The Other Side

The next step was to create the other side of my face. Rather than defining and creating the topology again for the other side, the symmetry modifier was used to create an exact copy on the other side. The left hand side was mirrored along its X-axis and flipped to create the right hand side of my face. To start with, this didn’t look quite right as the two halves of the face overlapped a little so there was an odd line down the middle. To rectify this, I selected the Mirror section of the Symmetry modifier and then used the move tool to line the right hand side up to the left hand side. I adjusted them so they were just touching down the centre. This looked much better.
 After this, I looked at any lines of the topology that created straight lines, points and corners and smoothed them out by moving vertexes to create smoother lines that flowed across the face better. When this was done, I used the NURMS subdivision to view a smoother surface. This highlighted some areas that still needed tweaking as there were a couple of sharp points and also a couple of visible lines.


At this point, I also noticed two areas where there were triangle polygons and had not attached properly to the rest of the mesh. It was important that these were sorted; otherwise this would cause even more problems later on. I turned off the NURMS subdivision and selected Edge in the modify panel and removed a couple of edges and then created new edges, creating all quads and no triangles. When I was happy that these had all been sorted, I welded the vertexes together so I was able to carry on with my modelling.

I spent quite a bit of time working on the nose and eye areas as they still didn’t look right. The nose looked to thin and pointy and the corners of the eyes protruded more than they should. I worked first in the front viewport, moving some vertexes around to allow me to adjust the nose better in the side view. I then worked in the side view moving the vertexes on the nose to try to create a better representation. I kept the perspective viewport open so it was clear what each of my vertex moves was doing to the overall model. I then also moved a lot of the vertexes around the eye back into the model a little bit and a bit further for the ones at the corners of the eye. Eventually I got the look I was after and I was quite happy with the result.