Modeling a human head

[cango]

Hi,

I've been having problems with modeling human head for... let's see... yes almost a year. I've seen a lot of ways and I've decided that box modeling would be the fastest one. But I can't get the basic shape of the head. Once my cousin had modeled that very basic shape and left the rest to me and the results were very satisfactory but when I try to start from scratch I fail. I would be greateful if someone can help me learn to give that basic shape of the human head. Thanks a lot

wow. I've talked too much

[Jelmer]

modeling heads can be really difficult, really. I'm not sure if you're using reference, but you should! It will make life so much easier because you don't have to guess how the shape should be but you can just follow reference.
Personally i don't have a lot of experience with modeling heads, but I prefer to start with a 1x1 plane then extrude edges around the eye and mouth so you get a good topology and edge flow.
If you're more comfortable with box modeling that's the way to go though, and don't forget to use symmetry, you probably already knew about that one.

[CU441ES]

hi, theres an excellent head modelling tutorial here

hope this helps


edit; found another one http://www.xenosgames.com/HeadTut.htm

[cango]

Thank you.

Jelmer: I'll start using reference images. And I've tried plane modeling before but the results were rather funny. http://i15.photobucket.com/albums/a3...hics/funny.jpg . And here is the one which my cousin started and I continued(not finished though) http://i15.photobucket.com/albums/a3...velybetter.jpg

CU441ES: Thanks for the tuts. I've started downloading them. 2 parts are done so far. I bet they'll be of help as they are step-by-step.

Thank you both for the replies

[Jelmer]

glad your posting them, to be honest i don't really like either one of them, are you sure your reference matches well, if that's messed up your sure it's never going to end up looking good!
The plane modeling attempt head is way too wide i think, it's important to start it low detailed, once you have the right shape you can start adding details. When you are using plane modeling and add geometry to the model in say the front view, always be sure to adjust that geometry in the top and side view too! It seems like you have forgotten about that in some places, so the model ends up looking really strange.

[NinjaHanzo]

i think your problem is that your limiting yourself to the two planes... like restricting movements only along those planes.. or .. limiting yourself to the reference images too much

you need to learn the structure of the human head, the skull, and how the muscles are formed

try picking up a "how to draw the head", a book like that usually has a pretty good info about how the head is structured
another book to look at is an Anatomy book, if it has something about the head in the book, get it
or.. get a book about modeling the human head, or body...

i suggest some books from Ballistic Publishing, they have some great books about 3d modeling