Endless revisions! I have set a new goal: I want to move on to UV work by the end of this month. If everything goes perfect with the UVs (ha!) I could conceivably be done with Rederick in time for the 4-year anniversary of my little project.

Topology change, right! I ended up actually adding additional wires to the flews, to even them out and because the reduction I had done before ended up making controlling their shape in deformation more difficult. This added flew wire makes that easier again. One of the cheek-eyesocket 5-edge intersections has dropped down an edgeloop row, creating it's characteristic effect much closer to the flew. This reduces some of the unsightly "high-cheekbones" deformation in certain smile tests. It also (coupled with a new edgeloop between the cheeks and the flew) helps give better definition to the boundary between the cheeks and the flews, creating a slightly dipping valley.

This still has some issues.

However, the new edgeloop between the cheeks and the flew became the best solution I could finde to remove the two diamonds that previously straddled the upper lips just short of the flew. That area was one of the earliest changes in this most recent round of face changes (I think it was introduced in March) and I have slowly grown aware of some of the difficulties it poses in deformation and other shape problems it caused. Finding a way to eliminate it without re-adding the rest of the upper lips or adding disastrous new diamonds and tris elsewhere proved exceedingly difficult. I was so happy when I stumbled into to it shortly after beginning this weeks cycle, I though I had fixed the face and almost made a post right then! Further tests would show it was not quite the cure-all I wanted, but combined with all these other adjustments to the mouth, it certainly helps.

The neck also saw some changes, notably in shrinking the gullet, which had lost an edgeloop in my work on the mouth and was becoming very large. Additional helper joints were added to the skeleton's neck to help keep the throat from being weighted to the jaw bones. I keep forgetting to actually weight paint the throat, so this was the solution instead. Additional helper joints are needed for the connection to the shoulders if I want the neck to deform properly in all scenarios without weight painting. An attempt to do the same with the ears (so I wouldn't have to weight paint them) failed. Despite being the most straightforward weight painting work I have to do, the geometry proved to be a bit too weird for me to work out the right helper joints. It would require far more helpers than I really want to add.


I'm thinking I might just move on from the mouth at this point. Far from perfect, but certainly serviceable. No doubt it will trouble me again when I get to Blythe (I've been thinking a lot about how to make a more feminine face and it seems really challenging.) I want to see if there is anything more that can be done for the neck, ears, and eyebrows. Then, it might just be full steam ahead towards proper UVs!