Learning to sculpt faces
Learning to sculpt faces takes plenty of time and effort. In this article I point out some common pitfalls, and give suggestions on how to learn most effectively. The process is the same for both realistic and stylized faces — you can’t stylize a face if you don’t yet know what a face looks like.
This is not a step by step tutorial, but describes the general approach you should take. You can find some links to tutorials in the Resources section.
I’m assuming you know the basics of your sculpting software already. It’s enough to know the basic brushes (move / grab, clay, draw sharp / dam standard, smooth) , and subdivision / multiresolution workflows. Any sculpting software will do. For Blender I have written Remesh + multires workflow in Blender.
Everybody’s first idea is to sculpt their favorite celebrity or character from some random photo. Unfortunately that’s not going to work before you have some experience. At first your most important goal is to learn the 3D shapes and volumes of typical faces in great detail, and that’s impossible from average photos.
In brief
- Use clear references
- Observe your references: only sculpt what you see
- Use additional resources, like anatomy references
- Make big shapes first
- Get feedback
These points are discussed next in more detail.
1. Use clear references
Choose references that are as clear as possible, which in practice means either photos made for that specific purpose, or high quality 3D scans. This way you can see all the details, which is necessary for learning. Typical photos of faces use soft frontal lighting so as to make the subject look more attractive, but that is the opposite of what you want.
Use minimum of three references of the same face. The most important directions are front, three quarters, and side. Experienced sculptors usually use at least 10 references. Only much later can you work from less clear references.
See also CG Cookie’s take on using references in general.
Likeness or generic face?
You can start out by sculpting a human face that is based on multiple reference faces, or you can attempt to make your sculpt as much like a single reference as possible, also called likeness sculpting.
Even though your goal is to learn shapes of faces in general, the best way to do that may be to make several likeness sculpts. In the process you will learn what is typical in a face, and what is individual variation. It’s important to understand both. You also won’t be able to ask for detailed feedback beyond “does this look like a human” unless you are trying to match a specific reference.
You will suck at first, like everybody else. Likeness is a very high bar for a beginner, so don’t feel like not achieving it is a failure. It’s a learning process and each sculpt will teach you something new. Take your joy from small incremental improvements.
Do use as primary reference
- Clear reference photos that show the same face with the same expression from multiple angles, and use contrasty lighting. Bodies in Motion has some suitable free references.
- High-quality, sharp 3D scans. There are links to some free ones in the end of this article.
Do not use as primary reference
- Softly lit or manipulated photos. This covers 95% of photos you’ll find.
- Photos with makeup. Can be hard to notice and intentionally changes perception of shapes.
- Photos with low focal length, as that causes perspective distortion. For the same reason, view your sculpts in perspective instead of ortographic mode.
- Low-quality 3D scans. View scans with simple shading and no color information (aka albedo / diffuse color).
- Sculpts or drawings. They will contain artistic interpretation and errors.
2. Observe your references
Learning to observe references accurately is one of the most important skills in sculpting and making art in general. Try to ignore your preconceived notions about what things look like. Instead sculpt the shapes you see, nothing more, nothing less.
You will mostly not know the camera focal length used in your references, so they will have an unknown level of distortion (see above). Photos will manifest also other types of geometry errors, such as barrel distortion. These things will make it impossible to overlay photo references exactly with your sculpt. Regardless don’t be shy about doing that when possible; it’s not cheating.
Tracing doesn’t work in 3D as it does in 2D though. This means you can’t simply overlay your sculpt on top of one or more reference photos and trace the shapes blindly. You must understand the 3D shapes and volumes.
For each shape, compare your references to see if the shape looks the same in all of them. If it doesn’t, that may be caused by different lighting, different facial expression or position of head (skin will sag), different age and weight of the subject, makeup, and other things. Keep in mind photos may be postprocessed aka photoshopped. If in doubt, find more references to see what is typical in humans and what is unusual.
Get outline right
Outline of face, or of any other object you make, is essential to get right. It’s the most visible thing. In poor lighting that’s the only thing you may see, and it’s often enough to identify a person. Try to match outline exactly from every angle.
You will need to look at your references from as many angles as possible. It helps a lot if you have references also from rare angles like below and above.
Use 3D scans as reference
If your reference is a 3D scan, none of above problems exist. You can overlay the scan perfectly with your sculpt, and can view it from all angles. Orthographic view is easiest for that.
Shape of things that don’t show in the outline from any direction may be hard to understand accurately. 3D scans come to rescue, as you can cut them in any direction and observe the resulting profile. Or paint a straight line on the surface and view its shape from side.
Read references carefully
Watch how light reflects from surfaces. Observe slight shadows. Notice shape and sharpness of specular highlights.
Learn some anatomy
You’ll often hear you have to learn anatomy to be able to sculpt good faces or humans in general. That is true. It’s essential to know especially the bony landmarks, that is, where skin is right against bone. For other body parts, it’s equally important to know the locations where major muscles connect to bones. For sculpting faces, studying skull shape from eg. this skull scan is a good idea.
You should understand shapes and locations of bones, muscles, tendons, and fat pads, and how skin typically gets draped on top of all this. You don’t need to learn medical names or study anatomy like a doctor would — although that can help in communication with clients or other artists.
3. Use additional resources
While clear photos and 3D scans must be your primary references, it’s very helpful to use also some other resources.
- Anatomy for Sculptors books and website
- Face plane images, like this one by Maria Panfilova
- Anatomy references such as this ecorche
- Others’ sculpts
- YouTube videos such as my playlist Sculpting Humans
Remember that only photos and 3D scans show you the reality. Face plane images in particular are interpretation and approximation that only offer a structured for looking at typical shapes, nothing more.
4. Make big shapes first
Pay the most attention on big shapes and major proportions, like vertical position of eyes, length of nose, width of mouth. A person can be recognized from even a very blurry photo, which shows how little significance the smaller shapes have in creating likeness.
Leave face detailing for last
For likeness, it’s sufficient that skin looks like it is of correct age, and its color is in the ballpark. Otherwise, skin detailing like pores and small imperfections, are fairly interchangeable between people.
If you start working on small details too early, that will make it harder to make fixes to the more important bigger shapes. Adding details to a crappy sculpt will only give you a detailed crappy sculpt.
If you want to create renders that look real and alive, face detailing and realistic texturing (color) is crucial. Many of the resources linked in the end of this article also discuss this. It’s an involved topic that you don’t need to worry about before you are able to sculpt the bigger shapes well.
5. Get feedback
After you have stared at your sculpt for several hours (or weeks), you stop being able to see it clearly. You become blind to its deficiencies and errors. This happens to everybody from a beginner to a world class sculptor.
Getting feedback aka critique is essential. You can find feedback eg. on various artist forums, Discord servers, as part of mentorship programs, or in formal schooling. Even your friend with no knowledge of the subject may be able to tell you the nose is too small compared to your reference photo — and after that you will be able to see it also yourself. When asking for feedback, write at least a few words about what exactly you want feedback on, what things you already know are off, and what is your goal with the piece.
Show the face from three angles: front, three-quarters, and side. The first two views should use perspective (non-ortographic) camera, focal length 70–150 mm. Side view can be ortographic. Use basic matcap/material (ZBrush MatCap Gray, Blender basic_1), with no cavity shading or shadows. This makes the shapes easiest to see.
Receiving feedback can be tough. We all want compliments about our work, but here your goal is to have others tear it apart and point out every flaw in it. Whenever someone gives you feedback, thank them for it, even if you disagree with the feedback, and even if you feel they are being unreasonably harsh. This will greatly improve your chances of getting feedback again in the future. If you disagree with the feedback, explain in detail just what you don’t agree with and why. It’s not rude to disagree as long as you’re constructive about it.
“But I want to make an anime style character, not a realistic one”
No matter what style face or character you eventually want to create, starting by learning realistic anatomy is necessary. Stylizing means “stylizing a real face”, which you can only do if you know what a real face is like. Stylization is exaggeration or reduction of realistic features, not making them up.
Free resources
Free 3D scans
- Female face from 3D scan store
- Blender Free Skin Shader and Model 3D scan store
- Louise’s 3D head from eisko.com
- Digital Emily 2.1 — Blender scene with setup instructions
- Male head and other scans from Digital Reality Lab
- Asian male face by Thunk3D
- 3D skull model by Ohio University
Free rigged base meshes
You can use a base mesh as starting point for sculpting.
- MakeHuman provides fully free rigged base mesh
- Daz 3D has a free, high quality rigged base mesh that you can export to 3D packages
Anatomy for Sculptors
The Anatomy for Sculptors book series is widely considered the best resource of its kind.
- Anatomy for sculptors book free samples
- 3D ecorche
- Human proportions calculator
Other articles
- The 3 aspects of form making
- Making realistic portraits by Kubisi art
- Remesh + multires workflow in Blender
Other free resources
- Face planes by Maria Pinfilova
- Face reference photos by Bodies in Motion
- Body and clothing references from 3D scans
- Body measurements by US army
- Outgang character art resources
- 3D anatomy — Zygote Body
- Sculpting Humans YouTube playlist
- Face Cartography by Daniel Boschung
Paid resources
- Human reference photos from 3d.sk
- 3D Scan Store — 3D scans and textures
- Texturing.xyz — 3D scans and textures
- Chris Jones — Universal Human rig and textures
- Anatomic: Head Anatomy 3d Cheat Sheet
Paid courses
- HUMAN course by CG Cookie / Kent Trammell
Feedback?
I aim to keep this article up to date, especially in regard to the linked resources. You’re most welcome to give feedback or make suggestions; highlight some text in the article and click the Respond icon in the popup, see my profile for contact info, or find me as Marblecat at the Blender discord channel #help-sculpting.
