Creating the quads

With the reference plates set up I can use the topology lines as a guide to start creating my face. So select shapes, splines and line, make sure the initial and drag type are set at corner, and just create a quad using the guide lines. Next right click snaps toggle and only turn on vertex, by doing this make it easier for me to line up all the quads together.
















Done

Attaching quads

When I have created all the quads, I convert one of the quads into an editable poly.

At the modifier panel, scroll down to attach, click attach list and select all the lines, press attach. This automatically converts all the quads to editable poly.

Although they are attached together, the vertices are not joined together, to join all the vertices together, in the modifier panel select vertex and highlight all the vertices, click weld, setting. At the weld menu set the value to 0.01 and press ok.

Moving the vertices

Press alt x to turn the object see through, go to modifier panel, select vertex and at the front view select all the vertices that is at the far right edge, use the move tool to start dragging them out to meet with the edge of my face at the side view. By using the side view as a guide, I began to drag out the vertices one by one to form the shape of the face, such as the mouth and the eye are the part that need to be more focused on because I have to make sure the depth of the eye sockets are right, which I need to make sure some vertices come out more than others, so it looks like overlap from the side view.















Symmetry





After all the vertices have been dragged out, go to the modifier panel and from the drop down list, choose symmetry, to apply the mirror effect on the object. On the symmetry parameters click x and flip and select the plus sign that is next to symmetry and click mirror. This allows me to move the left face around, so the two sides can fit together without overlapping each other.

After symmetry has been applied, I can see how my whole face will look when it is smooth. Firstly turn on Use NURMS Subdivision and see if the face is smooth enough, if not just turn on the vertex mode and change it manually.

Turn off Use NURMS Subdivision and from the modifier list choose TurboSmooth.

Reference Plates

To begin modelling, I need the front and side views of my face, these photos are taken by Richard Barnes, then I use Photoshop to edit the photos.

Choose Filter, Distort and Lens Correction, to correct the photos, so I can remove distortion or change the vertical and horizontal perspective, so the face looks more like it is facing the center. After I have done this to both photos, I drag the side photo into the front, so they are in one file, then I line them up by using free transform and ruler to guide me.

Topology lines

To highlight the key areas of the face, I will need to use the brush tool and set to 3px, the wrinkles are the point to start, I use the brush tool to draw each wrinkle, so I can easily tell the details of my face, and then I change the colour of the brush and set the size to 2px. Using the lines I have drawn already as a guild line, I begin to draw quads on the face. At this stage I need to make sure every poly have 4 lines and there should be no triangles, then save the file as face.

Reference setup

Open 3ds max and create a plane with 1 length and width segs. Open material editor, click on diffuse none, bitmap to apply the face.psd file. Go to the modifier panel and from the drop down list apply UVW map bitmap, click fit. Then use the gizmo to move the front face to the center.

In the material editor, increase the value of colour to 100, so the photo looks bright even from the side.

To create the side view reference plates, I select the rotate tool, hold down shift and rotate the image to 90 degree then click u tile flip. Select gizmo again to move the size view image to the center.