In This Chapter

Now that you've modeled with polygons and produced a hard-edged architectural model, it's time to move on to a curvy complex surface a human head. Organic shapes are often more challenging to create in 3D because they have no orthogonal lines and are hard to visualize as you build them. Luckily, the shaded Perspective view is helpful in building a model, and you can use a technique in which you control a subdivided smoothed surface with a simpler control cage, which makes modeling these surfaces easier to understand. Where you need more detail, you add more lines. Where parallel edges are closer together, you get more of a crease.

Modeling with the cage/smooth approach can be done with polygons. The Smooth Proxy option is expressly for this purpose. Maya's Subdivision Surfaces modeling also uses this technique, but in a more specific manner, working a bit like a hybrid of NURBS and polygons. In this head-modeling tutorial, you'll use a polygonal approach to build the basic model. Then, you'll switch to Subdivision Surfaces to refine the model. For this chapter, the head is built as polygons, so it uses the techniques you learned in Chapter 5, "Modeling with Polygons."

Modeling a human head is a challenge, and it's an ambitious project for a new Maya user. So, if your first head comes out a bit on the mutant side, start the chapter over and try it again. This skill is somewhat like sculpting, and you'll definitely improve your techniques with practice.

Here are some of the concepts and techniques covered in this chapter:

• Working with polygons Polygons are made up of faces, with vertices and edges on their perimeters. You can manipulate all these components to build the precise geometry you want.

• Working with image planes To model accurately, it helps to use image planes as templates for your model, as you did for the lobby in Chapter 5. In this chapter, you'll use two images in multiple views.

• Matching multiple image planes With two images in two views, it's critical that they match proportionately.

• Making new surfaces Most of the model is built up a face at a time by extruding edges or extruding faces.

• Simplifying surfaces Sometimes, you need to collapse polygons to make the surface simpler and easier to control.

Key Terms

subdivision surfaces Maya's dedicated hierarchical Subdivision Surfaces let you control smoothing and the level of detail.

point snapping Snapping something to a vertex.

curve snapping Snapping something, usually a vertex, to one edge of a polygon or a NURBS curve.

grid snapping Snapping something to the grid lines in a view.

geometry flow When modeling a complex organic shape, such as a face, the overall direction and flow of the topology has a big effect on how the model subdivides and smoothes out.

Hotkeys to Memorize

Ctrl+e Extrude polygon face.

Ctrl+Shift+e Open Extrude Face Options dialog box.

F8 Toggle selection mode.

c Curve snapping.

v Vertex snapping.

x Grid snapping.