It’s the first time that I have posted in the forum, so be gentle…
I’m trying to make a monkey mesh, and the face, so far looks ok, but I was hoping that some of you could give me some help with the mesh.
I try my best to make a nice mesh, but I can never seem to get a nice even structure, there is always a triangle somewhere there shouldn’t be, or I subdivide to get one part of the mesh to merge with the other, and it always turns out to be quite untidy in the end. I use edgeloops now, and that seems to have improved it a lot, but I still need some help.
I attach a picture of the rendered image, along with three of the mesh, the front, the side, and the ear (which is giving me the biggest problem, along with the corners of the mouth).
One thing that I notice is that you don’t have many edge loops that follow the shape of the face. This is crucial to getting the shape to look realistic. There are some great tutorials out there about edge loops (search anywhere for edge loops and you should get some). I used to think they were unimportant, but they really arent.
Thanks IanC, those are excellent resources, and I would encourage everyone to take a look. That really helps a lot. I did have a google search for tutorials on the use of edge loops, but I came up with practically nothing … there is some good stuff out there
JCTiger: - I’m planning to shorten the hair a little, well, make it less spiky. The chimpanzee (which I am roughly basing the character on), have hair that is quite long on the head, but it is thin, and falls around the ears. I am planning to use curve guides to “tame” it a little.
The mesh is indeed looking better You want to have the loops a bit more flowing though,
follow the lines around the eye for instance, see the nasty corners? Try and smooth those out. I tried to draw over your image but I realised I’m crap at drawing smooth lines
I recommend this to everyone making any type of head, try mocking up the skull underneath really quickly. At the very least, draw it out. You’ll see some important ways in which your model doesn’t match up. For instance, the jaw. Feel your own jaw and how its shaped, and look at some anatomical pictures. Particularly note the corner at the back (hint hint! Check your model!)
Hmm, maybe yry and look at the meshes for some faces that have been made by the ‘elders’ of 3d, look at some highly rated stuff on cgsociety for instance. You’ll see how even though there are a small number of vertices they can get quite an accurate shape. This is down to proper edgeloop construction.
Keep going as you are on this, and most of all have fun!
… there is some good stuff out there
