3D Reflective Journal #5 - Final Details & Ears

 

3D Reflective Journal #5 (+ Feedback)

I began by filling in the area between the neck and the chin with new geometry. This proved slightly difficult due to the positioning of edges/amount of edges but I managed to make it work out in what felt like a pretty clean manner.

Next I made some more adjustment to the eye and upper cheek area, as at this stage I've started to consider the proportions of the character's head in the production bible and reform the head shape slightly.

   I was impressed/surprised at how difficult/time consuming the ears ended up being to create. Creating the initial outer ring was simple, but a lot of problem solving was required to fill in all of the quads (especially in the central spiral) in a way that every edge was connected/"used up". The introduction of 3D depth made it a bit difficult too, cause I had to find appropriate ways to interpolate/connect between details the protruded out more and the ones that were further back.

Next I removed the geometry in the allocated place where the ear was going to need to fuse to the side of the head, and prepared to make the combination between the two meshes.

The actual geometry connection proved to be quite finicky and difficult. I did my best to prepare the ear model for being joined to the head, but ultimately there were still far more vertices on the surface of the ear than there were in the area on the head that needed to be joined, so a lot of edges needed to be converged to meet the ones on the face. I did my best to keep the shading looking nice, even introducing a supporting edge loop around the ear stem which helped a lot. Ultimately I managed to keep all n-gons away, but there were a few triangles needed (I tried to keep those in more subtle/hidden areas). The ear shouldn't need to hugely deform when the model is rigged, so I rationalise that this topology is probably acceptable.

This is what the head looked like at the end of the week, with connected ears and eyebrows too. Looking at the head model in the production bible, aesthetically I do think the facial proportions will be slightly adjusted - I tried moving the eyes as close to the bridge of the nose as they are in the reference and it just looks a bit too uncanny to me, so I may go with some kind of compromise.

Group status:

Engagement from 3/4 group members instead of 2/4 is an upgrade over last week.

There has been something of a basic piece of terrain created by Mila for the character to stand on - there appear to be mesh clipping issues/overlapping geometry which I will likely have to help fix, but it looks like a solid amount of progress to me. Gabriella has almost finished the body which is good, will just need to get onto clothes and such ASAP for the final submission. Max has not replied to any of my messages in the past 2 weeks sadly, so no idea if there will be a vehicle model in the end, but will have a discussion with Oana about it if this is looking to be the case.

Feedback

I received advice about the ears and about the back of the head too. Initially there were triangles at the back of my head, and Sylvain told me it would be better to remove those triangles and follow through a full edge loop all the way from the front to the back of the head, which I did.

I was also reminded by Oana that eyebrows are something which are important to remember adding, which is why I made some quick plane models of them (which you can see in an above image). They will be more apparent with a material separating them visually from the rest of the face.