[WIP] Zbrush Mermaid

st0kje

Hello.
This is my first post here on polycount

This mermaid is part of big fountain that i'm working on.
At the moment I'm still using dynamesh for the mermaid, but when I'm sure that the anatomy is right I'll change it to a normal mesh, so I can start deviding it to paint some more detail in the skin and tail.
Eventually the hands will be folded like in the last pic, but if I do that now dynamesh will screw it up there








Would love to get some critic on the anatomy!

st0kje

Just had some time to update the hands a little bit

Chase

Not sure if you were planning on it but you might want to model the shell to get a cleaner look. You could also retopologize it so the shell matches perfectly to her. I'm dealing with a similar situation where I need an accessory to mesh perfectly with the contours of another mesh. Hands look great.

st0kje

Chase wrote: »

Not sure if you were planning on it but you might want to model the shell to get a cleaner look. You could also retopologize it so the shell matches perfectly to her. I'm dealing with a similar situation where I need an accessory to mesh perfectly with the contours of another mesh. Hands look great.

Thanks for the reply Chase
I'll probably will retopologize it since I'm not quite happy yet with the shape of the shells. But first I will edit in zbrush and see if its anything good. Is it that harness that you're making for the horse, or a other situation? Thanks

Chase

No problem. Yep its that harness. Its proven to be a pain no matter which direction I try taking it. If you find any tricks feel free to post em :-)

Brian "Panda" Choi

Don't leave the tail so straight. There's an opportunity to creat some sensuous gestures there.

dand3d

A quick and dirty way to pull those shells away from the body and quickly sculpt them as different subtools is
Mask the areas you want to be made into a new subtool. Tool>SubTool>Extract.

Every time you click extract it will extrude a new subtool from the area you have masked. Then you could quickly Dyna mesh the heck out of it and do a good retopo on top of the hi poly.

st0kje

Thanks for the reply guys.

Chase: If I get to know any tricks I'll post them right away, I hope to get to know some when making the shells and the rest of the fountain.

JadeEyePanda & amile duan: Thats a good idea, though I first need to think of a way to fit that nicely with the fountain

dand3d: Thanks for the tip It'll come in handy, I just saw your blogspot and had a question about how you do the hands of your characters? do you use dynamesh for it, when I dynamesh the hands they mostly come out as if they are gloves, and I dont want to use a to high resolution because it makes it harder to edit it then.

dand3d

To be honest I don't use dyna mesh for humanoid characters. I quickly model out a good base to start modeling from and then I work from that point forward.
The problem with dyna meshing from the start (at least for me and what I have seen) is...
1. it destroys good poly flow if there was any to begin with.
2. it allows people to go hi poly really quickly fast.
If you want to use dyna mesh my suggestion is to drop the dynaMesh resolution down alot at first and just push and pull as if you were just moving verts in maya or max.
Then after you have a shape you like up the rez a bit.

TLDR; I never dynaMehsed hands I always started with a good base mesh with good poly flow.

st0kje

Hello guys.

Finally had some time to work on this again.
I started again from the beginning so that I could change the tail and the way she lies on the waves.

dand3d: Thanks for the reply and the explanation! I stayed away of dynamesh with redoing the mermaid and used a better basemesh instead, which did work better:)




Critiques are welcome!