What Focal Length should You use in Modeling Face?

peterblender · March 23, 2019, 11:02am

I was starting modeling and, modeled in ortho, but when i changed to perspective it looks to oblate at 35mm.

At what Focal length should you model when modeling face? and does the size of the mesh matter?

I had to adjust my mesh’s overall shape at 55 Focal length but i also had my mesh resized i don’t know if it is too big. (becuase when i sized it at 1 person = 1 square unit in the blender 3d View, when i used the mouse wheel, the zoom get’s stuck at some point and won’t zoom in anymore while the object is still too far, in effect it looked to gigantic.

Did i size it too big in this picture?

Here’s the ortho

Here’s Perspective

Here was the original: (looked alright in Ortho but in Perspective the face looked elongated.

CYNIC78 · March 24, 2019, 9:21am

Default cube has 2 meters high use it as guide to scale your character. To fix view from stop zooming make sure your mesh is selected and press NUMPAD ‘del’ key.

minoribus · March 24, 2019, 10:11am

Regarding the focal length when modelling/sculpting you will hear different opinions here on the forum. Some say, they get best results in perspective view. Some - including me - prefer orthographic view or user ortho. So it may be a matter of personal preference/workflow.

From a photographic standpoint 35mm is good for a view of the complete scene. 50 mil to 85 is good for a portrait of the upper body and will work for the face in some way. For a head shot you might even want to go higher with the focal length. This basic principles of photography and the perspective distortions with lower focal lengths are the reasons, why I like to work in ortho or user otho, especially when doing heads.

From my experience ortho views in the viewport and render results are very similar when the camera’s focal length is set according to the general rule of thumb for focal length in photography during render.

But as I said: might be a matter of personal preference.

ArtAvenue · March 24, 2019, 2:43pm

I work with the focal length of 50 personally. 35 feels a little too distorted, but 50 to 75 probably is the hot spot to work in. As mioribus said, it’s a matter of what personally works best for you.