I would say when YOU feel that you cant do anymore. Unless somebody points out a 'No,no'. Thats when you go back in and tweak again.

_J

Hey Pony, fine you like it and here is some wires as you wished. I didn´t finish the sole - still needs some definition. btw I didn´t even understand what you said about the shader :) anyway I´ll lern that somtimes. it´s only a creamy colored blinn with 3 volume- and 1 directionalLight.

Jango - yeah that´s right. by now it´s getting kind of boring tweaking the foot. maybe I´ll start with the hand and finish em later.

and other side

and bottom side.

I really think about starting with something elso from the body.

well, I knock the foot off for a while and start with the hand. In contrast to the former hand I worked on, I will separate the fingers and singletweak them like I did with the toes. cause when the mesh becomes dense tweaking is no fun on fingers or toes when they are not separated.

I played around with the subsurface scatterer DT3DskinShader from miguel santiago. his very cool site can be found at www.digiteck3d.com
the shader is awsome and for me the first time I use SSS. the skin I tried to create does not look very natural by now (too much wet spec maybe) because the interface contains of over 50 tweakers and as you guessed - it takes time to find out what everyone of it does (dokumentation is included).

I post a shot from the topView. have fun!

wow.. thats a nice foot. Gonna try that shader out myself now..

connected foot to leg, shaped the knee and hollow of the knee. legTopology is still little bumpy but the mesh gets denser, so tweaking is also more and more timeconsuming. hopefully I´m done with the legs now.

I decided now to start with the head because I find it easier to work on different things at the same time - so it doesn´t get boring. this time I tried to patchmodel with polygons - used the createPolygon tool and replaced the vertices in space. in opposit to Dave K's Poly Head Modeling Tutorial which I modeled my first head after, this method leaves more room for creating a cleaner and more manageable mesh. in addition to the natural clues of the face I marked the face with an eye linner.

I wondered how you guys 'n gals handle the set of teeth on a model. would it be modeled separately or as a part of the head? I have no idea about animation right now, but when she´s finished and textured, I´d really like to animate her. in addition to the teeth, what about the inside of the mouth? in order to let her speak it will certainly be necessary to model oral cavity and tounge. but what about the influece zones in there (weight painting, etc)? the mouth area I fear the most because it´s all stuffed together in very little space and I don´t want the ear moved when moving the tongue or something.

would be great if anyone who is experienced with such issues or has anything to say about could give me some hints! thx in advance.

Hey Falott

Glad to see the questions coming out here. For the inner mouth or mouth cavity which ever you prefer, I personally model it as an extension of the lips so its all part of the head in the end. Teeth and gums I would model separately. They are easier to manage this way and you will only need to key the lower set of teeth with your facial expressions on the mouth, be it in RX or RZ axis and possibly the odd TX or TZ too.

Its not difficult to do, if you get stuck once you are there give us a shout

_J

thank you Jango, you helped me out! I´ll stick on your advice when time´s coming. if my additional ask is not irking you - when you model a head and animate it for speaking etc -> a tongue would be necessary. in my current and rudimentary understanding I would model it separatly from anything else for easier animating. Or is there some general workflow for modeling an inner mouth area?

Hey Falott

No probs. Im always willing to help out, when people show the enthusiasms and also help themselves it makes it more worth while and easier to say the least.

Anyway, the tongue, again model it separately. Theres a couple of ways to rig it you could put a couple of bones in and again do keys on those or what I do are blend shapes that are all set driven keyed with the various mouth and teeth movements combined. It can take time to set up but if you do it right the results can be very cool

LAter

_J

thx again m8! and for the time - I started this model about 4 months ago (cause regular work keeps me busy), so time is no problem at all. and I want to get a real cool result :)

I tried to rebuild the mesh into a edgloopy thing but totally failed. plus it takes so much time struggeling instead of starting in a way where first step leads into the next.

so this time I try something like extruding method starting with the area around the mouth.