[WIP] Another Mermaid
polycounter lvl 5
I'm a hobbyist, but I'd love to be a professional someday. I have a long way to go. I've been dabbling in lots of aspects of 3D art but this is my first attempt to make a complete "character". I'd really love your help and input along the way!
I also want to use this mesh as a base of sorts for creating a entire race of characters by modifying body-shape, switching out maps, and alternate heads.
For starters, I created a concept. My 2D art skills are still pretty high-school level, but I'm working to improve them slowly. It at least gave me something to aim for loosely.
In Zbrush I created a Zsphere armature and started blocking out the character, then I started sculpting out the basic forms.
The under-arm and hand webbing were done on separate subtools, but I'll end up combining them once I get the basic forms finalized to a point where I feel comfortable.
I'll use this thread to document my progress. Comments and critique are invited!
I also want to use this mesh as a base of sorts for creating a entire race of characters by modifying body-shape, switching out maps, and alternate heads.
For starters, I created a concept. My 2D art skills are still pretty high-school level, but I'm working to improve them slowly. It at least gave me something to aim for loosely.
In Zbrush I created a Zsphere armature and started blocking out the character, then I started sculpting out the basic forms.
The under-arm and hand webbing were done on separate subtools, but I'll end up combining them once I get the basic forms finalized to a point where I feel comfortable.
I'll use this thread to document my progress. Comments and critique are invited!
Replies
After getting finalizing the webbing I wanted to combine everything into one mesh, so I dynameshed the model, projected details, and then resmeshed with Z-Remesher.The downside to this workflow is that my lowest resolution mesh is around 40k, so making big changes to the geometry would be pretty difficult if I need to. I wasn't sure how to combine the meshes and still retain my low-resolution details, and I'm going to end up doing retopo later on anyway. Was it a dumb idea to combine everything?
Changed some of the facial proportions (everything was too small) and did a detail pass on the face. I actually really struggle with adding finer details to the model one I get past the basic forms. I have a lot of fear of ruining the underlying forms when adding detail, or overworking certain areas such that other areas look unfinished.
This is the point where I usually get too scared to continue a project. I'm scared because I don't sculpt or make art enough! I'm scared of messing up the stuff that I like about this. I tried adding some more details on the rest of the body like the neck-flourishes, but it seemed like it overcomplicated the design and strayed too far from the concept. I'm thinking about nixing the arm-fins. They seem superfluous.
Want to add some roughness to the character next. If I subdivide again, I don't think my machine will handle it. 4 million is as far as it goes. I'm building a new PC soon though!
I also started blocking out some accessories for the character.
I know that my work is a little unremarkable, but I'd be grateful for critique from anyone here about what's working, what's not, or how I could push it further.
As for the clothing design I think the lighter ropey typed designs are the most interesting. Some of the more clothed ones work a little against the sleek, fast feel of the character. I think the third one across in the top row might be my favourite at this point. The second one has some nice things going on too.
I don't want it too look exactly like hair, but more like a veil or hood. I'm happy with how it attaches to her head, but I think I need to finesse it a bit more from the other views. (It's my first time doing hair, so it actually took me quite a while to get this far!)
I'm running into some technical issues with my mesh where I'd like to add fine details, but my edge-flow is a little strange and making it hard to refine. I'm at 4 million now, which feels like a lot, but to refine the face I feel like I need to go heavier. I could run Zremesher, but then I lose my lower subdivisions. I tried a partial sub-division, but Zbrush crashed, and subdividing the whole mesh once more gave me a result that was beyond what my 2012 macbook could handle.
The good news I'm putting together a workstation PC in the next few days, so hopefully I'll be able to move it over and give it some more room to breathe.
+1 to Zremesher & the projection tool. If that's still too dense, the most poly-efficient way to go would be to do a manual retopo, and project the details onto the low.
Spent a good chunk of the morning refining her face, especially the area around the eyes. We're getting to that part where it seems like you put a ton of time in for very little large-scale improvement. This is always the part where I start to wonder how far I should go.
Starting to think about working on the surface textures. I started sculpting some seamless scale textures, but they feel a little too uniform and stale. Using photos might be a better option.
What I'd really like to do is have scales that change size in various places along her body, like these (from Pirates, I think):
Trying to think about how I might accomplish this using Zbrush or other tools. I could manually apply the scales in patches, but after a test that method isn't looking too good.
@theStoff thanks, that's a really good point. I actually ended up softening her face a bit, it was getting a little too hard-surface.
I made a couple of minor adjustments, fleshed out the arms (I'm still rubbish with anatomy), and removed one of her dorsal fins that I felt was adding too much noise to her silhouette. Doing so left me with kind of a knot in my topology, so I think retopology is unavoidable at this point if I want to continue.
I think I'm going to do the whole thing manually, maybe use Zremesher to give me a head-start. Retopo is weak area for me because I don't fully have a handle on good edge-flow yet, especially with her extra fins and offshoots. Thin areas like fins and fingers are really a struggle because I get lost, and 3d programs are really finicky (3d coat keeps snapping verts through the other-side of the fin). It's a test of patience.
I started painting myself a guide for the edge-loops, but the flow gets complicated and I have uneven spacing between my patches. Anything I could do to improve this?
Last night I made a surface-reference guide for myself to use when detailing.
First try:
The first time I let z-remesher do some of the work for me, but it feels like there are too many loops on the arms going across x.
Second try:
then I started completely over, doing everything by hand, but the mesh has poor flow and is again very uneven in places.
I'm very worried, especially in some of the thin parts like the ends of fins that my details won't project well anyway, i'm not even sure if I'm approaching this correctly.
I try to look up teaching on topology and and tutorials, but they really only cover the mechanics of retopo, and not the methodology/big ideas. The wiki has some useful stuff but it's not enough. Is this just really easy, and I'm over-thinking it?
I'm working in 3D coat which has some nice tools, but it's hard to do parts where I need traditional modeling, like the inside of her mouth, or her webbed-hands and fins. I started to retopologize in Maya but the retopo mesh clipped into the live surface mesh and it was impossible to see what I was doing.
I don't know how people are able to retopologize things so quickly and beautifully. It's truly an art form. Right now I just feel really inexperienced and frustrated, and like I've wasted a lot of time and work.
Sorry for the rant! I'll get back to this.
Unless I'm wrong.
Started to UV but kept noticing little issues with the mesh that I was going back to fix, so giving my eyes a rest and then I'll give it a good look over. Realized eyes and hair are gonna be on these maps too, so I'm not quite done yet.
Threw a quick alpha mask on part of my mesh to test out a seamless scale alpha I made at a few sizes.
Really wish the "magnify by mask" slider in Noisemaker made the textures smoothly transition in scale (like a magnifying glass, rather than just drawing the texture at two different sizes). I want to put some size variation on different parts of the model, but it looks like I'd have to manually sculpt that in, which I don't know if I could pull off and also keep my sanity. Hmm.
I don't want to give her too much muscle definition, I want her to have some fat. But for now she looks okay from a far, but blurry and mushy when viewed up close. I struggle with getting sharp areas, like the eyelids correct.
It's probably just my lack of skill that's stopping me at this point, but I need to get over this fear. I'd really like to make this a successful piece.
Alternatively, am I just overthinking it? Gonna keep chipping away.
What you've got is nice and clean so far, though I think an indication of scales in some places would add a lot.
Somewhere along the line my UV maps for my hair got screwed up. Tried exporting them out, fixing them, and dropping them back in, but after I copy and paste the new UVs they're just a scrambled mess. They actually flatten to be in the correct place on the UV, but every color is like a separate island.
I'm inexperienced with this, and wonder if it has to do with welding (bringing the mesh into 3D coat for UVing, there were a ton of separate paint objects)
Done two fine detail passes now. Not really happy with the hair tendrils? Not really sure what to do with them either.
Anxious to get to texturing. Might do the body before working on the accessories more.
I got the base model into Substance Painter. This is the first project I've done with it so I was anxious to give it a test-run before I did anything heavy with it. I'm used to just poly-painting everything and going back-and-forth between Photoshop, so this is kind of blowing my mind. Here's a first-pass on the body:
I couldn't how to figure out how to paint easily across multiple UVs in substance, since each one becomes it's own texture set, so I ended up using one UV tile for the body instead of two, which would have given a little more breathing room for some of the small details I think. Ah well.
I tried to have as few breaks in my UV as possible, but I have some pretty noticeable seams on my model. Trying to mask with a curvature map makes them especially evident.
I've been scouring Polycount and the rest of the internet trying to understand normal seams and how to get rid of them, but most of what I'm finding is for hard-surface models. I feel like it has to be some noobish mistake, like there's an option I'm forgetting to check. I really need to get it figured out before I get further into texturing.
I'm getting ready to start blocking out her gear. Please excuse my poor 2D skills again. Want her to have the feel of scout/ranger with practical, functional gear. I don't think it's "oceany" enough though, but I also don't want to have lot of stereotypical mermaid stuffs like seashells and pearls. The design is missing something, or maybe it just doesn't fit completely. It feels too busy for something that a sleek underwater creature would wear. Too much drag.
Not being too happy with my 2D concept, did some 3D sketching of accessories. I toned back the clothing design because I wasn't sure how to model all the things, and thinking about rigging and posing all the hanging straps gave me nightmares. This is my first major 3D project, so I think I need to give myself breaks in some areas or I'll never finish this thing. Her design does need some more asymmetry though (I'm not a strong designer).
I started working on this thing back in July. I've been learning modeling and texturing while doing this, UVs, baking (which I still haven't gotten right). It's frustrating not being fast, knowing the result you want to achieve, but not being able to get there with your current skills and tool knowledge. When my brain is too tired to work, I lay in bed watching tutorials.
Anxious to finish this, so I can say "I finished something!" Great artists ship. But also don't want to rush it.