The head shot gallery

[Espen]

Hi all,
also my first post here. I have been to CGTalk before but I thought it could be good to visit a forum more game specific. There is so much great game artwork around here. I felt at home from the first second.

Well, I recently started a new portfolio project about modeling human heads. My plan is to practice face modeling without references.

It's all done in modo 301 including sculpting done with the new image based sculpting method introduced in it's latest version.

My goal is to acquire an efficient workflow with just one tool for everything. No more switching between tools, export problems, loading times and stuff like that.

The sculpting of a head takes about 1 to 3 hours right now, depending on complexity. The base mesh took much longer though. Please give me a note if you want to see base mesh, wireframes or anything...

Later on I will do some normal map baking and texturing, but for now it's all about modeling.

Head_004
http://www.pointsnap.com/download/CGTalk/faces/Face_004.jpg

Head_003
http://www.pointsnap.com/download/CGTalk/faces/Face_003_02.jpg

Head_002
http://www.pointsnap.com/download/CGTalk/faces/Face_002.jpg

Head_001
http://www.pointsnap.com/download/CGTalk/faces/Face_001.jpg

Critique and/or feedback are very much appreciated. And yes, please go into the anatomical details.

Best regards,
--Espen

[Marcus Dublin]

First I’d like to welcome you to Game Artisans Espen, and thanks for sharing your work with us. Head sculpts can be fun exercises and it’s a good way to play with modeling and sculpting tools as well. The one thing that sticks out like a sore thumb is the eye placement for you heads, it’s pretty obvious to me that these are made from the same base mesh and because of this your building from the same flawed foundation. Here are a few points to remember when tacking heads:

Eyes: The eyes are always halfway down, between the top of the head and the bottom of the chin. They are also an eye-length apart. This means that, however long you decide to make the eyes, there will be that much space between the eyes as well. Your models eyes seem to far apart.

Nose: The rest of the face underneath the eyes is divided into thirds. At the one-third line will be the bottom of the nose. The nose placement seems fine but the bottom of the nose looks flat and planar, from the profile your noses should be slightly arched.

Mouth: the next third, or two-thirds of the way from the eyes to the chin, should be the mouth. The mouth's edges should be in line with the middle of each eye. To check this, go into your front view port and put a pencil or box in “3d space” in the middle of one of either eye. If the lower part of the pencil and or box touches the outer corner of the mouth, it is aligned correctly.

Anyway Espen those were the main bullet points that I thought needed to be addressed in your head sculpts. With that said I’m really looking forward to seeing more of your work and hopefully some of the suggestion help you a bit.:)

[Espen]

hey Marcus,

thank you for your comprehensive feedback. Of course it is very helpful! You are absolutely right about eye placement and the arc of the nose feedback.

After I have read your comments I thought: OK, I have to rework my base mesh before going on to a new head modeling.

This is my old base mesh:
http://www.pointsnap.com/download/CGTalk/faces/head_base_old.jpg

And this is what I came up with:
http://www.pointsnap.com/download/CGTalk/faces/head_base.jpghttp://www.pointsnap.com/download/CGTalk/faces/head_base_wire.jpg

Front and side views:
http://www.pointsnap.com/download/CGTalk/faces/head_base_front.jpghttp://www.pointsnap.com/download/CGTalk/faces/head_base_side.jpg

Thanx again for the valuable feedback!

Best Regards
--Espen

[Espen]

Hi guys, I also did a female base mesh. Feedback welcome:

http://www.pointsnap.com/download/CGTalk/faces/head_base_female.jpg

Best regards,
--Espen

[SupRore]

Think your anatomy is off, Marcus. I'm pretty sure the halfway mark is the top of the eyes, or bottom of the brow. And the horizontal distance tends to vary, just a bit, it's not always a three eye rule.

Aspen, that female base looks awesome. I'd try and incorporate more of the form of the mouth from it onto the male base -- not quite as full and rounded, but the same subtlety and detail of the forms.

[Teclis]

Hey Espen, very nice work u have there :thumb:
I'm really looking forward to seeing your next sculptings, Especially what kind of variations you can get out of your female basemesh.
Only crit I can offer is that the earlap and the jaw seem to be welded together.

that's all for now

[Espen]

Took a new approach on the "od man" theme. This time I used some reference and made the face asymmetrical. Helped a lot in my oppinion. Ah, well, still WIP. I did not do anything to his neck... it's actually jsut the face right now. Any comments?

http://www.pointsnap.com/download/CGTalk/faces/Face_005.jpg

Hey Teclis, nice to see you around young Padawan. Be patient my son, I will work on the ladies later on. I still did not finish the UV layout. And I will give the ears a bit more focus in the future. They are pretty complicated and I normally tend to loose sight of it... but especially for the girl a nice ear is essential.

SupRore: yeah, I want to tweak my male basemesh even more. For me mouth and eyes are the most complex areas of a face and I could spend ages to work over those parts again and again.
Concerning all the rules that you and Marcus spoke about: well, I am not sure how much an artist should stick to these rules. I often see people on the street and I think: oh my god, if I would model this exact face nobody would believe me. People are so different. It is so easy to find faces were all the nice rules do not fit at all. But I surely agree that it is necessary to have a set of rules at hand when it comes to modeling base meshes and a stylized basis to add individualty later on.

--Espen

[Marcus Dublin]

Hey Espen it's nice to see you still grinding away on these head sculpts, I agree with both you and SupRore about the eyes and mouth not lining up in the same configuration for everyone. It's not that it's completely wrong but it's more or less a flexible rule set for people to work from, everyone’s facial structure is unique but we do fall under the same umbrella as for as anatomical detail goes. Anyway I just wanted to point out that the shape of the female eyes seem a bit off, the bottom half of the eyes are reading too horizontal. Check out the reference to see what I mean. Keep up the good work, practice makes perfect!

[Espen]

Marcus. Thanx for your feedback and the reference images. You are right about the eyes. There are still some little issues about my base mesh that I want to change. If you really have your base mesh in useyou always find things that are not optimal.

I head number 005:
http://www.pointsnap.com/download/CGTalk/faces/Face_005_02.jpg

I think he is quite some character now. What do you mean, anything to improve? I have the feeling that I already did too much on him, but maybe I'm wrong...

I also tested my female base. This time without reference again and it is still WIP. I put some focus on the eyes already. Ears and neck need more detailing.

Head_006 (Update):
http://www.pointsnap.com/download/CGTalk/faces/Face_006.jpg

Wireframe:
http://www.pointsnap.com/download/CGTalk/faces/Face_006_wire.jpg

You can see that I restructured the mesh flow in the forehead area compared to the male mesh. now it works much better with the sculpting.

Ah well, it's all done in modo 301 of course.

Best regards,
--Espen

[Teclis]

Hey Espen, the old man looks great, though i think he is really believable.
I'd rather spend the time in a new Head instead of tweaking the current one.

In my oppinion the women is relative expressionless, some how generic. She's missing uniqe detaills. But I suppose its an early state so this will change in the next update ;)

[pnyx]

the old man looks really nice epsen! Top notch imo.
As for the female... she doesn't really look that female to me ;) of course the lack of hair is one reason but not the only one ;)
for example you might want to push her forehead in a little, it seams really dominant at the moment.
Maybe it will also help to shorten the length of the nose and move the hole chin-mouth-nose section up a bit. In my experience this often makes a face look more feminine.
Also the ear seems quite huge and a bit to far back.
I made a little overpaint (http://img152.imageshack.us/img152/1898/epsen01eg4.jpg) to illustrate my suggestions.

[Espen]

Hi guys,
I am still fooling around with my head sculpts and came up with two more female versions.

Head_007:
http://www.pointsnap.com/download/CGTalk/faces/Face_007.jpg

Head_008:
http://www.pointsnap.com/download/CGTalk/faces/Face_008.jpg

Teclis: thank you for your suggestions. Well, we already spoke about how much of a facial expression is needed here. I decided to sculpt my heads in a neutral expression as much as possible as I intend to use some of those exercises later on for animation tests.

pnyx: glad you like the old man. To create a guy like him is much easier than to model a female face with some character in it. I also made some corrections to the female head, but not so much in your direction (except for the forehead). I like her that way actually. But as you can see I was moving forward to something new...

Best regards,
--Espen

[Teclis]

Hey nice work again, i like the new heads.
One detaill that bothers me is the nose of the old woman.
I think it is a bit to clean and to 'young' compared to the rest of the face...
But I'm not sure about it. Keep going, very inspireing work. :thumb:

[Vrav]

Just a tidbit regarding face proportion, specifically the already-rather-beaten point of eye placement: something I learned (from Burne Hogarth, I think?) is that the inner corner of the eye is always somewhere around the vertical line caused by the outer corner of its corresponding nostril. Simply something to keep in mind; if I recall correctly it is relatively true for all angles, so can be helpful in approximating depth as well.

I am obviously not a master of proportion or anything, though. The models look nice!

[_tdc_]

Looking good. But go a bit crazy and put some style into it; some exageration. Because they're great but I don't see the "character" side of things. Plus the last female one is the most believable female you have. The first one was a bit weird. Eyes were too far apart and looked like it kind of melted away from each other.

-tchiu

[Espen]

Hi folks, long time no see...

Teclis: thanx man. I checked some reference of old women's noses. There are normally not so many wrinkles but a bit more than with the woman I made. Maybe I will give the sculpting some rework. I am planning to do more head sculpts soon and pick the best ones for a step of rework/polishing.

Vrav: thank you for you comment. It is interesting to hear more rules for constructing a face. I normally do not think about rules so much. When I work on my portfolio the artistic side of things and a fast approach is most important to me. I always think that rules can help but if you stick to them too much they can also stand in your way...

_tdc_: you are absolutely right. All my head sculpts miss some exaggeration and need more expression. At the moment they are done in a very neutral expressionless pose. I am still working on a smooth workflow, yet. But I am planning to give my best heads some posing and rework later. Morphtargets seem to be a good way for that, but I have to check this feature in modo and see if it has all the functionality that I am looking for.

I did not have much time to work on new sculpts, but I did some testing on the creation of hair.

I did the textures with Maya's paint effects and assembled the hair patches manually.

http://www.pointsnap.com/download/CGTalk/faces/hair_001.jpg

http://www.pointsnap.com/download/CGTalk/faces/hair_002.jpg

http://www.pointsnap.com/download/CGTalk/faces/hair_patches.jpg

http://www.pointsnap.com/download/CGTalk/faces/hair_progress.jpg

I like the overall method of that approach as it gives you al lot of control. It is still a bit time consuming.

What do you think?

Best regards,
--Espen

[poopinmymouth]

One thing you might want to work on is that lighting setup. Harsh nose shadows are almost always a no-no. Try to either fill it, or move the light towards the front of the face, and down a bit. Or move it back and adjust the falloff. Just try to avoid hard nose shadows that go to near black.

Awesome sculpts though!

http://www.mr-chompers.com/images/poop.gif (http://www.poopinmymouth.com)

[Espen]

hey Poop, you are damn right about light setup. Actually there is none. The shadow color was even black right now. What is something only a newbee would do. I did not spend any efford on rendering yet...

Best regards,
--Espen

btw. here are some 5 min light tweaks. I think that this goes in your direction...

http://www.pointsnap.com/download/CGTalk/faces/hair_003.jpg

[Espen]

hi guys,

as it is all about real time characters I experimented a bit with baking and stuff. I will have to reduce the low poly a bit more by hand. But for a first try I like the results... any comments?

I checked out a fast baking method today. No adjustments done on anything and results are already quite clean. The complete baking worflow takes about 20 min if everything is set up properly.

1. SDS mesh with vector displacement sulpting
http://www.pointsnap.com/download/CGTalk/faces/head_normal_process_01.jpg

2. SDS mesh without vector displacement texture (base)
http://www.pointsnap.com/download/CGTalk/faces/head_normal_process_02.jpg

3. Relaxed poly mesh taken from SDS base
http://www.pointsnap.com/download/CGTalk/faces/head_normal_process_03.jpg

4. Low poly wire (3680 polys)
http://www.pointsnap.com/download/CGTalk/faces/head_normal_process_04.jpg

5. Applied normal map at 100% bump strength
http://www.pointsnap.com/download/CGTalk/faces/head_normal_process_05.jpg

6. Applied normal map at 160% bump strength
http://www.pointsnap.com/download/CGTalk/faces/head_normal_process_06.jpg

7. Low poly mesh with normal and wire
http://www.pointsnap.com/download/CGTalk/faces/head_normal_process_07.jpg

8. Baked normal texture directly out of modo 301
http://www.pointsnap.com/download/CGTalk/faces/head_normal_process_tex.jpg
Original texture size is 1024x1024

Best regards,
--Martin

[Teclis]

Hey Espen, pretty solid progress in the baking process. Though I have to say that your lowpoly is still pretty high. You have many loops which have neither use for the shilouette nor for the animation I think. But I don't know what you aimed for.

[Espen]

hey Teclis,
you are right my friend. I took my low poly mesh and reduced it down to 1722 polys.

http://www.pointsnap.com/download/CGTalk/faces/head_normal_process_08.jpghttp://www.pointsnap.com/download/CGTalk/faces/head_normal_process_09.jpg
Low poly mesh without normal map (1722 triangles)

http://www.pointsnap.com/download/CGTalk/faces/head_normal_process_10.jpghttp://www.pointsnap.com/download/CGTalk/faces/head_normal_process_11.jpg
Normal mapped low poly ingame mesh (1722 triangles)

I think that with a polycount like that my head should meet given standards like Unreal etc. ?

Best regards,
--Martin

[Espen]

Hi guys. I started to sculpt an Asian guy yesterday. No reference this time. After I did the "monk version" I experimented with hair in an extra layer. It is still WIP but I think that for short haircuts this way of creating hair is enough for most ingame assets. And it is much faster than the alpha layer approach of course.

http://www.pointsnap.com/download/CGTalk/faces/head_male_006.jpg

What do you think? Who is next?

Best regards,
--Espen

[Espen]

I was not quite happy with the Asian guy, so I spend some more time on him. I think I will stick to the Asian theme for a while. On the long run I am planing to do some Samurai characters, but this can wait.

This is my latest version of him:
http://www.pointsnap.com/download/CGTalk/faces/head_male_006_02.jpg

regards,
--Espen

[pnyx]

nice work epsen! although he doesn't look that asian to me... I guess it is because of the upper eyelid. Maybe take a look at this: http://www.asianeyelid.com/faq.html (Exhibit 1)

The Hair really makes him more unique, I guess thats something that made your previous heads look a bit generic. And it is way better than your alpha approach as it looked really flat and had no hair strands that would have brought some more structure in the haircut.

keep up the good work :thumb:

[Espen]

hi pnyx,
yeah well, you are right. This happens when you work without reference. :ack:

It's always fun but you never know where it leads you.

Maybe he's from the Philippines or something. Thank you for the link to the eyelid reference page. I made another Asian guy and kept those things in mind.

It is enormous how important the hair is to the characters. On the other hand: to model hair is quite boring and I normally tend to start another face instead. :p

I want this head modeling exercise to be something like a daily practice, or at least a normal routine. I am just playing around with different techniques for the hair though. And I am not happy with the results so far. Next time I will try to apply geometry with alpha maps and sculpt those meshes. Let's see how this approach works... or do you have another idea for the hair?

Head_010:
http://www.pointsnap.com/download/CGTalk/faces/head_male_007.jpg

He could be some kind of Japanese aristocrat. This already goes into the direction of my samurai theme...

Best regards,
--Espen

Ah well, I forgot my reference. Here it is:
http://www.pointsnap.com/download/CGTalk/faces/head_male_007_reference.jpg