MUSCLEs TO EDGE LOOPS
 

http://img299.imageshack.us/img299/3812/muscleseo8.png

Heres a diagram ofthe facial muscels, look how the layout ofthe muscles resembles that of edge loops, around the mouth, the eyes and nose with the joining at the cheeks

Cheers
Jay

Here is my effort at this typically hard subject...

cool, thanks for the reply vlad...
you havnt modeled in months!?! what have you been doing, i think it was in cg where i saw your work and it was too good to believe. if i was at that stage at modeling, i woudnt leave my computer lol..

ohh i finally see how it works now...thanks for that jay, cleared it up in my head alot.

mj

wow jay, the two pictures are a great amount of help already especially the muscles to edgeloops..

heres another question from me which i have always wondered, when your model is in subdiv and then you check out the wireframe and it shows them extra lines.. what are they for? is there a way to get rid of them without spit poly tool? this has also resulted me into split poly tool to get rid of them but then ending up having a heavy mesh... thanks, marlon

heres a picture:

http://img113.imageshack.us/img113/9910/worksx4.png

Have you tries pressing 1 on the keyboard, I think, if I remember rightly, its the display quality of the surface (like in NURBS).

hmm i dont get what you mean really but i tried what you said and no help really ... arrgh!

anyone else have any ideas?

With a SubD selected, pressing 1, 2 0r 3 on the keyboard displays different levels of detail, with 3 being the smoothest.

The patching you have around your nose is not uncommon in subd work but if you want to get rid of it, its a case of adjusting the polys, getting them to flow and/or join differently.

R@nSiD: Dude alot of work is needed to tidy the mesh up, get rid of those tris and 5 siders, its not really usuable right now for anything. I dont want to sound like Im putting you down, but dont rush it, take a step back a be a bit more methodical in your approach

Cheers
Jay

Jay, totaly true. This is my weakest area, and the human face is soo difficult to get 100% correct as we look at them everyday. I need to sort the areas around the mouth and eye. The tips you have given here wll help loads :)

If you have those extra lines that's because you have polygons that aren't 4-sided. If you want a totally "clean" sub-D-model you'll have to have only 4-sided polys.

DJ

this can happen with 4 sided polys, depending on there placement

Jay

Yeah Jay, ive had theose on a all quad model.

How do you go about getting rid of them? Do you bother or just work with them?

gster:

My workflow is this:

create the base mesh in poly and block it out as best possible adding geometry when and where necessary (obviously) then once Im happy with the overall base mesh and its all quads, be them N sided or normal quads I'll convert to a Subd and really go to town tweaking the model until Im happy or sick of it LOL. Then once thats done I'll go over the mesh again back and forth between SD and poly, ironing out bits and pieces that I feel may cause problems when creating blendshapes. Sometimes I'll re-route the edge flow around the cheek/nose area and jawline too, (around about where Vlad has marked on the mesh) just to make sure its all working for me, but as far as the 'patching' goes I dont worry really as they'll go once Ive done the final convert to hi res poly. Then its uv time. Once those are done I'll go back to the base poly mesh and create the actual blendshapes especially since the mesh is so low, it makes the job easier. Again I'll jump back and forth between Sds again while creating the shapes so I can check the forms of the expressions.

Once Ive done all my shapes I'll save two versions out, one with all the shapes in Low poly and then one set thats been converted from a SubD to a hi res poly version ready for animating

if you feel the need to re-route edges etc try the spin faces script from highend3d its a time saver, youcan select two faces at a time and spin them in another direction without recutting geometry

Hope this is clear
Cheers
Jay

Really? That's strange, since the wire in sub-D should be exactly the same as the polywire with the difference that it's smoothed. So if my model has all quads it shouldn't touch the wire... I mean it shouldn't add more lines..?

MarlonJohn:
As asked for...

DJ: As you can see four sided (possible from NGons causing the patches)

Cheers
Jay

http://img402.imageshack.us/img402/4637/meshtn4.jpg

might as well post this.
this thing helped me out a lot when i was learning to model humanoid heads. its a great ref for clean and rigging-friendly face modeling