In this Blender 2.5 video tutorial you are shown how to model a human head basemesh that can easily be used as a starting point for sculpting. This tutorial demonstrates the modeling process, discusses the topology and then showcases the end result of using just such a basemesh for sculpting.
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Discussion
75 Responses to “Modeling a Human Head Basemesh”Leave a Comment
Many thanks for that, much better than what i’ve been using so far =)
Awesome thank you. But it would be nice if you guys did a game engine charater tutorial series, Rig him and textere him and stuff.
It’s an older cookie, but not yet stale:
http://www.blendercookie.com/2010/05/13/game-enginecharacter-part-1/
can you please help me out.i want to know how to use blender, to create a good modeling..
This would be a great place to start: http://cgcookie.com/blender/get-started-with-blender/
Good luck!
thanks bro
How do you render in wireframe?
Same thing I want to learn,how to render a surface and wire frame at the same time so the mesh and the geometry structure is rendered,Ican only render just the surface or just wire frame not both,I have seen renders that had the wire frame over the mesh,not an invisible mesh with just wires,so I know its possible,probably an external render though.
Quick and dirty method is to duplicate the mesh and then set one mesh to render “wire” and the other to “surface”.
I typed Wireframe into the search box above, pressed enter.
A tutorial on it pops up.
http://www.blendercookie.com/2009/05/02/tip-wireframe-overlay/
Just search.
One way to do it is to duplicate the object, scale it up a tiny bit, add a new material to it, set the type to wire., change the diffuse colour to black and hit shadeless. Its not perfect, but it works.
or you could try and play with material nodes in the node editor, use ordinary material and a wire frame layered on top of that
Nice tutorial, thanks
How do you render with the wireframe on top of the solid?
The best way is probably to use exported UV layout as a diffuse texture.
I’d like to see a tut on modeling a low poly for a game from a sculpted model (retopology I think…) I don’t think there’s enough love for the BGE on this site
or any for that matter
but very nice tut thanks Jonathan
To render the wireframe and the surface, you can use the following tutorial:
http://www.blendernewbies.com/tutorials/video/solid_wireframes/solid_wireframes.html
In short:
1. Duplicate the mesh at the same location
2. Make two materials, one solid, one wireframe.
3. Make them have different colors.
4. In the materials-panel of the wireframe-material, turn on Wire and Ztransparancy.
5. Turn up the Zoffs to 0.05
6. At the shaders panel turn the specularity and hardness down to zero.
7. Render your frame, if the lines aren’t clear enough turn up the Zoffs by 0.01 and repeat.
i would like to see less modeling and more animation, texturing, game engine and compositing.
There are lots of ways to skin a cat, and I have skinned many. But not all of them lead to proper / correct topology from the start. I appreciate the tutorial taking me back to the basics of setting up a topologically correct mesh.
Cheers,
YOU HAVE NO IDEA HOW HELPFUL THIS IS! I’ve wanted this tutorial for such a long time. It’s nice and short, too. Thank you so much. I needed this for a project, and this will save me hours of experimenting! Thank you, Jonathon.
-A!E
P.S. Can we have a body to go with it, male and female variations, too? Please?
Very nice! I will now jump into Blender and try it out myself.
So Jonathan, say you’re trying to create a character that’s going to be animated. Wouldn’t sculpting from such a basic base mesh leave a lot of retopo work?
Hi,Jonaythan Williamson,
Thanks for this tutorial
my progress link,
http://browse.deviantart.com/?q=gallery%3Ahaqzaf%2F9410305#/d3790yq
hope,you may continue further to teach sculpting steps for this base mesh.
I used female ref image to follow your tut steps.
Could you do a quick tip on how to play a tutorial in the image editor? I find it difficult to work with the video on one side, and blender sqeezed in next to it:)
cool tut, tnx.
i like it
Another thing, could you possibly create a tip on how to make the mouth without ruining the meshes equality?
@Verticies
. I play tuts on one workspace, with the application on another, and I switch between the two with a shortcut. But then, I’m using Ubuntu, I don’t know if that’s possible on Windows.
Oh, I never thought you’d do it this way, that must be hell
@Pawel,
If you are talking dual monitors, My computer doesn’t support that. If you mean swapping screens, of course I can, but then I can only see one at a time:)
Fantastic work Jonathan! I’ve been wanting something like this tutorial for ages. I rarely make humans in Blender and part of the reason is that I don’t know how the base mesh should look. This tutorial took care of that nicely
Cheers mate!
Hey man! Good to hear from you. Now let’s see some sweet human characters
-Jonathan
Very good tutorial.I love zbrush and blender.
please!!!! finish the model! That was an amazing tutorial, and it would really help if you did the whole human body basemesh
how do you add loopcuts?
Ctrl+R to add a loop cut. Scroll wheel to adjust how many to add.
CTRL + R. After selecting the cut you can slide the loop along the faces and then left click to confirm placement. Immediately after pressing CTRL + R you can also use +- or your scrollwheel to add more loops.
-Jonathan
Hi, Jonathan,
Watched all the way through and it’s great. Have two things happening:
1. With Ctrl R, I’m normally able to just input the number of loops I want (laptop, glidepad, no mouse) and now I have to use my page up/down (guessing it’s emulating the wheel?)
2. I have clipping on and when pull in on that first neck loop, they cross. I have tried creating a mirror over and over, and the clipping does not seem to engage. Any suggestions?
Thanks
Hi Cris,
1. This is correct, Page up / Page down emulate the mouse wheel for most features.
2. Are your vertices overlapping the center line? Can you send me a screenshot of the problem?
-Jonathan
Well, created a cube separate and subdivided and deleted half the verts and added the mirror modifier and use clipping and works as expected, so maybe my file corrupted…will try again.
…and she finds a new blend works and continues with the tutorial…blush.
‘Now move these two points there… *poof* – hirez head mesh appears… you are done’
great tutorial!!!! could u make a tutorial on how to create a complete human base mesh?
Jonathan,
Thank you very much for this. I see you can go several different directions with this beginner tut: 1. As an intro for box-modeling a human head at higher topology and resolution (including how to properly set up edge flow with poles), and 2. As a base mesh for game engine characters. Are you planning on doing any more game stuff on this site? This would be the place I would come to learn this…
Keep up the strong work.
Mike
Nice Tutorial
Another great tut for beginners!
Any chance we’ll see one on how to join a sculpted bust to a body mesh? Or on the basics of body topology for animation?
Thanks .. very nice tutorial..
are going to show how to detail the face..
http://www.flickr.com/photos/51851421@N02/5362813152/
I try.. but need to learn more about using the sculpting tools…
sometimes the tools dont look like there doing anything..
any sugestions or tutorials.. on just skulpting??
very nice,
keep up the good work
on a side note, i very much enjoy your tuts on organic modeling
I got to thinking, you’ve got this human basemesh project going, in addition to a basemesh, it could also serve pretty well as a mesh deform cage. I’d really like to see a tut on adapting the basemesh, and using it as a mesh defrom modifier.
what’s the easy way of creating a bowling pin? could you make a tutorial?
I’ve been following your tutorial closely (and enjoying myself!), but I’ve run into the same problem as Cris: when I add the mirror modifier and enable clipping, the verticies still cross the center line. I’m using Blender 2.5 for windows 7 64 bit, if that makes any difference.
Here’s a screenshot:
http://i110.photobucket.com/albums/n84/dragonflyblues/blender_clipping_error-1.jpg
Also, I somehow managed to oriented my mesh in the oposite direction from yours; but I’ll assume I can just fiddle with that later.
Thanks for your time! I’m a total blender newbi – I’ve only had it for a few days. But between reading “Noob to Pro” and watching these great video tutorials, it’s all becoming a little clearer.
Excellent tutorial!! Very helpful and well made.
Are you planning on making a head sculpting tutorial as well?
I definitely hope to in the near future! I have a lot of other topics I’d like to cover first to help fill up some of the topics other than modeling.
-Jonathan
This is a terribly basic question, sorry for my noobness: When I try and grab from the single vector to create the chin, it is pulling it out like a spike and not stretching the entire part of the sphere, what am I doing wrong?
nvm I got it proportional editing
yeah, this tut was my first intro to proportional editing. Just press “O” to toggle it on, then grab and move as normal. The mouse wheel, or zoom control is used to modify the area of influence.
Proportional editing is awesome!
well… this probably is kinda stupid… i don’t know not good yet… but what i do is unwrap it, save the image, then try to apply that image to the model….
Hi Russel,
I am not sure what the problem is you’re facing? Are you having trouble applying the image to the model?
-Jonathan
Thanks so much. This tutorial helped out a lot, and I have been using this base mesh to create my first character in Blender. Your tutorials have helped me out a lot, but one I’d like to see is making a game character using this basemesh, all the way from creating the full body, attaching it, rigging it, skinning it, creating accessories, creating hair, and making the game with it.
I am so grateful for these tutorials. When I first started on Blender, I couldn’t figure out how to use it to create a general bust. I love that when you explain each step, you say what keys to press to achieve the step. Without knowing the various Blender key functions, I wouldn’t have continued on Blender. Now I feel more confident in exploring it.
This did not work for me my Grab Command is messed up and would not give me the same results you had when you used it.
Thanks! Great tutorial.
Terrific paintings! This is the kind of information that should be shared across the net. Shame on the search engines for now not positioning this publish upper! Come on over and visit my website . Thanks =)
Can someone help me? In the tutorial when he changes it to “View 2″ he has 3 rings….. 1 outer ring & 2 inner rings…..
but when I do it & change to view 2 I only have 2 rings…. 1 outer & 1 inner
I’ve done what he said in the video but it still ain’t working I’ve tried it a gazillion times already just with the same results.
Hi just finished this tutorial and wondering if there is a sculpting tutorial for this base mesh, thank you.
Hey this is a cool tutorial, but I have a question. I’ve just gotten to the part where I extruded the neck, and am trying to select some points to do some fine-tuning of the neck and jaw shapes, but my sphere of influence is too big and I can’t do it like I’m seeing in your video. How can I decrease the influence on areas I select? I can’t remember.
Hi Jason,
You can adjust the PET influence by using your scroll wheel or the Page Up and Page Down keys during any transform. So for example, press G to activate grab mode and then scale down the influence.
-Jonathan
Jonathan: How would you take this tutorial and go from this to a full topology head, or is this more of a reference model to base other models on?
You could use box modeling techniques to create a full detailed head from this mesh but generally this would be used a sculpting base, such as this tutorial: http://cgcookie.com/blender/2011/08/31/sculpting-a-human-head/
simple tutorial. Easy to follow thnx
First off, amazing tutorials! I’ve learned tons from your tutorials, and find them really simple to follow and understand, of course making me want more, more, more! Do you think it would be possible for you to create a tutorial on creating what you call a base mesh for a typical body shape for a genderless human, then one that goes into detail with sculpting or something like that? (Not sure if that is possible, just curious really)
First, thank you for the tutorial, very well done. One question, does the mirror modifier work diffrently in 2.62 ? Im not sure if Im doing something wrong, but changes I make to the model after mirroring do not affect the other side like they do in your video.
Jonathan, am a big fan of yours. Say, am totally addicted to your tutorials. Never saw anyone say this, but you have a great control over the language (pretty fast and witty at times
). One little request, please enable the option so that we can see what keys you are using. Thanx and keep up your cool work.
When I go Grab Mode for the jaw, it doesn’t move the whole part of the sphere, it only moves that vertex. Can anyone help?
Hi Cannon,
In order to move the surrounding geometry as well you need to enable the Proportional Editing Tool by pressing “O”. Then you can press “O” again to turn it off.
-Jonathan