Back to Modelling The Head:
I always build the nose than build it out to the eye brow and eyes first. The basic way this works is.
This is the basic mass of a low-poly head. I find it helps a lot to know this and think about it as you build the head. It should help you get the over all mass/form of the mesh, and that is what you are aiming for in a low poly model.
So start by using Extrude Face and extrude some mesh for the nose. You may have to do some Edge Dividing to get the right shape for the nose. After you extrude the faces you will need to Target Weld two vertices at the top of the nose and delete two faces on the inside of the nose. You should have some thing that looks like this.
As you can see from the last image I work with wire on. This is very helpful for two reasons; one you can see the over all mass/form of the mesh a lot easier and two can find edges that need to be turn a lot easier as well.
Now you want to build in the brow of your character. My character that has a huge brow can be done in the same way as I did the nose. But generally you will only have to divide some edges and move the vertices into place. You should have something like this.
Next you will have to use that artist eye of yours. By dividing and turning edges and moving vertices around we will add detail to the brow and nose.
This will do for now I will be easier to get the perfect shape when we have more mesh. We are now going to move on to the eyes, mouth and cheekbone. This is one of the areas that we should be adding more faces than you would if you were making 1500 face model. We want to make the eyes so that they can blink and move side to side and have the mouth be able to talk.
We will start off by cutting the eye lids in and adding the Eye ball. This again will be done by dividing and turning edges and moving vertices around. The eye ball will be a GeoSphere with the back faces deleted.
One thing to remember when you are building the eye and eye lids is that when the eye closes you want the vertices to line up. This will mean that the mesh will not cut through itself and the character will be able to close it eye fully.
Now for the mouth, this is done the same way as the eyes (dividing and turning edges and moving vertices around). The same thing applies to the mouth as it did with the eyes; you want the vertices to line up. We will also build in the cheek as we build the mouth; this will help to get the mouth shape easier.
Also when it comes to the mouth you want to have two vertices in the corner of the mouth for animation reasons (mainly for jaw movement.)
Now for the ears, we will do something different for these. We will use a high-poly mesh to make a low-poly mesh, by using target weld, collapse and just moving vertices around. If you don’t have a high-poly mesh don’t worry just remember the technique. This technique will become even more important with next generation real-time games that will use poly-bump.
Start by turning all smoothing groups off, turn off Edges Only in the properties of the mesh and then just optimize the crap out of it. One thing to remember when you are making a high-poly mesh into a low-poly mesh is to try to keep the extremes of the mesh therefore keeping the over all mass of the mesh. Also remember thing that can be textured (remembering that UT 2003 dose use the mesh to create shadows on the character unlike before, I will talk about texturing and this generation of game models in the optimizing section of the tutorial.)
The ear will most likely get optimize more, but with a little luck we can have the ear this highly detailed. This is one of the things that should be added now that we have a higher polycount. Before the higher face count, it wasn’t possible to add ears or only very low detailed one. This kind of level of detail is the main different between 1500 and 3500 face models, as you will be able to tell when we get to the arms and other areas of the body.
Weld the ear to the head, making sure the ear is in the right place. The top of the ear should be in line with the top of the eye and the bottom of it in line with the bottom of the nose. And about half way back from the front of the head at the top of the jaw line. To weld the ear to the head cut a hole in the side of the head and then weld the vertices of this hold the open edges of the ear.
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Brendan George BrendanDoord@hotmail.com
Mid-Poly Modelling
09/2002