Part 1 Getting started

Recreating a human head is one of the hardest things to do. Everyone knows what they look like and when you've done it wrong, but most people can't tell you what the actual problem is. That's why I'm such a big fan of Reference Material. You need good, clean, preferably high resolution front and side view photographs. Good images will be doubly useful, both for modeling and for creating an appropriate color map later.

There are plenty of places to find these images online. 3d.sk is an excellent source of human references. If you don't feel like spending money, then grab a camera and a friend who's willing to let you take a couple mug shots.

Also, I know this looks like a lot of text, but each part has a video. The text is just there to explain what I'm doing in the videos with more detail.

Preparing Your Reference

Now that you've got your pictures, you need to get them ready for Maya, because Maya likes square, 72 dpi tiffs, and chances are good your image isn't going to be square. Load them in your image editing software. I use Photoshop.

- Change the canvas size (Image: Canvas Size). If it's too wide, crop it down. If it's too tall, increase the width.

- Make sure the files are at 72 dpi (Image: Image Size).

- Scale and line up the images vertically, or at least as close as you can get. Copy one image onto a layer above the other image and decrease its opacity. Try to match up the hair line, eyes, nose, and mouth. Guidelines can be helpful here.

- Chances are the subject of your photograph didn't sit perfectly upright or even at the same angle between front and side shots, and the image will need to be rotated and scaled. Even then it may not be enough and you'll just have to use your own judgment when it's time to start modeling with them.

- You may want to select half the front view, copy it, and flip horizontal in order to make the face perfectly symmetrical, but since I only model half of the head and mirror it in Maya I don't usually bother.

- I suggest you save this as a psd, just in case you need it again later.

- Save out the front and side views as separate tiff files with no compression.

Image Planes

Now we can finally get to Maya!
Just one note before we get started. The naming convention I use for the materials and planes is not important. What's important is to have a naming convention and to remain consistent.

A more detailed list of instructions lies below the video.

Details 

• The very first thing you want to do is go to File and create a New Project. I can't tell you how many students I've seen get messed up because of this. Give it a name and tell it to use defaults for everything else.
• Move the psd file into the Images folder and the tifs into the Sourceimages folder. 
• In your preferences, change units to inches (or whatever you prefer working in). 
• Create a polygon plane with width and height the same as your image size, divisions of one, and name it FrontIP. 
• Rotate it 90 degrees on the X axis. Freeze transformations (Modify: Freeze Transformations) and delete history (Edit: Delete by type: History). 
• Make a new Lambert material and place your front image in the color channel. Assign it to the plane. 
• Name Lambert IPFront. 
• Duplicate the plane (ctrl d) and rotate it 90 degrees in the Y axis. Freeze transformations and delete history. Name it SideIP. 
• Make another Lambert material and place your side image in the color channel. Assign it to the new plane. 
• Name the new Lambert IPSide. 
• Select both planes. 
• Go to your Layer Editor and make a new layer. 
• Select your image planes, right click the layer and assign them to it. 
• Set the display type to Reference (Click the empty box next to the "V" in the layer until it says "R"). Now you can see them but not select them while you're modeling. 
• Name the layer IP (double click).