Hey! I’ve been playing with Blender for a while. I was going through the “Noob to Pro” set of tutorial and then I decided I needed to do something more satisfying so there I started this head model. So there it is in all its glory. It is far from finished yet but I couldn’t wait for posting my progres. I still have lot of tweaks to do to get the head the way I like it.
I modeled only half of the head. The other half is added with the mirror modifier but it produces a strange shading transition. If anybody know how to solve that mirror shading artifact I’d appreciate.
ypoissant, that’s a very nice head. The proportions look good, and I suspect the topology is well done, too. Most organic models start out mirrored. The assymetrical bits are done after applying the mirror modifier once you’re satisfied with the overall shape.
Here is a small update. No model tweaks. I moved the mirror modifier on top of stack and I applied a gamma correction of 2.2 on the OpenEXR file in Photoshop.
Can someone point me to where I can set the render output gamma correction. I see in the manual that there was a gamma button in 2.37 and I saw a discussion of gamma correction for video rendering in the on-line manula for 2.43. And I saw that there is a “gamma” setting but only for “Radio” in the manual for 2.45. Bot no matter what, I cannot find the gamma settings, even when I set “Radio” ON.
You’ve got a very nice head model there ypoissant. The facial features in particular look pretty much spot on.
The only things I’d mention are the ears and eye lids/brows. The ears seem a bit too simple, just need a bit more definition of the folds and such. The crease of the eye lids seem a bit too undefined as well, maybe just lower the brows slightly to fix this.
Over all it looks great! Any chance of seeing a wireframe?
You can adjust the gamma using composite nodes. Here’s the set up. The viewer node allows the image to be seen in the background of the node window, and the Composite node is the rendered output.
When you select “use nodes” in the window header, and check composite nodes (icon looks like a face) you’ll get the render layer node connected to the composite node as the initial set up. The gamma node is in add>>color>>gamma and the viewer node is in add>>output>>viewer. Connect nodes by dragging a line from one node’s output to another node’s input.
I started by importing one of my head models I did in Animation:Master. The general topology was roughly similar but patches and Sub-Ds require different solutions for the same topology issues. So in the end, I had to rethink a lot and remodel a lot. The remodeling was done like verex by vertex and edge by edge. Every topology issue was a puzzle for me.
Any plans to rig / animate it ?
In the long term, yes. But I promise nothing yet. I don’t even have a clue how to apply maps to the model yet.
Yes there is, but it’s not as good as a screen grab. It sometimes leaves out edges when the mesh is dense, resulting in things that look like ngons, which confuses everybody, since Blender doesn’t do those. Yet.
Here is an update. I just tweaked the head morphology. The previous head was way too smooth so I added definition to about every facial features. No changes to the mesh topology yet but that is the next thing on my to-do list.
I just spent the last week studying sub-D modeling techniques from the pros. That was a fun learning experience.
This is looking very good, love your loops, so efficient! I agree that she looks very childlike, mainly because of the large eyes (emphasized by their emptiness) and very high forehead, two features very common in children. Not out of the range of adult proportions, though. I did a paintover to make a few suggestions if you want to “mature” her some:
raise the eyes & brows slightly (about 5-6 pixels in this scale image), and bring them slightly closer together;
add a bit more definition between the bony bridge of the nose and the cartilaginous part.
The definition of the muscles at the outside of the mouth also seems too great, maybe a more gradual transition from lower lip to this area and broadening the mass so it blends into the cheeks more smoothly.
I painted the eye shapes in to reduce the contrast – it is kinda creepy otherwise, kind of “possibly-malevolent-starchild” creepy
Yeah. I see what you mean. I don’t count the number of time I tweaked the proportions on this head. I have so many versions of heads done over the years. Eventually, I found a set of photos from a model that have the proportions I liked very much The proportions on that head are directly taken from that model’s head. The model is not a child but a young adult though she have sort of childish head proportions. I have several shots of the model taken in a lot of different positions and took time to get all the angles right on the mesh. Of course, I’m not sure about the forehead height. I made an educated guess there.
add a bit more definition between the bony bridge of the nose and the cartilaginous part.
I agree. This is where changes to the mesh topology would apply. That’s on my to-do list.
The definition of the muscles at the outside of the mouth also seems too great, maybe a more gradual transition from lower lip to this area and broadening the mass so it blends into the cheeks more smoothly.
Agreed. It did not look that pronounced in shaded mode but it is very obviously bulging in the render. May have to do with the light angle too.
I painted the eye shapes in to reduce the contrast – it is kinda creepy otherwise, kind of “possibly-malevolent-starchild” creepy
Here is an update with eyes. Took me the whole yesterday night and this morning to do them and texture them. Talk about a learning curve
Here is an update. I redid the topology of the side of the face and the neck. This is not the most up to date, unfortunately, because Blender have become inoperative since I tried to render with YafRay, and I lost my last changes to the model which was mostly in the neck area where I reduced the musculature. The one I post now have a heavy neck musculature But that is all I have.
Edit: I restored a previous save of the scene. All I must do now is redo the tweaks I did on the neck to reduce the musculature a bit. I added a YafRay render (the second picture) At least for that scene, YafRay is considerably faster than Blender Internal Renderer. For instance, I had to increase the Octree resolution to 512 in order to get a decent render time of 18m45s. YafRay rendered the same scene in 5m03s. And I orefer YafRay render look so from now on, I will render in YafRay at least for this learning project.
I had to decrease the light "distance from 30 to 8 to get a decent lighting. But now I lost the eye cornea transparency. I will go and tweak the cornea properties but if anyone have a simlar experience and know the solution, I’d appreciate a hint.
