Tutorial 6 - Refining Model (the nose)

Refining organic models with Edit Poly

How to add details to your model.

Switch to the front view and maximise so we can access the nose area.

We are going to add some additional faces.
Select object > modify editable poly > show end result and then go into edge mode. Select the edges that follow around the outside of the nostrils. Select edge hold down shift and drag you will create a copy, which you can move or rotate. So select the 5 edges hold down shift on the key board and click and drag. Go to vertex mode to space out the vertices.

You need to produce a nice edge flow going all the way round the tip of the nose. The fleshy tissue goes from the tip of the nose down and around to the edge of the nasal cavity. We are going to attach the vertexes to the corner point of the nasal cavity.

Turn on snap and click and drag. Currently the vertices are still separate so we need to click and drag over the three vertices and click weld. Now it is a single vertex. We have a fairly decent flow of quads but this is not enough detail to model a decent nose so we will have to add additional geometry all round. Max has a neat tool called connect and the way it works, it takes any edges selected and creates an edge that connects them. Select all the edges underneath the nose in one continuous loop. Under Edit edges > connect click on the settings next to it and play with the dialogue box. When we increase the amount of segments it determines the amount of times we connect our edges. A value of 0 will connect from the midpoint all the way round. We want 1 segment, 0 pinch, 0 slide > OK.
So we have some additional detail here. We have a five sided polygon that we need to get rid of as the edges stop abruptly. We need to use another tool called “Cut” – edit geometry > cut. As I drag the cursor over the mesh there are three distinct shapes, for vertex, edge and face. We want to move cursor over the end vertex, click once and then move the cursor to the centre of the space. The cut tool allows you to draw your edges so easily to make changes to your topology. This created a nice quad; go to corner to edge you can make all quads again. You can get out of the cut mode by right clicking.
In vertex mood, we follow the loop around and there is a hard seam between the tip of the nose and the nostrils. We go to edge mode and hit backspace which will remove an edge. If you delete you remove the whole polygon.
Jump back to vertex mode, just space them out a bit more. We need to close the gap of the nostril. Want to give the illusion of a nasal cavity. Go to polygon mode, edit geometry >create button. Draw in a polygon. Left click to select the polygon in centre of the nostril. Jump out of front view to perspective view. Start to tweak the vertices of the edge of the nostril.
We are going to create the nasal cavity. Get a good view of underneath the nose, and select the polygon you have just created. Use the extrude tool to do this. It needs to be a negative value to take the nostril into the head. Position it to make it look more natural to the side. Tune on turbo smooth to view the nostril.