Welding and modelling

Today I went to weld all the vertices together, this is done to make sure that when you move one part of the face, the surrounding areas are adjusted.

Next I had to start forming the shape of the face, this gives the three dimensional element to the head. Well this process started well, but I didn't really understand where I was supposed to be moving the vertices to. Here I decided to stop viewing the remainder of the tutorial and mess around with the vertices until I understood what I was actually aiming for.



This was the right thing to do for me,it meant that I understood why the lines curved in certain directions and also allowed me to learn more of the settings within 3ds through mistakes i was making.

One technique that i have managed to learn that will become useful for the future, is producing extra vertices and also deleting unused lines. The reason that this will become useful for this particular project is that i can now recreate areas where i have made mistakes.
For example, areas of my topology did not weld togeter within 3DS. This means that holes were left within the face when setting the topology as a editable poly. (Below I explain how i got round this problem and was able to produce a cleaner looking face design).



With this technique it allowed me to delete lines easily if i had accidentally produced a triangle on the face. All I had to do was select a vertice (vertex mode) or a line (edge mode) and press backspace on the keyboard. This would open up a larger quadand reduce pinching on the face.

A problem I found with this though, is that by deleting an edge it would produce a straight line across the face, this was frustrating if it was the cheek area which required a smooth rounded surface.

But there is another technique that can easily rectify this. By selecting the "Vertex" mode, it gives us the option to added points on the face which will allow you to produce more quads.



With this step you have to select the Edges option and check the "Insert Vertex" option. This allows you to select anywhere on the face where you would need a vertex.

Once the vertex has been setup, go into "Vertex" mode and highlight the vertices that you would like to connect together and press the "Connect" button.

I found this an invaluable technique to use when finding problems with producing the basic shape of the face, and no doubt I will have to use it again at some stage further on with this project.