In the next few steps we will clean up our mesh by making our edgeloops a little more defined and add detail where we need it.

First off, I'd like to talk about edgeloops and what makes a good clean mesh. Our ultimate goal is to make a single mesh that consists mainly of quads (4 sided polys) that flow with the natural curvature of the face. Ideally, you should be able to pick any face on your mesh and follow it around a path that conforms to the flow of the face. This is called an edge loop. If you follow your path and it suddenly stops due to either a three or five sided poly, you're loop has been broken and you should clean that area up. Here is a picture indicating the loops of the head I'm modeling. The radials are in red and the opposite direction in blue.




If you create your edgeloops correctly, adding detail and deforming your mesh for facial poses will be a breeze. Try and remove any three or five sided polys as you work. It's better to get rid of them at this stage then to wait too long and try and get rid of them when you have a lot of detail.

Next, I'm going to start adding in some more detail and clean up my mesh along the way. I'll add in a ring around the eye to help define the eye socket and cheekbone, then I'll add an edge from the center of the eye to the tip of the nose. This will help define both the tearduct and the roundness of the nose. And finally I add in an edge to break up a five sided poly near the mouth and clean up my mesh a little.


Next, I'll add in another loop to the eye to define the crease where the eye meets the brow. Then I'll throw in a couple loops to help define the roundness of the upperlip and the shape of the chin. As I add these loops, I might need to get rid of existing edges to create a continous loop with no three or five sided polys. Use the delete edge tool ( go to edit polygons>delete edge) to remove unwanted edges, then redraw your edges in the corect manner using the split polygon tool.


Then I'll split up the eye a little to better define the roundness of the lid, plus I can use the rest of the edge to help define the brow and cheekbone.


Next, I will throw in a few more edges around the corner of the eye to create the tearduct. These edges will also help define the wrinkles on the ridge of the nose. I'll also throw in another edge around the bottom of the brow to help make it more distinct. Then, I split up the faces under the nose to create more information for the upper lip and cheek bone.


Now that we have the shape of the eyelid pretty well defined, we can go ahead and create the eyesocket for this guy. Start off by creating a loop just inside the eyelid loop. This will define the thickness of the eyelid.


Next, create two more loops, an inner ring and an outer ring. These will be used to create the depth of the eye socket.


Grab all the points of the inner ring and push them back in the Z direction (into the head) then take all the points of the outer ring and scale them informally to create the underside of the eyelid. If some of these points penetrate the outer surface, just simply move the points back in space. Now you should have a fairly descent looking eye socket.



Next I'll split the eyes, brow, cheek and mouth to further the detail. While I do this, I'm getting rid of any triangles and five sided polys that I come accross by running them into the newly formed edge. This also strengthens my edgeloop.


Notice the difference between these 2 steps. Notice how the loop now fits nicely around the brow, eye and cheek whereas before it didn't.



Now that I've got the loop around the eye cleaned up, it's time to go in and fix the loop around the nose. Notice how I have a lot of triangles and the edges aren't exactly flowing with the curve of the laugh line. I'll fix this by running some new edges in the right direction and deleting out the old ones.

Notice how the laugh line is now clearly defined.


Next, finish off the loops at the top of the head. Bring the edges down through the back of the neck to give that area more definition. You can also add on some of the edges that define the muscles of the brow. Then, split up the lower lip a little so that we can begin working on the inside of the mouth.



To begin creating the inside of the mouth, first draw a radial loop just outside the edge that defines the center of the mouth. Make sure you split the edges at the corner of the mouth instead of taking the edge to a single central point. If you split the edges you will be left with quads and this is what we want.


Next, select all of the inside faces you just created.



Then, press the delete key on your keyboard to remove them. This will create an opening in the mouth if you have split the corner correctly, you will have nothing but quads left over. If you have done it wrong, you will have triangles at the corner. If you do... fix them up by drawing in new edges so all you have is quads before proceeding to the next step


Next, go to your side viewport and view your model in wireframe. This will allow us to see where we are going to place the inside of the mouth.


Using your ep curve tool (go to create>ep curve tool) trace out 3 curves that define the inside of your mouth. One from the upper lip back to the throat, another from the lower lip back to the throat and a third beginning at the corner of the mouth, going half-way through the other two curves, all the way back to the throat.


Next, go into your perspective viewport and move the center curve in the X direction to the corner of the mouth.


Now that we have our curves in place, we need to create a surface out of them. I could simply loft them but this would give me unpredictable results and put isoparms wherever Maya feels like. I want to have more control and be able to direct the iso's where I want them to go. So next we are going to force the Iso's to go the way we want them to.

The next illustration shows the direction I want the Iso's to go.


So... with that direction in mind... I right click over my curves and select curve point from the marking menu. I select the points where the red lines in the above illustration intersect the curves. This will leave a little yellow dot that indicates where we are going to cut our curve later. If you hold down shift while selecting the other curves you can perform this action on multiple curves at once.

Notice how the yellow dots line up directly with the red lines in the above illustration.



Once you have selected all your curve points, you should cut your curves. You can do this by simply going to edit curves>detach curves . Now wherever you had a yellow dot, the curve should be cut, leaving you with a bunch of little curves.

These curves are still not ready to loft yet. We must do one more thing first... rebuild our curves so that we have an even amount of isoparms on each surface when we loft them.

To do this... select all your curves and go to edit curve>rebuild curve and open your options dialog box. Set the number of spans to 3 and hit the "rebuild" button in the lower left of the box to apply.


Now we are ready to loft our surfaces. You might want to go to your viewport settings and turn off your polygon display to make this step easier (show>polygons).

Start by selecting the top curve in front (upper lip), then holding down shift, select the next curve in the middle, then last but not least, select the bottom curve (lower lip). Then to loft them, go to surfaces>loft . Repeat this pocess for the rest of the curves.


Once you have created all of your lofts you should attach each surface together. First, select the the first surface, then (holding down shift) select the second surface. Then, using the attach surfaces command (go to edit nurbs> attach surface) attach them together. Repeat this step until you have a single solid nurbs surface.


Now all we have left to do is match the nurbs surface to the inside of the mouth. In order to do this we will need to match the information up. Ignoring the center edge and the mouth corner edge... count the number of edges that make up your upper lip. In this case we have edges.


In order to match up the edges with the inside of the mouth, you must insert 8 isoparms from the center edge to the mouth corner edge. In order to do this, right click over the nurbs surface and select "Isoparm" from the marking menu. Select an edge and drag. You will see a yellow line appear, this is not actually an isoparm... it's just a marker indicating where you want to put an isoparm. Holding down the shift button you can insert as many yellow lines as you need.

After you have created 8 evenly spaced yellow lines, you need to create isoparms out of them. To do this, simply go to edit nurbs>insert isoparms and the information will be added for you.

When you are done repeat this step for the lower lip as well.

Finally we have a surface for the inside of the mouth. The next thing we need to do is convert it to polygons so that we can attach it to the rest of the head. To do this select your nurbs surface, then go to modify>convert>nurbs to polygons and open the options dialog box.

Under "Type" select quads

Under "Tesselation Method" select general

In the Initial Tesselation Controls section...

for "U Type" select "Per Span # of Iso Params"

for "Number U" select "1"

for "V Type" select "Per Span # of Iso Params"

for "Number V" select "1"

Then press the tesselate button in the lower right to convert it to polys.

Now that you have a polygon version of your mouth you can delete the other nurbs components used to make this surface.

Before you can connect the two shapes into a single mesh you should snap the verticies of the inner mouth shape to those of the mouth on the head. Go into component mode and select one of the verts of the inner mouth edge. Holding down V for vertex snap move it to the corresponding vert on the head shape. Repeat this step untill both edges are perfectly lined up.


Now that you have both edges lined, up the first step is to combine your geometry. Select both pieces then go to polygon>combine to join them. This will make Maya treat your 2 pieces of geomety as one piece. However, there still is a border edge seperating the 2 pieces. This will be evident when you go to smooth your mesh. If there is a border edge a huge seam will appear.

To view your border edge, go to display>custom polygon display and open the options dialog box. In the "Highlight" section, check border edges and in the "Border Width" section, put the slider to 5. Click apply and close. This will draw your border edge a little thicker than the other edges to help you see what your doing when you start to merge edges.


The next thing you're going to want to do is merge your border edges together. To do this, select your mesh and go to edit polygons>merge multiple edges and open the options dialog box.. Set your threshold to .01. This is important because if you set this number too high, it can merge your mouth shut. Press apply to merge edges. If there are some edges that didn't merge try setting it to .02 and go up from there until all your mouth edges are merged.



If your mouth didn't merge at all... you might have your normals flipped. If this is the case, go into component mode and select one face from either the head or the inside of the mouth, then go to edit polygons>normals>reverse and open the options dialog box. Set the mode to "reverse and propogate", then hit apply. This will flip the normals on the offending section, then you should be able to merge your seams.


When you are done you should have a single piece of geometry with no seam.

Once you've attached the mouth to your head, go ahead and finish off your loops. Finish off the back of the head and neck. Now is the time to add in any little details that you want. When you are finished with the one half of your model, simply duplicate it, combine it and merge the border edges the same way you merged the mouth to the head. Try smoothing it when you are done to see how it looks. Go to polygons>smooth .

Looks like this guy only needs one more thing to be complete... Wrinkles :) . Right now he looks a little smooth.

To create wrinkles while maintaining perfect "quadness" is a cool little trick.

Find the edge at which you wish to create a wrinkle.

Along that edge draw another edge just a little offset to it and connect at the corners.

Next divide the faces in the center, leaving the triangles at the ends alone. This will make quads out of everything.