gang at BlenderArtists is always here to help.