Well there's absolutely no reason for this image, except for you to see where I'd got to last time.

I didn't have much time this evening, but I was itching to get on with doing some more modelling (the head is always my favourite part of modelling a creature- it's where the natural focus is of the image and of course the most defining feature of character.)

The usual pattern of tweaking and refining, splitting polygons and moving vertices. I'm suddenly very glad I took the time to write the SmoothReference script on Sunday. I suspected I was just being "lazy" when I wrote it, but now I realise that I can use the "relax" modifier on vertices in the base mesh.

Why couldn't I before? Well, before I'd either have to run an edit mesh modifier on top of it, or collapse the whole thing back to a poly object and do the smooth reference thing again. I don't like stacking modifiers - it slows down the work process and interface.

A few people have been asking "what's the best way to avoid generating triangles?" Well, it's always a bit tricky and sometimes downright impossible. It's almost inevitable that you'll end up with one or two triangular polys in a more complex object, but try and either keep them hidden in a fold or make sure it's in a part of the object that won't deform.

Another tip is to avoid using Meshes (I work with 5.1, polys only), another trick is to select Rings and split them.

In Polygon mode, select an edge, then slect Ring:

(mouse-over the image on the right)

Once you have your selection, just select "Connect" - easy :)

Ring selection is a lot more familiar to modelers who are used to working with nurbs (I'm not a fan of nurbs, however!). It has the advantage of creating ONLY quads via a quad selection, but you will need to manually refine (or relax) vertices along the split, otherwise the final shape with start to become a little boxy. This is not due to the 4-sided polys, but that connected edged are linear.

A little more detail, some eyes (the eyeball is a separate sphere) and it's getting late again for me. Been working on this about 3 hours now, but I've other things to do.. bugger.

At least there's a few more "fun" things to work on next time (inner mouth, horns and spikes...)