Realistic female from plane

WARNING: Minor artistic nudity in lower posts.

I have been wanting to model a human from scratch and I finally took a crack at it. I followed along the blendercookie female head series, improvising along the way. I got lost doing the ear and had to make my own (worse) topology and wound up with some extra poles which I don’t like. I realize now that I will need to delete my multi-res and unwrap and go back to a mirror modifier to finish the body and I thought this would be a good time to get some feedback while I can still do something about it. My plan is to create a chest, torso, and arms. No hands or lower half. I included wireframes and a timelapse montage of working snapshots. Early concepts for the eyebrows/lashes were scrapped and will be revisited later. The images look better at high res, as you can see the pore/wrinkle scupting.






And the wireframe.


I think you’ve done a great job. The part int the tutorial on how to connect the ear to the head was pretty bad. I had to figure out my own way too. There’s are two slight changes that I would suggest. The area right below the eye that connects to the nose seems inflamed. I think a little tweeking with make that look better. I think the pores and wrinkles are exagerated. It kinda looks like she has a skin condition.

I’ve been working on the nose a lot, that area between the inner eye and nose is difficult, it’s hard to know what the topology should be doing. The wrinkles and pores are definitely overdone and it looks off. I am going to make a few hi res brushes and redo them. I may remove a loop around the mouth as there are so many that I’m worried about pinching. But overall I am happy with the results thus far. I am going to take my time and try and get things right technically and artistically. It’s a long, but rewarding, process. Thanks.

You might be able to adjust the strength of the bumps if you bake a high polygon version of the model onto a lower polygon version. Ultimately, i think you’re going to be doing this anyway if you get rid of the multires.

I think I will end up baking a normal map of the higher multires levels and deleting them at the very end. I need to redo some topology first though and make the quads on the cheeks and forehead more squarish. That’s part of the reason the pores look odd. But they need smoothing too. Thats all on the list, right now I’m finishing up the modeling on the chest and arms.

I won’t begin to try and offer topology advice, but her skin pores look too strong IMO. The skin shader looks good, I just think there is too much displacement possibly.

One of these days I’ll attempt some kind of human modeling.

Here’s some more work on it.

I modeled a body, minus the hands and feet. I Remade the eyes and eyebrows, toned down the pore sculpting. It’s starting to come to life I think. I need some critiques.




OK… here is a few things … her nose seems to be pulled down to far…It appears to me there should be more space between the nostrils and the top of the lips. Not sure what you have done with the eyebrows, but maybe they need some additional work…

The pores look much better than they did, but I wouldn’t be afraid to soften them even a touch more… just a touch more. Are you working off a reference photo?

I’m with Harleynut97 about the nose bridge length and distance from the lips - people are built many ways and it’s not bad now, but it might suit your model to raise the nose while the lips remain.

There’s so much good about this that it’s making it hard to figure out what’s slightly off. “Eyes are the window,” so get them nailed! New eyes are better - more lashes that ease in from the inside of the upper lid and stack about three deep at their thickest. Randomize them more. The distance between her eyes seems exaggerated but not wrong per se. You mentioned trouble with the spot between, I frequently have that problem too. I think that extra real estate is space to build up the intro to the cheeks: Wide cheeks to match the wide eyes.

Showing off the pores is okay, but if she’s wearing makeup, she’d cover those up! Her large pores are a testament to your skills, but if they were half the size in depth and width, they’d appear more natural. Skull shape, 3/4 view, brows and lips are all great! This might be a case of over-working the details?

It’s looking good, I agree that the nose would seem more natural higher up.
It seems to me that the position of the cheek/smile wrinkles don’t quite match up to the mouth.
Maybe too far out, or too high?

Thanks for the critiques. I moved the nose up. Reworked the eyebrows a bit. They still jump out though. Softened the pores and lips (more so in the 3/4 redhead shot) I am going to need to redo the multi-res entirely. I need to add a couple loops on the forehead as the quads are too long and I’m getting distortion. I started in on the patches of skin on either side of the eye.

I randomized the eyelashes, but I need more of them and need to thicken them up some individually.

I started a new concept for freckles, going with a particle system. Trying to do it with an images texture is tough as the textile density is low around the nose and I’m getting some stretching. The freckles are more opaque in the redhead version.

The cheek/smile crease also needs to be moved when I redo the pores.

I widened the cheeks ever so slightly, and started some sculpting on the nose bridge. It’s a tricky area in terms of knowing which way the normals want to head. I’m hoping to get some more feedback today so I can make some tweaks and do a high res overnight render. Any thoughts appreciated.

Sorry for the low samples, I need a new design machine.


I had some time over the weekend to work on the face. I repositioned the features some and softened the features. I added loops on the forehead and re-sculpted the face. I also moved to black and white based masks for the skin shader, there is no photographic image texture on it any more. Eyebrows still awful and there is a crease on the chin that needs to be smoothed. I’m most concerned about the eyes. I want reflections only if the light source is strong. Otherwise the cornea is hiding a lot of color info for the iris/eye white (Veins etc…) Any ideas on Cycles cornea/iris shaders? Or other critiques?


Seems like you really made a big change in this most recent post…she is looking much better to me, in many ways. Like you mentioned the eyebrows still need some attention.

This version probably looks the best, I’m working on the eyebrows when I can and I know I can fix those. But I really need some ideas for the cornia/iris/eye whites. It’s just not looking right. No pun indended. :rolleyes:

Otherwise the cornea is hiding a lot of color info for the iris/eye white (Veins etc…)

I struggled with that also in my last attempts and I came to this setup. This has a very subtle but noticeable gloss if there are strong lights. In my model the cornea has the form of a dome and is only covering the iris (has a bit more radius then the iris of course).


For the white parts of the eyeball I used this because eyeballs are never completely white.


Perhaps this can help. Of course you could also texture the eyeball to have veins. I textured only the iris.

Thank minoribus, I’ll play around with those.

More work on it. Better eyebrows, slightly better eye shader. I’m still trying to play with the isreflection ray nodes to get reflections stronger but only if the strength is high. I need to smooth lip the creases above the lip and redo the pores some. I’m going to start on the neck/body sculpting, but the main focus with be the face. The hair is just a stand in I am going to redo that too. I am either going to go for super curly red hair, or dirty blonde curls. I’ve been doing some normal and displacment test for baking, but they still aren’t quite right, this image is a highpoly multi-res sculpt. Anything jump out to anyone?


The eye brows look way better and they eyes look pretty natural to me, than previous versions. The skin looks better too. Her eyelashes look more natural too me now, because she has other makeup on.

This is the first time you’ve seen much of her ear…something looks a little off on it to me on it… Maybe a little less makeup under her eyes

Overally it looks good, but the nose looks squished in. I think you could try some re-shaping there.

The eyes look good but I don’t like the eye shadows (make-up). I think it should be less visible on the outer edge. A stronger gradience would help I think. And I feel that on the outer eye corners the make-up goes too far.

But as I said, overally it looks good. You have good progress since the first renders. Keep on improving.