I am not very good at this. Here's a work in progress. I think I got the topology reasonable enough (after hours of struggle) and now I've got something which aligns beautifully with my side and front references and looks like an alien horror show at an angle. Well, I think i've gotten the jawline and the nose and lips okay. Bridge of the nose definitely needs to be wider, I've no idea how to shape the brow ridge and forehead and how to size the back of the skull. And I'm hoping that when I actually add the big anime eyes and eyelashes and so on that it looks slightly less terrifying...
WIP #2
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Moved front of forehead forward and then sloped it back more. This looks a lot more natural.
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Added subsurface scattering, causing that slight redness under the chin and nose. Adjusted roughness a little bit. Now she looks like she's made out of wax, so I may have to adjust those settings a bit.
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Adjusted eye shape
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Added eyeballs. This definitely helps with the overall effect but I am not havin ga good time with these. I set both the eyeball and the back of the eye shaders to "background" and white but it seems like they don't get the same actual colouring, so my understanding of what that shader does is wrong. I was hoping to use the white part of the eyeball basically to obscure the back face of the iris and to have it blend invisibly into the back of the eye.
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I inset the pupil, this makes her look more like her eyes are pointing in the same direction. Definitely still looks a bit derpy though.
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Still dealing with lumpy forehead and that sharp line from the corner of the eye to the nose. I possibly just need to add more loops.
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This is 630 triangles according to blender, so I am pretty sure I have room in the polygon budget to improve the shape.
This is absolutely a learning exercise, so feedback is most welcome. At this point I may bung on some ears and eyebrows and eyelashes and so on and come back to this later.
I went back to basics and spent some time on tutorials that probably didn't impact on this. But I also spent a lot of time looking at faces (and cartoon faces) and had a really close look at someone's face in VRChat that totally didn't turn into a weirdly hot VR makeout session or anything and realised that I should have made the planes of the face more plane-y and also that the forehead was way the heck back from where it should be.
In WIP 4 we see where I was before, and also a disconcerting skin shader that I have thankfully turned off. WIP 5 is a substantial improvement but there's still a ways to go. I think I should be bringing the brow ridge further down and further forward, but I tried that in the process of making this post and just made her look worse.
I think earlier in the process I reduced the size of the top of the head, and actually part of my problem now is that the brow line should be closer to the middle of the head.
This is tremendous fun but I'm also realising that it's absolutely critical to get the feedback loop right and to not rabbit-hole on making adjustments without a clear purpose in mind. I think I'm gonna push the tutorial I'm on as far as rigging so I don't burn too hard on sculpting.