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I am a novice, and have been watching this old Maya video to practice modeling faces.

Around the 30sec mark the modeler uses something like vertex relaxing after adding cuts to the brow, chin, and ear areas, completely improving the head to a more organic shape.

https://youtu.be/ac4qV2uIF3Q?t=29

enter image description here enter image description here

How would I achieve this in Blender2.9? I have discovered that the relax tool has been merged into the Mesh:Loop Tools Add-on, but cannot achieve similar results.

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    $\begingroup$ Please add more specific details to your question. The video is a timelapse and many operations are done in few seconds. $\endgroup$
    – lemon
    Dec 5, 2020 at 7:24
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    $\begingroup$ Welcome to BSE. You can improve your question and make it more relevant for future readers if you change the title to something like "Technique to get a more organic shape from a base model head?". That makes your question easier to find. (Nobody will search for the term "Unknown technique" if you have a problem with the shape. ;-) Add a screenshot of what you have tried & expect or at least from the video (so your Q does not rely on external resources that can go lost) $\endgroup$
    – Blunder
    Dec 5, 2020 at 13:24

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The head is box-modeled from a uv-sphere. The video is a timelapse but you can follow along if you stop it after each step, basically after each second ;-)

Most of the time you only have to move vertices along the axis a bit and add new geometry with the knife tool (K in Edit mode). For the neck (a cylinder) add edge loops with Ctrl+R.

image with two heads

How to Get It In Shape

The mentioned relaxation of the vertices can be achieved in Blender with the Smooth brush, which also works with low-poly mesh. After you added the new edges switch to the Sculpt Mode. Select the brush with a very small strength (~0.08) and touch the top of the head, the forehead, cheeks and chin area. The Smooth brush reduces the volume and the chin will get smaller if you touch it a few times.

The flat area of the ears can be pulled out slightly if you pull the pole and the vertices around it to the side. Use the Snake Hook brush or Elastic Deform brush. This will give the head a rounder appearance.

Then pull the outer vertex of the cheekbone downwards with the Snake Hook brush (alternatively, you can do this in Edit mode). Finally, move both vertices that form the cheekbone a bit forward, along the y-axis, to give them more volume.

That's it.

Later, when the mesh has a higher density, you can use the Smooth brush to smooth it, the Elastic Deform and the Inflate brushes to restore the volume and to adjust the shape.

The relax tool (in the Loop Tool add-on) is great to smooth edge loops. For example when you messed up the lips or the eyelids.

It is best to see the changes in the frontal view:

frontal view

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