with the basics covered. It's time to plan out our topology.
I can generally recommend doing some amount
of preparation instead of just winging it.
Uh you will have an easier time solving this puzzle that
way and to show how important a bit of preparation is.
I will guide you through my thought process of read apologizing
the face one of the most complex areas in my opinion.
If you know how to tackle that, you know how to basically reach,
apologize almost anything.
It's also good to mention that my terminology so far and in the rest of the chapter
is pretty much a wild mix from other artists and what I came up myself.
There's no commonly agreed on
terminology, so I'll at least make sure that mine is well explained and consistent
for the planning.
I'll use the sculpt of rain after the expression tests
were made and withdraw overs from the annotation tool.
With this, we will determine the goals and minimum requirements of our topology,
especially from what we learned in chapter three.
First off, we start with the general edge flow.
This is often the same across humanoid characters or even most animals.
There are circular loops going around the eyes, islets,
nose and mouth to support the general shape.
There's also a loop going around the chin
last line and into the nose bridge to frame the mouth and the nasal area.
The edge flow is also roughly aligned with
the movement of the muscles in those areas,
not just the shapes.
Lastly, there is a loop along the jaw,
ear and temple and then the forehead to frame the face
and follow the shapes and the muscles there.
I made a separation in the middle since the other side will just be symmetrical.
So we'll just use the mirror modifier.
But this is the most basic outline that most faces will follow.
Next up we have our landmarks.
These are areas that for specific reasons need to match a certain structure.
In this case there are the eyebrow objects on top of the face which
I want to match as closely as possible with the topology on the face.
This way I can be sure that the skin and the eyebrows will deform in unison.
If you would use hair stimulation and grooming
then this is probably not as important.
It's really if there are two separate objects on top of each other,
you might also have big piercings,
a nasty scar with stitches or any other landmarks,
but these are only meant to provide enough geometry to move with
other objects that are attached not to model other objects into them
stitches, piercings, eyebrows, et cetera
should be kept separate
to not make the topology too complicated.
Following the general shapes is the first thing the
next important thing is capturing specific surface details.
We can outline the primary creases which are hard
edges that need to be captured by the topology.
This is usually achieved by having one or two proximity loops
next to the hard edge to keep it sharp while subdivided
tied to this idea or the secondary creases which are
only becoming sharp when the area is getting compressed.
You can base these on the muscle movement and expression tests that we sculpt it
for this. There also needs to be one or two proximity loops
but spaced out more to keep the surface smooth by default.
Only when for example firing off a muscle to smile.
Do the secondary creases become sharp by compressing the loops together.
But to make this possible, the loops need to be there and ready.
But now that we talked about the defamation of the mesh,
it's good to give an ideal structure to the areas that will articulate the most.
These are for example,
the browse eyelids and lips which can deform in various ways based on the expression
to make the defamation as clean as possible.
That need to be at least three loops. To define any arc or curvature in these areas,
What I'm talking about now is basically based
on the three curve principle by brian tyndall,
which I can highly recommend if you want to dive deeper into the subject.
So they need to be one mid and to end loops for each
brow eye and the mouth with with a horizontal separation in the middle.
But just like adding curve handles will give you more control.
Each of these loops should have two loops next to them
from there on out more loops can be added
if needed by the defamation or curvature of the surface
but try to keep this three curve structure and
the amount of loops symmetrical vertically and even horizontally.
The rest of the loops that go perpendicular to these articulation loops
should just be to keep the curvature of the surface intact.
For example, for the closed eyes or stretched and compressed expression.
There need to be enough loops to keep the structure of these
shapes standing and not end up with two stretched or flat services.
But with all of these pieces of the puzzle, how do we connect them?
This is where the strategic placement of polls comes in.
What we want to do with them is to
redirect these lines into square and circular patches.
The polls should be placed away from the creases and hard edges and instead on
surfaces that stay mostly flat won't deform
heavily or are hidden by other geometry.
With these polls placed,
we can connect the dots and to find specific patches to guide
all of the other lines in the right direction without conflicts.
So, so for example, by placing some polls,
we can create a square patch inside or next to circular ones.
It's important to actually connect the polls and not spiral them
off This way we have very clearly defined square and circular patches
in a constant ebb and flow next to each other
and within each other,
bringing this all together.
In modeling, you should end up with something like this,
I call it the patches to make the structure more clear,
but this is very much an open ended puzzle
since there is no gold standard for written apology.
This ring topology can be reused for multiple characters,
but some might need some special attention and different implementations.
For example,
if you would want to add some more loops below
the eyelids and between the brows to get more definition,
you could add another circular patch, like a hero mask.
If you look online at our other artists, read apologies,
you will find many different solutions to the puzzle,
but as long as you understand the principles and what is
needed for your character then you can pretty much read apologize anything
of course
in an actual production environment,
there is an extra chaos factor.
This planning and execution is pretty much an ideal scenario but there might not,
there might still be some changes and last minute
adjustments or the time available is only very minimal.
You might want a couple more loops in the brow area for
frowning and you add a diamond and try to hide it.
It's a bit ugly, but you can make it work.
They could also be a little graveyard below the jaw where
the arcs are just wide enough to not be too noticeable.
Also, as a side note,
I drew the ark the wrong way loops would be
coming from the face and redirected back into it.
So
just to clear that up,
extra poles to lead some more loops into an
area where you need them is also very common.
Or some areas might lack extra poles, which makes the available loops of it thin.
The better the topology, the better the animated outcome will be.
But placing more polls
comes at a cost of more stretching and pinching.
That's the tricky part of the puzzle.
In the next video, I'll demonstrate how to read,
apologize the face in practice to get to the results you see on the screen right now.