CGArena : Secrets of Swimsuit Babe

Secrets of Swimsuit Babeby Jimmy Chow, Hong Kong

Head

Model Size - I’m going to make an eight-head body (the total length of the body is eight times that of the head). The body to head ratio for a typical woman is seven or seven and a half. If I make it eight, the legs will look a bit longer which is what I want. The body height is about 6 feet which is about 180 centimeters. The height of the head would be 22.5 centimeters. I determine the model size early at this stage because I know that the shader SSS fast skin is sensitive to scale. Also take a look at the working unit in preference settings to make sure it’s centimeter.

Image Planes - To model known characters, image planes are very important. It’s important to spend enough time on it before moving forward. For a fictitious character, image planes don’t really matter. But I still put up something to get me started. The usage of image plane here is to make sure that the facial features are in proper proportions. The following figure (Photoshop screen shot) shows what I have used.

The front photo should be chosen with care such that there is no or very little head tilt relative to the film plane; otherwise you’ll be in trouble. Note that the above head side photo is not showing the head at its default pose (expressionless pose).

It’s a half smile in which the lips are slightly raised and a bit deeper than default. Front and side planes are in the same image so that their scales can be adjusted easier with the help of guides. It is particularly important to adjust the tilt of the head side image according to the slang of the head in the front photo. Guides and rulers are used to measure the relative proportions. The followings are some of the rules:

Head width is slightly less than 5 times of eye width
Gap between eyes is 1 eye width
Nose width is 1 eye width
Eye is at half of overall height of head
If head is 3.5 units high, brows and underneath of nose are 1.5 and 2.5 units from top of head (ie. nose is half way between brows and bottom of chin)
Mouth is at one third the distance from underneath of nose to bottom of chin
Width of mouth is equal to distance between pupils for man, shorter for woman
Upper lip is slightly in front of the brow’s apex from side view
Ear base is half way between forehead and back of head from side view
Underneath of nose and tip of lower ear are at the same horizontal level
Brows and tip of upper ear are at the same horizontal level
Upper side of ear base is at the same horizontal level of eyes
Pupil is at the same depth level of corner of mouth from side view
Depth of eye is equal to the distance from brow apex to pupil from side view
There’re still a lot more rules in drawing books.

How to start

Actually, it doesn’t matter from which feature you start your modeling process. You can start from the eyes, lips, or the head. The thing is that you must feel confident from the first few steps you start. If you don’t, you’d better drop it and start it all over again. This is particularly true if you model for likeness. I suggest starting out from the most recognizable feature of your character. That is, the feature that you can recognize the character by just looking at it. If you can make it right, you can see the character through it and the rest of the process will be very smooth as you’ve gained confidence already.

The usual ones you can start from the eyes, lips or head. Because their structures are simple. You can quickly rough out the shape and start tweaking until it looks like what you want. But there’s no need to put too much details in it. Construct a simple topology as much as you can. This is only the first pass in the process. After you’ve finished other features, you may find its likeness is not enough compared with them. Then you can refine it and complicate it if necessary. The thing is to keep all features in proportion and harmony throughout the process. Details are not important until the very end.

Eyes - If you start from the eye, here is what I’ll do. Create a NURBS sphere whose numbers of sections and spans are 8 with axis along Z direction. The first span along U will be roughly the size of iris. Position and scale the sphere such that it matches the iris in your image planes. Then a circle of 14 spans on XY plane. Tweak it until it matches the outline of the eye. Duplicate it, move it forward or backward a bit and then loft a surface. Convert it into polygon, delete history and throw away the curves and the NURBS surface. Extrude the outside and inside borders until you’ve got a rough shape for the eye area. The following figure depicts this process.

The only objective of this process is to create the outline of the eyes. The eyelid is not important while a rough shape is needed. There’s no need to model up to the brow. Its topology and edge flow are trivial.

Lips - Lips are particularly important if you want to achieve likeness. In my opinion, they are the most difficult features to model. Through eyes, you recognize character by looking at the outline and the iris shape. Through lips, you recognize character by looking at the shape of the shadow formed by the upper and lower lips. This is headache. So you can imagine that its topology and edge flow would hugely affect the shape and therefore likeness.

Similar to building the eyepit patch, create a circle with 16 sections, adjust its shape to become the outline of the lips, duplicate, scale it down to become the inner edge. Loft and convert it into polygon. Throw everything away except the polygon. Insert a ring edge in the middle and sculpt until you’ve reached the basic shape of the lips. The following figure depicts this process.

Tweak it until it looks like what you want. Insert edges wherever necessary. Watch out the edge flow along the depth, the number of edge rings and the number of sections around. The following figure shows a couple of examples.

As you can see, the number of edge rings you can see from outside is at least one (a) or three (c) at most. The number of sections around the lips ranges from 22 (a) to 30 (c). The edge flow is usually radiating outward, but sometime is nearly straight and forward as shown in (c). Try different edge flow and you’ll see the difference.