The Ear

I was dreading the ear slightly. I think perhaps due to the shape and the undulation of the flesh and cartilage in the ear I approached this section of the model with a little trepidation. 

Ear Topology

Similarly to my earlier reference plane images I sectioned the profile image out into blue guidelines, which helped me to carry out the topology. I was very aware of the amount of quads I was creating and tried to limit the amount I drew in order to have a simpler model to work with. Now I’m sure this would have been a good idea had I not started my face model with so many quads as I discovered after transferring my topology covered ear into 3DS Max.

I (using the spline and line technique that I had used for the face), traced my ear topology, attached the polygons, welded the vertices and created an ear model separate from my main head. I then manipulated the vertices to match my reference planes (obviously repositioning and resizing the ear also) and to create the many contour lines an ear has. I was pleased to learn both the chamfer function and the extrude technique to create the ear canal, which I was quite pleased with.

Attaching the Ear

I soon realised that my reference planes did not match up when it came to my ear. My first attempt at positioning the ear ready for reattachment put it somewhere near the back of my head, precariously near my shoulder.

One of the offending ears.

I modified the ear slightly to make it look a little more upright and in the correct position for my head (using the very scientific method of feeling my own head and spending a good deal of time looking in the mirror!).

Once I was satisfied with the position of my lughole, it was time for the surgery of reattachment! That was much easier to type than to actually do. I must have tried about 12 – 15 times to attach my ear to the hole I had left for it although as I mentioned earlier, in my enthusiasm to limit my usage of polygons I had forgotten to factor in requiring a similar amount of vertices on my ear as exists on the face model to match them up successfully. My trusty ‘Cut’ and ‘Create’ tools were required here.

Another issue I came up against was the fiddly process of trying to get close enough to the seam between the ear and the head. After several unsuccessful attempts at an attachment (vertices flying off into the ether thanks to the snaps toggle) I decided upon attaching my ear from a distance and after welding the vertices that were to be attached I brought my ear back in towards the side of my head. This process I found was much easier than trying to guess at which vertex was which and it’s intended partner vertex, although the ‘Weld’ tool was very temperamental. Sometimes it would weld my chosen vertices and at other times decided to have a tea break and not do any welding at all. To overcome this hurdle I did delete a few of my polygons and created some more in their place which seemed to help the welder get back to work. I am still a little unsure why this happened but for now I will set that aside and carry on.

The final ear model

After turbo smoothing

After the successful ear transplant, I used the same technique I used with the lips (holding shift and creating new polygons from existing ones) I created a rough neck and shoulder silhouette that I matched up as best I could to the reference plates that I will manipulate further at a later date. I did this just to ascertain a suggestion of my head being attached to a body of some description.