SGH- I can happily say that's always what I do, and I recommend the practise to one and all. Segmentation really makes manipulating smaller areas without affecting the other parts a lot easier. Producing new heads basically becomes a copy/past exercise from a series of pre-produced templates.

A1- Oh I wasn't so much concerned about that, as the supposed brittleness of the material. But I suppose, given heads end up relatively thick chunks of plastic, such a thing is no issue.
Yeah I tried minimising em and they just don't look right. Least I know never to bother with em again!  

I'm not entirely sure what you mean there mate. What I mean by that is that I'm trying to recreate the old G1 cartoon look in a classics-styled head. You can be sure, I have no intention of keeping the lips now. What I really want to learn to produce is a mouth like that Wheel_jack has done for his Swerve project. I just can't imagine where to start with it! I suppose it doesn't help sketchup is not really designed to deal with more organic rendering like lips and such.

And thanks man  

 

With the lips, your head looked like it had the face of an Animated toy in the head of a Classics toy. Remove the lips, and it should look better.

Still, with a head like that you don't need FUD. Only use FUD if your part is highly detailed, otherwise WSF will do fine. I only used FD for my Stranzer print, and it's already detailed beyond this head. You don't need FUD, it's just money wasted.

If you want to mold something more like WJ's head, why not just ask him? A lot of design communication happens behind the scenes. Just PM him and see if he's willing to lend you a hand. I do recommend contacting WJ on S70 instead of here though, he's more active there. I think his PM box may be full, though.

Alternatively, if you have a sketch of what you want, send it my way and I'll see if I can figure out how you could draw it in Sketchup.

 

For organic shapes one of my go to plugins is this among other things you can select different curves, select the path between them and it makes the best fit skin between them, have a look at the videos and posts in the thread to see what people have done. (you will also need to download this into your plugins folder for it to work)

 

A1- I'm thinking of frosted detail (not ultra, not really necessary like you said) since WSF generally requires sanding to make the surface smooth and paint-friendly. Frosted detail prints a lot smoother doesn't it?

I'd thought about it, but generally I've found that designers aren't overly keen on teaching you their techniques. A shame, since I don't really care about the money side of this trade (while it'd seem many do), I'm in it for the wicked designs. But eh, it can't hurt to ask I suppose. I'll bug him on s70.

That'd be really good of you mate, but I don't even think a sketch is necessary. Literally all I'm looking to achieve is the mouth on WJ's Swerve render on Firefight's head. Once I see how to render it in the program, I'll know how to reproduce and manipulate it.


Rodentus- Thanks for the links, I shall study them tonight!  

 

Eh, try it, you never know. Ultimately, it all depends on what sort of reputation you have. If you're known to be an honest guy, then designers aren't too stingy with advice.  

Just a warning with the links: Curviloft is unfortunately still a flawed program. I still get errors loading the script. Somehow the script works for the most part, but like all plugins, SAVE before using them. Seriously, you don't want to lose a lot of work because Curviloft happened to screw up.

Got a pic of the head you wanna replicate? I haven't had a chance to see WJ's Swerve head in detail yet.

 

Well I certainly hope I've garnered such a reputation! Duly noted wrt plugin stability, I've had my fair share of run ins with bug splats in the past.




Here's the best two images he's put up for showing the head. It looks a similar school of design to Rodentus' work, and imo just looks rockin'.

 

Step closer tonight, at least think the rest of the face is satisfactorily done!

The current mouth's very much a place holder shape, gonna go check what sorta grin Firefight usually has and put it in instead.
So I get putting the basic shape in now, but putting in those slight "lips" is still to be figured out.

 

Yeah, the mouth looks a lot like some of my older heads' mouths did. To be completely honest with you, draw in the lips but don't be too fussed. The final product is small, the lips are hardly noticeable. Drawing them in certainly helps sell the product, but the difference is minimal.

 

Aye that's true. This thing's not gonna be around 1cm along x,y,z, so such detail would not stand out that much. I'll get it though, I have a rough idea of what to do but it'll have to wait til later. It's 6am again, bed soon!

At least once I've got this done once I'll have a template for every other face I render. Still yet to PM WJ, might do that today and see if he'd be kind enough to chuck me an image of the Swerve render centred on the lips. That'll show me everything I need.

 

How about this? Think it's almost there  



Feels like it could do with a smidgen upscaling, what d'you reckon?

 

Finished! I'm now happy with the look at style of the heads and faces in their entirety. At least, until the first prints are done and I can see just how these look in reality.

Opinions?

 

Looking good - though I think Skydive should have red eyes.