How do you avoid "wrinkles" in SubPatch models?
 

I'm trying to model a human head, and so I've watched Philip's tutorial, but I'm such an impatient cretin, that I may have started on my own model too soon. Anyway, I've got the head more or less complete, but when I subpatch, I get some issues with wrikly surfaces where polys meet up.
how can i get rid of them?

This could be for several reasons. The most likely is that you've got points shared by more than four patches. This lends too much weight to the points and causes the patch edges to take on a harder look.

You can also get a similar effect with using 3-point patches (it all has something to do with the way Lightwave averages tangents to the poly mesh).

You also might just have to do some minor point manipulation to get rid of any bumpiness (a tip - switch off grid snapping in the modeller display options panel).

Also, if you've performed any merge operations or weld operations, you could have some 2 point polygons left in your model - simply delete them.

I've already tried to avoid three-points patches whereever possible (I usually get problems with those anyway), and grid manipulation hasn't really worked.

but I'll try to avoid having points that are shared among to many patches. That could very well be it.

Thnx, you may just have saved the day :)

I had this problem too and decided that the head wasnt best as a first model.

I did notice in attempts at other things that this happened and I think it was due to the third reason in the post above. I just try to concider the out comes of ever thing I do and after each important action turn subpatching on to see what happened. If it looks messed up you did something wrong

then again sometimes the nasty areas go away when you render..all down to trial and error i suppose

thnx for the tips
It was especially around the corner of the mouth that there were some problems, but I just realized that philip built that area very cleverly in his tutorial, so I'll try his way and see if that helps.
Either way it seems that alot of the wrinkles were indeeed caused by "overly shared points" or whatever you want to call it, so I've been cleaning that up.

All in all it's coming along slowly. Bendezium is right in saying that the head is a difficult project if you're new to LW. But I'll try and salvage what I can.

Thnx again

heck i only ever done the frying pan (new tek), philips basic head modeling, and polygon hair (new tek)...the rest is just playing with things, texturing with uv is REAL fun, hehe