topology help

hey all im really stuck, i read torqs tutorial and got amazing resualts very fast, although his proportions where wrong so i take a human from fron and side view then i am completely lost as of where to put the topology like say in torqs tutorial he has 5 verts round the eye (just guessing) does that affect how many verts will be in the loop around the mouth if so is there a way to find out the calculation, so any tips would be great

Thanks Fudge

If you are following Torq’s tutorial and modeling a head for the first time I suggest you do what I did: Do EXACTLY as in Torq’s images (in fact copy them to your hard drive and keep them open in a viewer while working). Adjust the proportions to your reference photos, proportions should not affect the number of vertices at the early stages.

Once you have all the loops filled up and tweaked the way you like you can convert a Subdvision of Suface set to 1 for more loops, if you need to add detail, or add loops locally with control-R or the knife tool.

That’s what I did for this model, still wrestling with the whole thing, the ears are killing me. Hope those tips help you.

ok thanks, this is not my first head (iv done thousands before) allthough im going for realilism on this one so what i really wanted to know is in torqs tutorial like all the color lines do they have names? and also the question

i am completely lost as of where to put the topology like say in torqs tutorial he has 5 verts round the eye (just guessing) does that affect how many verts will be in the loop around the mouth

Fudge

BUMP

Fudge

I think you’re approcahing this from the wrong angle. In my opinion topology is not a skill by itself, but is just a question of how to efficiently represent something in 3d. In other words, questions of topology are simply questions of how to efficiently represent anatomy. I think you would benefit far more from learning the anatomy of the human skull, and how the separate elements of bones, muscles and skin interconnect. Andrew Loomis’ book “Drawing the Head and Hands” would be an excellent start. Only once you know what your representing can you hope to represent it efficiently (good topology). As to your question on how many vertices, i think only you can answer that. The magic formula is what you think looks right, and what you think will work if you intend to animate it. In this case the only way to get better is by hard work.
-s