Mudbox Skull Model

 Following on from last week's Mudbox pepper modelling session, I attempted a more ambitious structure for this week:

Starting with a basic sphere preset, I used the grab tool to form the initial skull silhouette. Since the human skull is made of two pieces of bone (main skull and lower jaw) I focused on the main top half first. I used reference images as orthographs to help me. I found the grab tool would not manipulate geometry towards the center, so my model wouldn't look rounded and more boxy instead.

I spent a lot of time manually adjusting my structure with the smooth and sculpt tools. The nose and eye socket formations were easier to organize by eye and without the orthographs. 

The skulls underside was of secondary importance because it's less visible, so I focused on this area once happy with the main facial structure. 

I used the flatten and pinch tools to create a uniformed upper jaw that correctly transitioned into the base of the round skull. This isn't a very clear area on either my front or side orthographs. 

The freeze tool let me work on specific features without accidentally manipulating others. This was especially handy for the skulls front profile, where the cheekbones extrude separately from the back end of the skull. 

I also used the freeze tool to experiment with tooth indentations around the upper jaw, but I did this with too little topology and retreated. 

Instead, I worked on starting the lower half of the jaw by generating a new sphere and working through the above stages again. 

The switching between the smooth and grab tool gave me steady progress. 

By the end of the Mudbox session, I had a strong upper skull and the beginnings of a lower jaw.