Research and reference
I can't stress enough how important this phase is. Without well researched and considered reference, a likeness of a person is extremely hard to capture. You'll need good front and side orthographic photographs, taken with a long focal length so that there is as little perspective distortion as possible. You'll also want the head to be pointing as perpendicular to camera as you can possibly find.
Since, the angle of the head is looking down, this is a bad front ortho:
This, whilst not perfect due the head being turned very slightly to the right, is much better:
As long as you understand why your orthographic photo's aren't perfect, they will often do, since you'll be able to compensate for whatever is not quite right in the photograph when you model.
Along with good orthographics, you'll need shots in between those 90 degrees, and you'll also want shots taken under different lighting conditions. Certain lighting conditions are of more use to us than others when it comes to reference. Often the best is a diffuse lighting condition ( e.g overcast day outside ) since it'll really tell us a lot about the bone-structure without hard shadows getting in the way. For example, the shot below was one of my most commonly referred to pieces of references of Peter Cushing, since the lighting conditions describe the complex facial bone-structure ( particularly around the cheek area ) quite clearly:
Get good with google image search! Try and think laterally when you're looking for somebody and go off at tangents. If you discover a lesser known movie that an actor is in, search for that alongside the more obvious ones.
tip: look up an actors filmography on imdb.com
One of the most useful pieces of reference you can obtain however, is the head in motion. A common trick I often use, is to grab DVD frames from a movie of a head turning through 90 degrees and compile into an .mov. That way you can compare alongside your 3D model at angle increments:
If you don't have a fancy DVD capture card, there is a more time consuming and less elegant method to capture frames: In your windows advanced display panel, turn your graphics cards acceleration from hardware to software. Now play the DVD, hit 'print screen' at the frame you want and then go into Photoshop and hit file new>edit paste. You can then save out the series of frames and compile them into a movie using your favourite 2D editing software. Premier, After Effects, Quicktime. Im sure there are some freebie ones too.
Ensure that your front and side ortho's are square, and the right relative scale by lining up crucial features in Photoshop:
You can then go ahead and set up as image planes or simply apply to polygons in your 3D software. Make sure that your front and side images are square, and so are your polygons to ensure correct aspect ratio of the image. It's worth assigning to layers so that you can toggle their visibility on and off quickly
tip: setup your modelling camera with a longer focal length to lessen the amount of perspective distortion whilst working. In Maya I always have the focal length set to about 90.
Copyright : D.Pattenden