Modelling My Face and Adding Detail

Modelling My Face

Now that had a base for my face it is time to start editing the shape and curves of the model to make it look more like me!
I decided to save a few versions at different points just incase I messed up as this was the first time ive ever modelled my face so it was quite important not to mess anything up.

The first thing I decided to do was to create a symmetry of my face so that I had a whole face to edit, to do this I selected the modify option at the top right then on the dropdown list select "symmetry" and then click and drag the image to line up in the middle of the half I had created.

Now that I had a full face it was time to start fiddling with the shape of my face and decided to start adding a few details to my face such as the shape of the top of my nose and the jaw line.
The best way to do this was to select the modify panel and click on the "vertex" tool and click and drag / move sections of the face and see what it did by looking at the other half of the face that had no vertexs showing.
This allowed me to see every little adjustment as I was doing it which helped alot as it would show me if I messed up any of my face.
Once I had successfully edited the jaw line and nose it was time to edit the chin and the area around my mouth as the modelling stage before had made the shape not very smooth.
Using the click and drag I used before I moved the areas of my face that I wasnt happy with until it was of a standard I was satisfied with at that moment.
As I had edited the face for quite a while it was time to zoom out and take a good hard look at a few angles of the face to see if it looked anything like me and at the point of doing this i really didnt think it looked a thing like me but maybe with more detail added and a nose and mouth it might be different.
The next step was to create the nostrils

Creating Nostrils

To create the nostrils I had to use a new technique I hadnt ever used before and didnt even know existed which was good because I enjoy learning new things about software.
This has to be the hardest part of the face as it look ages to model the nostril right.
The first step to making the nose was to click each section around the nose where there is a gap on the model object using the "edges" tool then by holding down the "shift" key and then clicking and dragging away from it, it creates a new quad into a circle. After it had created these new quads I selected each edge from left to right and selected the "Connect" tool to make an extra line inbetween each new quad so it creates an extra quad for each one that I created before so it doubles the amount of quads I had created.
Now that I have all the quads it was time to start moving them around to create the shape of the nose.Once I had a shape that I thought was suitable I added a middle to the nostril so that it would have a middle to do this I selected the "Polygon" tool and created the shape that was the same as the gap in the middle of the shape and then created and extruded the shape to fill the hole.
Now that I had created a shape that was good enough it was time to start changing the shape of the nose in the side view and perspective so that I had all the angles covered when editing the nostril.
To make the shape look right and have shape of my nose I selected the modify panel and selected the "vertex" tool to allow myself freedom of movement of each individual vertex so I could make the shape I needed.

Now that I had a shape that looked remotely like my nose it was time to smooth around the edges so I didnt have a point at the end of my nose and instead it would be rounded like the shape of the end of my nose, to do this it was a case of using the "turbosmooth" option on the modify panel dropdown list and then using the "vertex" tool again just moving the end reference point around to see what result it gave.

When I was satisfied with the shape I moved the perspective camera angle to below my nose to see how it looked and was plesently suprised with the view and then looking at the side view it looked quite alot like my nose which left me quite shocked.
Adding Detail to Face

Now that I had a nose I needed to change the face detail so I had curves in the right areas on my face such as around the eyes, the forehead, cheeks, above my lips and the chin.
To do this it was the same technique I have been using before select the "vertex" tool and start moving individual points on the face and seeing how it moved on the other side of the face and seeing if it made the change I wanted it to.
Adding each individual detail makes the face look more realistic as no ones face is the same or smooth, everyone has areas on the face that are inward a bit or have lines on areas of the face so I tried to show that as much as I could using the vertex tool and moving the areas around my chin, lips, eyebrows and eyes to create the overall shape of my face.
Once I had reached a stage I was happy with I went onto the next step of starting to create my lips.
Creating Lips

To create the lips I used the same process as before with the nostrils clicking on the edges of the mouth and holding down the "shift" key and clicking and dragging the points out.
This made a nice straight up line that had 4 quads in, by selecting the edges of these quads and using the "connect" tool it divided them in half and made the quad count go up to 8 which made my life easier and it would allow me to make the shape more detailed.

The first step was to make the lip big enough, to do this I used the side reference picture to show me how big my top and bottom lips were and using the "vertex" tool select each individual vertex point and moving it to the point on the face it should be located and trying to create a curve in the shape of a lip.
Once I had done this for the top lip it was time to do the same thing for the bottom lip and try to make them join in the middle.
When the bottom lip was created I tried to make a natural bump in the middle so it looked like my lips in the picture and have a natural shape of a lip.
After turning the Turbosmooth back on it showed how the lips looked and again I was shocked at the result and it even included a great complement from Jo saying that my lips looked good which made my day as I have been trying so hard to make the detail look just right.I then looked at the perspective view to see how the lips looked for size and shape and made sure all of the face shape was right for the next step in the tutorials.
I also then added a dip in the area above the top lip so it had the same shape as my face and as the image shows.
Using the vertex tool I selected the area above my lip and moved it inward slightly and the next point out so it followed the same structure as my top lip.

The next step making the whole head...