I've now began to make and refine my final model, the head took time to model and shape so that it mirrored my subject but after a few attempts I had a basic subject head that I could further refine over time. The features were rough but they corresponded close enough to my subject that I could work with them. Below is my final model in its early stages...
I then started working more closely on the main features such as the eyes, at first I tried using the tools such as the 'Foamy' and 'Wax' tool but found that I could not get a realistic enough sphere in the socket. So I read that it was possible to create sphere meshes to act as the eyeballs themselves.
So I sculpted the eyelids and surrounding area as best I could and then hollowed out the eye sockets and created the spheres. There was a lot of adjusting to get the eyes in the right place but eventually they were done to the point that they looked like the subject. Obviously as these are separate objects they will be painted or imprinted separately later on.
The next thing I did was to change the lighting presets until I got one that gave the model a more realistic feel. I also began sharpening up the ears and the other features, even though the hair (which would be modeled last) would cover most of the ears I still wanted them to look as realistic as possible so I asked people on several forums for their best ear topology images to get a feel for them and also looked at my subjects ears to see if they differed at all.
I came across a few problems as I started fine tuning the features and these were issues such as the fact that my subjects head photo, although it lined up perfectly with the rules was not the same from the profile to the front view. This was mainly due to the issues of shifting to an orthographic view and the changes (although subtle) in expression and angle.
Once I had sculpted all the details of the face such as the nadilnus, 'laugh-lines' etc and the model looked accurate I began adding the hair. The hair was perhaps the most difficult part of the scuplt to get to look like the subject, this was because whereas the skin was a flat surface which could be mimicked quite easily, the hair on the other hand is constituted of about 100,000 hairs on average. There was not a sufficiently effective tool to make large masses of hair look realistically defined either. I read various ways of trying to do this but none of them applied to Mudbox. I tried using different 'alphas' to define the hair but none of them looked particularly effective. My only option was to create the hair in large portions and then sculpt it as best I could. The hair on my model looked reasonably good and perhaps once it was colored later would look better.
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