Working with face topology.

We got the opportunity to scan our faces by taking photos from different angles and putting them into a program called 123D catch, which glues everything together to create a mesh of your face! I was impressed to see how the program worked and applied all those photos, took the information it needed and created a face on its own, although not perfect. It was super fun to see and to experience. We did this preparing for a class assignment where we tried making face topology on a premade or our own faces.

Starting with the topology was hard to grasp and to apply to the already premade faces, as well as your own. I could not use my own face because it looked like I had run into a truck at high speeds. we started out by simply placing faces manually around the eyes and making sure that there was an equal amount of faces on each side of the eye. The reason they should be equal in faces is so that you can animate them properly, and it helps to make the topology optimal.

It was a lot of picky work, but in the end, it looked pretty good to me. we also made the mouth in the same patterns. One was also supposed to merge from the mouth to eyes in some way, I did not have the time however, since I struggled with my own face in the beginning.

We did go through some pictures during the lecture, showing how the topology is very similar on almost anything you can encounter in the 3D world. Any creatures face has a similar topology, if I got everything right.

Having the lecture was super useful to have, since we could use it for the upcoming character modeling assignments and I must say. If we didn’t have this lecture at all, the making of the face of my character would have taken ages and ages to complete, and heck if even would get it right to begin with!

On the picture above you can see what I made with the time we spent on making the face topology. I only got so far sadly, since I struggled quite a lot getting my own face appear on screen… and you can see how that went. Starting with the minor topology on the very inner parts of the eye was hard to get right the first time. I even had to remake the whole eye once because I managed to fluke the symmetry up. The mouth was not as tedious as the eye, and went quite quick to finish up. what was annoying with the mouth was the fact that I had too count all the time! so many faces to count over and over again to make sure you actually had an even amount.

And that’s what I have to say about that lecture, it sure was great! Until next time. Cheers!