How to 3D Model a Head Part 1

in this video I'll be going over how to use my 2011 to create a character's head first off I want to go over is how to make this tool like using inside of Maya that allows you to split faces in half or more like a ring of faces in half so an example would be if I were to grab this right here with a simple flick of a button I can cut things in half so I want to go over how to create that to a real quick first of all if you click on anything let me double let me turn off my mirror that's off now any of these things press up this right here basically selects the edge ring if I go to edit mesh and go to connect components this will cut that edge ring in half go my script editor you'll notice that everything I've done has been recorded inside the script editor for example the pig walking that's what a line works likes the whole edge ring and this line right here connects the components so if I take these two middle Mouse drag it down here and this line little mouse dragging down with the semicolon just looking both of these four you can copy it also for those we like to use commenting I'll comment this line real quick select the edge ring and this splits the edge ring in half alright let's treat copy that if you get a window settings/preferences hotkey editor you can add it to any of these menus Oh categories I'll put this under edit mesh' you click new you can give it a name ah I guess I'll call this divided edge ring which if they already have it's already in there give it a description you paste it once you paste this code in here give a description click accept it'll add itself to the list okay next what you want to do is click on your new item and sign a hotkey to it just type a hotkey in here I'll assign mine to the exclamation point this just makes life just a little bit easier so now you click a single button and I'll split the edge ring in half so again just like that it just allows me to work faster alright now that we have that down if I were to do this straight you won't have to wonder how I'm doing this in the video I'm going to the front view so it's like my - I think kind of weird now all right I just pause the video to delete my preferences reopen it now let's see if I can go to the front view okay now in the front view tool mainly be using is under the mesh gray polygon tool this helps me create my first polygon from there I'll be extruding every edge from that point on so let's start to this off create polygon tool it zoom to the eye region is where I typically do my drawings to us or from the eye so that's why also why I'm wobble this way um create that enter the x-ray mode so I'm gonna start seeing everything and after extrude any part I always start tweaking them a bit so here I got extrude move this out rotate extrude again rotate again and one more time just read this across just going to map to split these points up here see this upwards and I'm going to vertex nap this and click on this use my move tool and hold V down it'll snap a lot easier so this book question is why did I make this shape instead of the typical circle that Musti will do it but a lot of tutorials you see online or in books the reason why is because if you have this as a normal circle then instead of having the eyelid go down this way no you'll have trouble making any of the creases here and they'll let me go upwards same with this if you look at the flow of this line is pointing downwards went toward the nose so I don't want to break up the consistency and make it go up so all of this is for mainly balance of the water frames also helps a lot more a lot more wires go down to the ears we're gonna need a lot and a decent amount going out of the nose that we'd also have detailing the end when you're done it I like to call this almost like a little fish shape because if you have a little tail here go spits a little body of the fish this should help you get just about all the detail you need in the eye region without having for it to go too far typically we're worried about this because I've insert edgeloop it'll go too far going all across and this will connect a loop through later on we'll go over a trick to keep the detail within this area and still keep the same flow that we have for the eyes alright make sure each time you start closing any areas up you have to merge vertices so I set my settings real quick go to edit mesh merge options and I'm gonna set this value to point zero zero zero one the reason why is this basically is merging in that's right on top of each other anything higher basically means you're merging things that are relatively close together with this I'm going to extrude this across all right I want to snap this to the center line and make it perfectly straight a double click on the move tool and go to its attributes uncheck retain component spacing and now when I'm moving make sure you're also in world hold down the letter X and it'll snap it to the middle for those who like to work on both sides simultaneously you can always do the edit duplicate special options so this doing instance with a negative scale of 1 on X and now you have both sides let's turn on the wireframe I purposely drew him so that he is asymmetrical in both sides and that the exact same and at the same time I took a perspective to account so I drew them without perspective so if you looks a bit flat on both sides the reason why is when your 3d modeling taking perspective photos actually hinders you a bit it goes against what you want to model in perspective view ok sound these are they flow properly now we start extruding out the basic shape of the nose extruding this straight down globally now there's general area of the nose so as they always say you'll block out everything first and you start adding detail afterwards so get this main body front of the nose here shoot this down basically doing everything that we can see now take your the side view later for now just fall straight down gain this main part of the front of the face picture this out for the nostril this is the front side of the nostril this property on your Street now is basically the side airing of the nostril get roughly into place strewed again straight down take out the ear right below the lab I'm gonna screw this up across snap this point up here move this down and now I'm going to click on this line and split it in half let's try that again oops Wow there we go sometimes a script acts up I'm not quite sure so many in line but more than anything so move this up right here pull listen each time I have a new line you always wanted to make everything around it now when I execute this area out like so snap this there we go and these two down you're going to basically create the area around the mouth maybe it always ask me how I model it's pretty simple shoot this down rotate this the bottom part over here extrude this across which have been a very basic for now stood again and again putting all these lines extra line in between here just to run it out a lot more you alright one merges areas on top and there we go okay now I'm going to extrude this bottom part of the chin straight down first let's split this line in half let them move this line later when we go to the side view I want to take care of the side of the nose real quick on this side want to make sure everything fits properly and we'll move this down a bit move this point up now cut across over here insert edgeloop place that right there extrude this line up communicate tear up this air of the nose now I'm going to extrude this out also merge everything together you look at this the line the gap here is too big so we need to make a little bit more acute distance you just cut that in half then we have generally the most important parts for the front of face if we continue going too far this is what I'd like to get done a little bit more detail all right just make sure you save often because my intensity to like to crash on you so try to save a lot just in case my crashes you can always go back to one of your iterations that you have I cannot stress how important that is there will be times when you work on it and in the middle saving it actually crashes so at least you have something go back to all right let's take the other side so when doing the side view if we just look at the side views be it'll be nearly impossible to select any of these points so what I like to do is go back to my quad view like like cell and take this middle line right here maybe highlight it you can pull this all the way up as you see both the front and the side view simultaneously if you don't see this you know it's change both these cameras now I can select any point at one from the front view here and then move it inside example let's just like this point here I can just move it forward on this side just move this forward and just keep pulling them forward until you get the entire profile view on the side and still out of the face I typically do the silhouette first then I start pulling out everything else don't bother moving up and down yet other than maybe this area of the chin the reason wise will be adding edge loops and we'll be tweaking it remember that's still blocking out phase we're not getting too much detail yet it's easy to want to move them up and down but remember whatever you do the side will affect the front view for those who are using photos a lot of times the image on the side and the front don't match up perfectly so you just have to adjust accordingly right here it seems like my drawing wasn't perfect so things that match up as I was hoping but I'm just going to deal with it well this is the front these two lines though they must be adjusted as you can see right there so move them up over here makes no real difference in front views I'm not too concerned about that I want to get that part I start pulling the sides I'll pull this point a little it back to this is too high up and be sticky when working around to get the entire phase but time you're done should look something similar to this notice how close most of these are to the front the reason why is because if you don't do this you have the face being very angular and very um almost like pointing triangular to the fund make sure you always check the perspective view right now is very low poly not too much detail but it does give you a general gist of how it should look like to make sure the eyes are proper what I'm going to do is going to drop in two spheres or just once fear for now to make sure one of those work there goes our little sphere here and rotate this I'm holding J to rotate snap place it where the eyes should be scale it up a little bit and now I'm going on a side view and move this up to where it should be all right there now go about your perspective view to enough transparency I can see where it's going through and adjust accordingly remove all these forward that should work much better with this for two it's flattening out way too much all getting way too angular earlier than I want it to and just like that you can generally see how the high should be we pull these back a little bit more alright so now we have the basic shape of the face if the weird shadowing is causing you problems just go to normals soften edge and you should be okay I'm going to keep the wireframe on shaded the next step I'll be doing is getting the lips so I'm going to buy to the side view over here turn that back on I'm going to click the top lip right here shift double click this bottom torques Lexus that loop and extrude globally scale inwards roughly close what I'm going to do now is I'm going to move these accordingly tops that's supposed to go zoo man if you need to and secure at the bottom the bottom will probably go through some parts the top just make sure everything is all proper when it passed just pull them in and words now goes sideview grabbing those moving them back move this back the middle pull that back same with the top row pull those back pull it up higher that down a bed I've got a perspective view without x-ray on use the other basic shape of the lips now just need to split this in half and go in and adjust smooth this down a bit move this out we got ourselves much better-looking lives okay let's close up more of the face and let's start extruding the jawline out too um so if I look at this I'll see you at this line I want this point to connect at this point but it stands currently there's two edges going down here and one down here so to compensate for that I'll just split this in half select these edges extrude get roughly to where we need to go and actually snap it here already if I wanted to split that in half move those points of the attach to each other select around merge remember whatever you do in the front you must adjust on the side okay 107 my Nobles again and now I want to take care of the jaw line on the side so again I'm going to split this line in half now move this to adjust it accordingly let's back of it and down we'll take this edge right here and make sure to all the way back and up this we're going to find the jaw line immediately before we forget that's a little mistake it will do is they forget about doing this so you start getting all these rings and you lose any form of define jawline like to define mine immediately that way you don't forget later on pull these out there we go fairly simple I want to get some more of the lines across here so we're going to start attaching them so I'm going to shoot these out like so scale them in a bit move them up you have to move them back on the side over here if I look at this I can telling you to cut a line across so insert edge loop tool just like that Sascha's point down and we look at the front with adjust this whole front so I move it to the side slap merge again we do it for this part extrude out in pull this back which I'm going to cut the line across so insert edgeloop I want to show you how to use the current wire from you have to for it to guide you on how to create the next set just by a string that I could tell I need to add an extra point right there merge those in pull these up there we go we're getting one develop jawline at this point already it's all following this point it's pretty simple so far nothing too difficult next part I'm going to do is I'm adjust some of these lines because we inserted a whole new loop in there we haven't actually went in and played with any of these there we go pull some of these down to because we're going to put a lot more lines in here anyway so pull all these out look at this I can extrude another line in I'm going to take these two through that and close up this part of the face select around merge pull this back that's pretty easy again soften edge now see how it looks like a perspective view this is okay so far not too bad all right we can close these two ears right here up street those out back I'll just merge the war will be during a lot more edge loops inside the eye area so I'm not too worried about the stretch that's happening right there okay the next area I want to take care of is how low detail the nose is on the is let's get this nose running it out these way how I tack this typically is I look at this nose and look at the nostril you see four sides we're going to make sure we keep this all quads so I'm going to basically split this in half across and half across in half across in half the reason why is I should get eight there and should be a lot more than enough that to basically run up the nose so I'm going to click this one here so within half that goes across over here just split that in half the top and half now just at the bottom half and typically that I've had all that it goes down I would see the mouth see a line coming down right here you split this in half to whatever you do to one top should be done on the bottom the whole goal is so I close these areas up like the mouth and the nostril actually be able to get all quads so let's adjust that real quick go into a wireframe view and tweak all of these new points I have just added all I want is a get I'm not so it's bit more round I can do this on the side of here to pull this down these are here get these to cover the general basis just because I had a new one already I can already add more detail to the side of the nose also if you look at this we have a lot of these lines going across now start shifting these up more now I can evenly spread all these these new points I just added doesn't go down here and I get more of that shape same with the side everything we've added we have to go through and tweak so being with you add this new piece on the front here I can move some of these lip points more in the center and push these more to the side smooth them out just let adjust them accordingly because of that with move the side also so if you're having trouble you can always move edges instead of just points move those back as usually gonna adjust all these little things over I can select this point I can slide my edge back so I can form this better on the side and we do the same to the front now and adjust all of these points nicely so I'm back to my move tool be careful about the side view - it's easy to forget it now if you move a lot of these further back adjust these points here to make it more round move that in shape of the nose better and then go in here I'm gonna hide the eye and I'll put the eye on a separate layer this way doesn't come in my way anymore and who line up some of these points much better now the mesh that float okay now way up that we can look at the side of the nose right here this isn't exactly round enough so let's put this line in half and go inside and tweak no it's gonna be a lot more round got a sideview now actually have that point pull these better we have that what typically do is a take all of the slides right here move them inwards so we can get that crease uni on the side of the nose and pull some of these points out further pull that it in the back and as usual because we had a new line we can adjust all these points down so this chin isn't as polygamy anymore so I'm shifting all the stuff down now by one in that in this area now readjust all these points in down just like that make sure you check the perspective view still looking okay back to the front most of the little fine details I'll be sculpting downside zero instead right now my goal is to get yourself a very nice base mesh from Maya to taking to ZBrush there we have it we have the basic shape of this face looking pretty good so far I want to move some of these points forward to get the fatty area around the lip right there okay next area is just don't like how pointy the nose is in the front main part of the bridge so I'm going to go in and slice this also in half so now that out of that I have to go through again as usual tweaking all of these points pulling these out really rounding everything out nicely pull these closer to the front should make a lot less pointy like a perspective view now that nose is an S pointing more and I can start refining some of these shades back here move them further back in further back no this supposed to be this way we can actually do that and it keeps it nice and proper you want the pinched to the side of the nose back here to look significantly better we can always move this back a bit more not too far back just enough okay the reason I didn't add extra line down here is because I plan to end this loop right down in this area so you need to split polygon tool cut across just like so now I'm click and get rid of this little line go to edit mesh delete edge/vertex and it's gone with that we have fairly round area of the nose love lines going up here across sometimes I end this line right on top mainly because I don't want too many wires continuing so if I look at this this will continue the all clump up go out and might be more wires than I want so I'm going to extrude this one more time up like so pull them forward over here and I'm going to end my line so to do that I'm doing the same technique but on top instead and kill this edge off it delete edge/vertex all the top part of the nose bridge and that off it's an easy way so that you don't continue pulling your detail too far and pull this inwards all this goes in a bit more and snap this to the grid and pull you up let's close the nose up so go here select the whole loop strewed scale in globally move in this way back and up I'm going to extrude again up back the worse displayed on the back right now so you can see it let's kill it in this way limits any possibility of the inside the nozzle going through moving back you can Mar more with that loop selected I'm going to mesh fill hole caps that off cut my quads in so cut across pull this point up a little bit I'm go inside now shape the inside the nostril just like this loop this line right here split that in half remove both these faces inwards and the space even more so there's actually a bump inside your nostril and that's what I'm modeling right now go in here split that in half again start getting all the other areas of the nose so it looks proper there we go unsoftened my normals this part is coming out way too much as a point someone move smoothies back we'll watch this actually I'm gonna pull that forward all this needs to be pulled forward a lot more that's much better okay let's go moldy I now leet the histories so let's put more detail around here XQ some of this stuff in I will pull the sphere back now select on this little loop extrude pull back until it touches the eyeball now let's like the bottom area right here move into front view with x-ray travel the whole wireframe thing is kind of part of C so I want to move this up so much is that line just like that remove these and just them properly - so matches well the area around the eye properly that works much better pull this in slightly that will you have a little nice curvature going in feel that this is still going on the eyes slightly so we move some of them forward when I press three though should move in nicely through this whole line back again back scale it up f+ 3 and see how well it matches if we want this line to be a lot sharper just insert another edge loop closer just like that and that line will be significantly sharper same thing on the outside if you want this whole line of e sharper roots insert edge loops and you get that whole crease right there around the eye all right so I'm gonna hide this eyeball here take this little thing straight up and scale out a bit more let's get back again just like so scale it down a bit I'm going to fill whole mesh fill hole and cut down across not to concern that's going through the back of the eye because when I can't see it anyways and we end this we should get a triangle that was to be expected because we haven't added the crease around the eye on the outside yet

Channel: Duylinh Nguyen

Views: 386,748

Keywords: Maya, 3D, Character Modeling, head, animation, tutorial

Id: gDT0Pz1UtWM

Length: 39min 52sec (2392 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 18 2011