Using My Head

     Now that I have a basic body form it is time for me to start creating the head for my model. There are many different ways to go about this. I am starting mine in zbrush using a polysphere. I then masked part of this out and rotated that segment to create a basic skull shape as seen below.

I spent a lot of my time using the trim brushes in order to create the planes of the face. I used the move tool to stretch out a neck shape and to pull eyeballs from the socket. I have seen examples where the eyeballs have been made separately but this is not what I am doing for my model. Sculpting a face is not something I have done since last year so some areas of this were difficult to grasp, particularly since I was using a new program. However the body sculpting I did beforehand gave me some chance to warm up.

      Once I had the planes of the face laid out I could start sculpting in some of the curves of the face. I found the best thing to do with this process was just to keep working and coming back to it with a fresh look until I had refined a sculpt that I was happy with. I found it helpful to keep a bulk of magazines around my desk so I had a constant stream of references to compare my model to.

Once I was happy with the sculpting of my head I had to begin the process of retopologising the model. It was best to use the polypaint feature to paint the new topology first.

With this topology painted out I was then able to use it to guide my new topology. Firstly I loaded up a Zsphere from which it was then possible to rig to my original headsculpt and then edit the topology.

With the symmetry on to save me doing both sides I could create vertices where they appeared upon the topology map that I painted onto my sculpt.

When this was complete I was able to make a "skin" of this new topology which was then ready to be exported into Maya

Once my model was loaded up in Maya I created additional edge loops around the eyes and mouth. I then went on to create ears, shoulders, eyebrows and eyelashes for my model, which I will do further work to once it is imported back into Zbrush. My next job will be to finish up any sculpting work and then work on the texturing.