Let me first apologise for the quality of this tut, I threw it together really quickly and don't have time for a better job :o( The problem is I'm really only just getting to grips with this stuff myself, kinda figuring it out as I go along :o) So I'm afraid the geometry isn't quite consistent through the pictures but it should give you a guide (I hope!) Also I'd struggle with this in Lightwave so you're going to have to figure out how to achieve a similar result yourself :o( Maybe someone better informed could help? Anyway, this was my approach. Like I said in the other thread, I start out with an oval shape where I want the ear, in Wings it can be an n-gon, in Lightwave it has to be Quads and tris. Then smoothshift without dragging and then use the size tool to make the selected polys smaller, leaving you with a ring of polys around the edge of the area. I then tweaked the geometry so that the edge ring of polys turned into the middle, this will be the bit of your ear that runs from the front into the centre. This is where my knowledge of Lightwave falls down. I don't know the most efficient way to achieve this in LW. I suspect you'll have to do a lot of splitting, deleting and rebuilding of polys. Now smoothshift this ring and use the move tool to pull it out of the head. This should leave you with something like stage 1. OK now you've pulled out a sort of G shape, the next thing I did was to collapse the end in the centre to get it to blend with the rest of the ear. In Lightwave I'd try weld points. Then I pulled the poits about (LW - drag tool?) so the surface that we extruded from the head faces radially outwards from the ear. Select the polys in red (stage 2) and smooth shift again.

thank you, bazc. making that g shape makes perfect sense to me. who knows, my challenge guy may even get a couple ears.

In Wings I just extruded in the direction of the surface normals, I don't think you can do that in LW so maybe try scale or size tool after smoothshift? This should produce stage 3. You'll notice I altered the geometry a bit here just to simplify it, hope it isn't too confusing! Then I added another ring of polys, bandsaw will do the job here I think, and smooth shift and move again to produce the edge of the ear. Stage 4 After that I pulled points around (LW-drag) and fiddled with the geometry a bit just to make it neater and a bit more ear shaped :o) Stage5

After that it's a question of adding and tweaking geometry to make it look realistic. You can smoothshift inwards to make the ear canal, and outwards to produce all the little ridges and so on. Definately look at some photos! www.fineart.sk is a good resource for that. And practice, practice and practice some more. Don't get discouraged if it doesn't work too well the first few times!

I hope this helps a bit! - Baz :o)

Hey Baz! That was great! As everyone has different shaped ears, I don't think there is really a good or bad! Thanks! - TJ

Thanks Bikermouse!

hi Baz, great tut, bikermouse is correct nobody has the same shape ears. id studied loads of pics of ears before building one myself, damned if i could find a common look lol. cheers stu

Thanks Stu :o)

Attached Link: http://www.users.fast.net/~yayo/index.html

thanks go to CC for this great tut. cheers mate. stu