"Pinch spots" on character mesh

[azookimochi]

First time character modelling! Having trouble with certain vertices appearing to pinch the mesh when subdivided, and I’m not sure how to fix it.

[Magnavis]

Looks like you have some doubled or unconnected geometry. Try selecting all, and merging by distance.

[azookimochi]

I tried it on different distances, but all it does is close the mouth seam while the pinches stay the same

[azookimochi]

After working a bit more and seeing if it persists, I figured it must be some problem with my flow of extruding and filling the faces

[azookimochi]

Lesson learned, don’t update blender versions in the middle of creating a mesh, it just breaks.

I went back to 4.1 (the original version for this file) and redid the nose, chin, and mouth areas with the tearing and finished the mesh.

[Okidoki]

Especially the last front view looks like there are some inverted normals which usually could be solved with Shift-Ctrl-N or Shift-N… this may also the reason for those peaks.

So i’m a bit puzzled of your solution, also i’m not aware of any directional select to normal direction changes.