To
begin creating the inside of the mouth,
first draw a radial loop just outside
the edge that defines the center of
the mouth. Make sure you split the edges
at the corner of the mouth instead of
taking the edge to a single central
point. If you split the edges you will
be left with quads and this is what
we want.
Next,
select all of the inside faces you just
created.
Then,
press the delete key on your keyboard
to remove them. This will create an
opening in the mouth if you have split
the corner correctly, you will have
nothing but quads left over. If you
have done it wrong, you will have triangles
at the corner. If you do... fix them
up by drawing in new edges so all you
have is quads before proceeding to the
next step
Next,
go to your side viewport and view your
model in wireframe. This will allow
us to see where we are going to place
the inside of the mouth.
Using
your ep curve tool
(go to create>ep curve tool) trace
out 3 curves that define the inside of
your mouth. One from the upper lip back
to the throat, another from the lower
lip back to the throat and a third beginning
at the corner of the mouth, going half-way
through the other two curves, all the
way back to the throat.
Next,
go into your perspective viewport and
move the center curve in the X direction
to the corner of the mouth.
Now
that we have our curves in place, we
need to create a surface out of them.
I could simply loft them but this would
give me unpredictable results and put
isoparms wherever Maya feels like. I
want to have more control and be able
to direct the iso's where I want them
to go. So next we are going to force
the Iso's to go the way we want them
to.
The next illustration shows the direction
I want the Iso's to go.
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So...
with that direction in mind... I right
click over my curves and select curve
point from the marking menu. I select
the points where the red lines in the
above illustration intersect the curves.
This will leave a little yellow dot
that indicates where we are going to
cut our curve later. If you hold down
shift while selecting the other curves
you can perform this action on multiple
curves at once.
Notice
how the yellow dots line up directly with
the red lines in the above illustration.
Once
you have selected all your curve points,
you should cut your curves. You can
do this by simply going to edit curves>detach
curves . Now wherever you had a yellow
dot, the curve should be cut, leaving
you with a bunch of little curves.
These
curves are still not ready to loft yet.
We must do one more thing first... rebuild
our curves so that we have an even amount
of isoparms on each surface when we
loft them.
To
do this... select all your curves and
go to edit curve>rebuild curve
and open your options dialog box. Set
the number of spans to 3 and hit the
"rebuild" button in the lower left of
the box to apply.
Now
we are ready to loft our surfaces. You
might want to go to your viewport settings
and turn off your polygon display to
make this step easier (show>polygons).
Start
by selecting the top curve in front
(upper lip), then holding down shift,
select the next curve in the middle,
then last but not least, select the
bottom curve (lower lip). Then to loft
them, go to surfaces>loft . Repeat this pocess for the rest
of the curves.
(go to create>ep curve tool) trace
out 3 curves that define the inside of
your mouth. One from the upper lip back
to the throat, another from the lower
lip back to the throat and a third beginning
at the corner of the mouth, going half-way
through the other two curves, all the
way back to the throat.
. Now wherever you had a yellow
dot, the curve should be cut, leaving
you with a bunch of little curves.
and open your options dialog box. Set
the number of spans to 3 and hit the
"rebuild" button in the lower left of
the box to apply.
. Repeat this pocess for the rest
of the curves.