Just realized I haven't posted this one yet - quick sketch I did during an university course, no real reference, a little more than 1.5h. Not the best one but atleast it was fun
Decided to start building a female basemesh I can reuse later on. Right now mostly trying to get proportions right, a lot of the anatomy/muscles is not properly blocked in yet. As I want to reuse this for future projects I would be really thankfull for feedback
Continued working on my basemesh, started blocking in the head. Next are ears and eyes, then some adjustements on the body (something is wrong with her clavicles/chest area, have to figure out what) amd after that I'll be doing a retopo and start a more final anatomy pass.
Continued the basemesh, still a lot of things to fix/add. Ignore the hands for now. Also changed a lot of stuff on the side view - left is the new one, right the old one.
Just overviewed this and I have to say this is a very nice thread! I think it can be a huge help for beginners (such as myself) to follow along the steps you have taken to improve your quality!
Holly Mellor and braintrain, Thanks, that's really motivating to hear
Finally some more work on this. Aside from some proportion changes I finally started to face. Still a lot to fix (armpits because dynamesh welds them together ) and the eyelids are really WIP as well. As always, any kind of critique is highly appreciated
Started sculpting the face of the main character for our semester project (will most likely open a seperate thread for this once we have a bit more to show). Right now only rough version, trying to get the proportions right (neck seems to be too small compared to the head right now - feedback is really appreciated!) Going for a standard white female face with this..
Some more progress on the face - critique is always welcome, planning to go into some more detailing soon.
looking good! the ears are drooping way too low and dont come out far enough from the head. theres a lot of real estate back there that a lot of people forget about. your head shape is pretty good, i think the eyes are going to be too big once you put the eyeballs in there and define the iris and cornea.
Worked some more on the face - put her into Marmoset and started working on the skin. Currently no color variation in the albedo and no map for subsurface scattering, will follow later. Hair is just fibermesh exported to Marmoset right now.
Still working on this character - textured the face for the 4th time now, slowly I am getting more happy with the skin texture even though it looks a bit too "dirty" right now.. teeth are obviously missing the right now, eyebrows and hair will be proper hair later EDIT: just noticed she is missing makeup in one eye x.X will fix it tomorrow
@tierzilla Thanks, will do my best You are right about the secondary forms, I am always a bit hesitant to sculpt too much into female faces because they always end up looking really old for me.. I am finding it hard to find a right balance there..
As the women is almost finished and is currently shaded/rendered by a teammate I already started doing some sketching for our second character, the african rebel. While I am fairly happy with the sculpt so far I feel like it does not fit the character as he looks to ..athletic.. at the moment, will most likely go in a more thin/less muscular direction. Also have not worked on the ears yet
Pretty much finished the movie and will release it in a few days - here is a small still on how the rebel character I did looks with proper shading and lighting (done by a teammate):
Did a lot of environment work over the last motnhs and no real sculpting, but now I have started another character project Super basic blockout so far to figure out in which direction I want to go in terms of design. I want it to feel like it could have existed in medieval times but still take some liberty when it comes to the design, sorta like witcher or game of throne-ish - lets see where this ends up
I have several guidelines I repeat to myself every so often when working on a new head.
1. Check General proportions, and am I deviating from them on purpose?
2. Decide on the age of the subject and check for consistency among the features concurrent with the age
3. Check if the anatomy is plausible, starting with the largest features, and focusing on the smaller transitions and details only when you are satisfied with the major ones
Here is a quick paint over with some ideas, keep in mind they're just ideas and the model might look better doing it another way. I don't really have time to go over every change, but the most important ones. 1. I think the could chin could be toned down and brought up a bit, seems to strong. 2. ball of the nose should be wider, the "wings" could be more narrow. 3.ears seem ok length wise, but I think should be wider 4. I think the top of the head is a bit to high up, maybe bring it down a bit. 5. I think you should soften up the cheeks a bit, so they're rounder in perspective.
Hey @oreoorbitz Thanks for taking the time for such a detailed critique, much appreciated! Lots of useful stuff in there, will go over everything you said.
Did a few more tweaks and a little rendering test in marmoset to see how the whole facial structure looks under proper lighting conditions.
Blocked out more of the characters outfit. Almost every part of the clothing is a blockout and will be remade later, but the design is slowly going into a direction I like. Feedback as always welcome
Super slow progress on enverything, but I started putting the face into Unreal instead of Marmoset. Still having trouble to make the skin look right, somehow the subsurface scattering in Marmoset seems to look much better than in Unreal.. Eyes are the slightly modified epic games eyes, will further adjust them later.
Wow! Great improvement, tt's so cool to see from where you started and where you are right now. That iris... really dig it. Someday I might go back to see my first sculpts and publish them hahaha
@Cordero Thanks a lot for your comment, will do my best Your work is pretty awesome btw^^ @JoseGR Thanks! Yeah, it is actually pretty cool to compare old work against new stuff, it is always super motivating (atleast for me) to see that there is actual progress
Just saw this thread and having scrolled through it from start to finish for the first time, i have to say its an inspiring journey your on. A very visible improvement. Keep it up dude and keep posting your progress!
Finished the blockout but will go back and change the design of the boots to something a bit more bulky as it feels a bit unbalanced right now. Also started creating a clean version of the armor and started to add details.
Crazy improvement. That's a very well spent 3 years of work
You still can learn a lot about face anatomy and if you haven't already, I suggest getting some 3D scan and using them as references only. You can just pop it in your zbrush file and move it on the side while sculpting, after a while your brain will make a visual library out of it and you won't need these anymore.
It teach you the face planes, the subtlety of facial anatomy and it's much easier to see the volumes on a gray shaded mesh than a picture with texture.
@Felixenfeu Thanks for your comment! You are totally right, reference is essential for learning and using 3d scans for learning purposes sounds like a great idee, have been using them to study body muscles but not for face anatomy yet, have to try that
Received incredibly helpful feedback for my character and went back to rework the face a little - quite a few subtle changes I would have never noticed on my own. Still a lot to do but kinda like where it is going. Also did some further work on the outfit. Struggling a bit with the padded armor part because I suck at sculpting folds.
Been working on the texturing of the skin, kinda happy with the direction it is currently going. Still need to sculpt skin and lip pores/details currently it is only a tileable skin texture + a normal created from the diffuse with ndo. Eyes are from the photorealistic rendering example.
Finished baking the armor. Lowpoly is currently at ~100k Tris, going for a bit more highpoly as it's for an animated short in Unreal. Next up is texturing and hair.
Replies
Finished the last study.
Not the best one but atleast it was fun
Right now mostly trying to get proportions right, a lot of the anatomy/muscles is not properly blocked in yet.
As I want to reuse this for future projects I would be really thankfull for feedback
Next are ears and eyes, then some adjustements on the body (something is wrong with her clavicles/chest area, have to figure out what) amd after that I'll be doing a retopo and start a more final anatomy pass.
Ignore the hands for now.
Also changed a lot of stuff on the side view - left is the new one, right the old one.
Finally some more work on this.
Aside from some proportion changes I finally started to face.
Still a lot to fix (armpits because dynamesh welds them together
As always, any kind of critique is highly appreciated
Right now only rough version, trying to get the proportions right (neck seems to be too small compared to the head right now - feedback is really appreciated!)
Going for a standard white female face with this..
Thanks a lot for your feedback, I did some more changes
Also started creating the eyes/eyebrows/eyelashes - skin details and hair is next.
As always, feedback is really appreciated
Currently just fibermesh, final hair will be done in Maya by using this as guide curves and probably look better
Skintexture is really WIP right now and will change a lot.
Currently no color variation in the albedo and no map for subsurface scattering, will follow later.
Hair is just fibermesh exported to Marmoset right now.
Cloth is only a placeholder and will be replaced by a proper dress later.
(You can find more about the project here: http://polycount.com/discussion/179590/blood-diamonds-animated-short#latest)
The marvelous designer base for the dress was done by a team mate.
Thanks, that's really motivating to hear
EDIT: just noticed she is missing makeup in one eye x.X will fix it tomorrow
keep it up man!
Thanks, will do my best
You are right about the secondary forms, I am always a bit hesitant to sculpt too much into female faces because they always end up looking really old for me.. I am finding it hard to find a right balance there..
Thanks, I really appreciate it
As the women is almost finished and is currently shaded/rendered by a teammate I already started doing some sketching for our second character, the african rebel. While I am fairly happy with the sculpt so far I feel like it does not fit the character as he looks to ..athletic.. at the moment, will most likely go in a more thin/less muscular direction. Also have not worked on the ears yet
Fingernails will follow later.
http://polycount.com/discussion/179590/blood-diamonds-animated-short#latest
Pretty much finished the movie and will release it in a few days - here is a small still on how the rebel character I did looks with proper shading and lighting (done by a teammate):
Super basic blockout so far to figure out in which direction I want to go in terms of design.
I want it to feel like it could have existed in medieval times but still take some liberty when it comes to the design, sorta like witcher or game of throne-ish - lets see where this ends up
I like where it is going but -something- still feels wrong and I just can't figure out what
1. Check General proportions, and am I deviating from them on purpose?
2. Decide on the age of the subject and check for consistency among the features concurrent with the age
3. Check if the anatomy is plausible, starting with the largest features, and focusing on the smaller transitions and details only when you are satisfied with the major ones
Here is a quick paint over with some ideas, keep in mind they're just ideas and the model might look better doing it another way.
I don't really have time to go over every change, but the most important ones.
1. I think the could chin could be toned down and brought up a bit, seems to strong.
2. ball of the nose should be wider, the "wings" could be more narrow.
3.ears seem ok length wise, but I think should be wider
4. I think the top of the head is a bit to high up, maybe bring it down a bit.
5. I think you should soften up the cheeks a bit, so they're rounder in perspective.
Thanks for taking the time for such a detailed critique, much appreciated!
Lots of useful stuff in there, will go over everything you said.
Did a few more tweaks and a little rendering test in marmoset to see how the whole facial structure looks under proper lighting conditions.
Almost every part of the clothing is a blockout and will be remade later, but the design is slowly going into a direction I like.
Feedback as always welcome
Still having trouble to make the skin look right, somehow the subsurface scattering in Marmoset seems to look much better than in Unreal..
Eyes are the slightly modified epic games eyes, will further adjust them later.
Someday I might go back to see my first sculpts and publish them hahaha
Your work is pretty awesome btw^^
@JoseGR Thanks! Yeah, it is actually pretty cool to compare old work against new stuff, it is always super motivating (atleast for me) to see that there is actual progress
@Chidambhar_Swaroop Thanks a lot!
Finished the blockout but will go back and change the design of the boots to something a bit more bulky as it feels a bit unbalanced right now. Also started creating a clean version of the armor and started to add details.
You still can learn a lot about face anatomy and if you haven't already, I suggest getting some 3D scan and using them as references only. You can just pop it in your zbrush file and move it on the side while sculpting, after a while your brain will make a visual library out of it and you won't need these anymore.
It teach you the face planes, the subtlety of facial anatomy and it's much easier to see the volumes on a gray shaded mesh than a picture with texture.
Also did some further work on the outfit. Struggling a bit with the padded armor part because I suck at sculpting folds.
Still need to sculpt skin and lip pores/details currently it is only a tileable skin texture + a normal created from the diffuse with ndo.
Eyes are from the photorealistic rendering example.
Lowpoly is currently at ~100k Tris, going for a bit more highpoly as it's for an animated short in Unreal.
Next up is texturing and hair.