Week 3 - Extruding The Face / Adding Extra Detail

This week I worked on pulling out the rest of the vertices's for the face, so that they lined up with the Topology made in week one. This entailed selecting each vertex separately, and then putting it out on the x axis until it lined up with the side on shot of the face. This was most difficult in the regions around the mouth and the eye, as the reference images where unable to show the complete detail of the over hanging brow, and the right hand edge of the eye, meaning that it was difficult to find a natural looking curve. Once I had pulled put all of the vertices's, I applied a mesh smooth modifier so that I could get more of a gauge on how the finished product would look.



It was obvious that because of the short comings of the reference images, that some of the hidden details had not come out correctly, there was also an issue on the outside of the eye which made it look as if it was bulging. The initial nostrils also look incorrect, but I knew this was to be addressed in a latter tutorial, so I left them for the time being. After applying a symmetry modifier, I could see that the face was beginning to come together.



Once this was done, I decided to tackle the nostrils. Looking at the reference images, you can see that there is quite a lot of shape to the side of the nose, making a sort of cover around the nostril. The model this effectively, I decided it would be best to add some extra polygons to define the folds more clearly. I did this by removing the current nostril and bottom of the nose, and adding a very small, thin polygon which added as a fold between the nose and the face. After this I went about bridging polygons around the edge of the existing nose to add a more bulbous point on the end, so that it matched with the reference image. After adding the mesh smooth modifier back onto the face, it began to look quite effective.



Once this was done, I bridged in the caps from the end of the nose so that they all met together, making an organic shape that matched up quite nicely to that of the reference image. There was just a little work that was needed to be done on the underside, but this would be easy to fix one that the nostrils had been added.



The nostrils were added by using the inset tool to make a polygon within another polygon on the underside of the nose. After this, I used the extrude tool to make a cavity which would make the nostril. After this, I used the rotate tool to move the nostril so that it lined up with the reference image, and fixed any of the problems with the nose lining up. With the mesh smooth modifier, I was extremely happy with how it lined up.


Once this was done, I began to concentrate on places where I felt there were problems on the model. The main culprit for this was the brow, as it was not prominent enough, and didn't hang over the eye like it did on the side on reference image. To fix this, I began to pull the out the vertices's which made up the brow, and pull them out further along the x axis, so that it overlapped the eye socket more, giving the same look as the reference image. This looked better, but did not fix the problem entirely. I realised that another problem was within the eye socket itself. It didn't have enough depth, making the eye look puffy and incorrect. This was fixed by basically using the opposite method to what I did for the brow. By selecting the points which made up the outer eye and the socket, I pulled them in the opposite direction of the brow, making a bowl like shape within the eye cavity. After applying the mesh smooth and making the model a basic skin colour, I was very happy with the outcome.


Next week I will be working on adding the rest of the head and the ear.