Spontaneous Merman

Boozebeard

So I was messing around in Zbrush last night. Just doing a doodle really and ended up with this head:



Decided it would make a pretty cool Merman kind of creature so ended up spending the day doing this:



Really quite like him so think I'll be finishing this one off.

Crits and comments welcome.

Pabs

good luck on this
personally, i'd remove the gut and replace it with something else; possibly fish armour (scales)

Steve Schulze

Nah,the belly adds quite a bit of personality, though it could use a little reshaping to make it a smidgen more anatomically correct.

Boozebeard

Yeah, I like the belly but it needs some work still

Boozebeard

Update:

Boozebeard

Another small update.



C&C welcome as always.

Boozebeard

Did a few silhouettes for possible weapons/staves.

KristaW

Hey Boozebeard!

I love how the tentacles are coming out. They cleaned up nicely.

To me it seems like there is a little bit of a disconnect between the bottom of the character and the top. I did a really quick bad paintover of ways to unify because I was afraid I wouldn't make sense with just words, haha. But I think you could do some cool things by taking the nice curve and lip you have going with the tentacles and put that same curve and lip somewhere near the top. Also the suckers make a pretty strong visual texture so it might be nice to see that somewhere else like the hands? Take what I say with a grain of salt though because I'm no expert.

Boozebeard

^ Interesting idea about the suckers. Might play around with it.

I decided to go with number 3, the swordfish spear, but also the lantern part of number 6 which he will carry in his left hand. However while I was starting on the spear I realised the skull could also work as a pretty cool fist weapon. Not sure which one to go with now!



Lantern concept

Boozebeard

Worked on the spear



Might have gone OTT with the teeth lol

Boozebeard

Angler fish for the lantern ^_^

Boozebeard

Took this as inspiration for the head:



Not sure if I like it though...

Boozebeard

Spent a while working on this lantern but don't really like it T_T

DougClayton4231

It looks great Are you going to polypaint it?

Boozebeard

DougClayton4231 wrote: »

It looks great Are you going to polypaint it?

Thankyou!

Yes I will. I'm gonna clean up some of the tentacles, do a final detail pass and then move onto the poly painting.

KristaW

I love that cage!

Out of curiosity, is this character going to stay as a zbrush sculpture or is it going to go through the pipeline and become a character? If it is going to become a character, do you have a plan for how you would retop that cage? Is it going to have alpha's or supporting geometry for the spines?

Oh haha. I just read your comment that you don't like the lantern. Awww, I like it. It might need more construction detail but I think it has really interesting elements to it.

Boozebeard

Glad you guys like it. I'm gonna make a real time model for it but was planning on it being fairly high spec so I'll probably have geometry for the spines.

Pancakes

Hi, I like it! My issue with the gut, though, is that unless you have a lot of excess fat, which this character doesn't, your gut won't sag like that because of the fact that it encases vital organs and it has to have some firmness in order to protect those organs. If a thin creature like this one has a floppy gut like that, one punch to the stomach would pretty much end their life =p

That's why when thin people have extended guts those guts are generally quite firm and shapely either roundish like an egg or barrel or angled due to the underlined muscle tissue.

If I'm wrong anyone correct me plz

I like it!

You have superior sculpting to mine but I just wonder about the function of that gut. I think if a character with his build had fat around his waste that it would be situated as love handles on the sides more than as a gut in the middle.

Boozebeard

Yeaaaah, I know the belly doesn't make much sense anatomically. I just kind of like it. I'll probably try making it firmer and rounder anyway though, see how it looks.

Boozebeard

I've started trying some surface detailing on the face but I'm not sure where I'm going with it really. Any ideas or tips? Not sure what I'm gonna do with the tentacles either.



I feel like I could use another sub division level but it crashes :C

Edit: I think I need to rework the face a bit. Seem to have lost the more sinister look of the early sculpts which I liked. Maybe it's because I changed the nose, I dunno :S

DougClayton4231

If you reduce your undo count and seperate some of the polygroups into separate subtools, it sometimes helps my aging machine handle 4+ million polygon sculpts.

Boozebeard

DougClayton4231 wrote: »

If you reduce your undo count and seperate some of the polygroups into separate subtools, it sometimes helps my aging machine handle 4+ million polygon sculpts.

I'm already at 10 mil polygons :poly136:

There's a lot of surface area with all those tentacles and suckers though!

DougClayton4231

Lol, have you tried the HD subdivisions? Those are supposed to be able to handle all that detail, though I haven't really had a chance to test it.

Boozebeard

Long time no post. Never really tried this level of detailing on a piece before so I'm taking my time experimenting. Refined the face a bit and started trying to do the micro skin details for the skin.

Tips and suggestions appreciated.

Boozebeard

So I've come back to this piece and plan to finish it up this time; currently working on the suckers. Keeping in mind I want to use this a a portfolio piece should I straighten out the tentacles? I assume it's not good practice to have them bent like that for baking and rigging purposes? If so what method would be best for re posing them? A zshpere rig?

Thanks.

Boozebeard

No one got any thoughts on if I should spend the time straightening them?

KrisLW

Instinctively, I would say yes - but I suppose the depends on how you are going to rig or deform it. I am not particularly familiar with zBrush's zSpheres.

I think of it this way - if their currently deformed position becomes the "neutral" bind pose, if you try to actually put them into a straighter, more literally-neutral pose, then that pose technically becomes a deformation. Depending on how it's rigged, you could end up with lumps, strange flat areas, and/or other variously shaped oddities around the areas where the tentacles are currently curled as they try to straighten out.

I had a model in Maya recently that lost it's binding mid-animation, and just rebinding it mid-pose like that resulted in a lot of general wonky-ness when I tried to put my character back in a normal standing pose. I had to do a lot of mesh editing to get it back to the neutral pose to properly rebind it.

The results and consequences of such things will depend on the model, what you actually intend to do with it, and how flexible it needs to be. If you just want to repose it for a render, you may be able to get away with leaving them curled. If you want to have this thing full animated at some point, or the "proper" ability to fully animate it, then I would say to go ahead and straighten them out.

Boozebeard

I'm not really planning to do any animation with it but as I want it in my portfolio I definitely want it to look like it would be properly animatable. I'll try and re pose it. Thanks.

Boozebeard

Well I've tried doing it with a Zsphere rig but it's not working right. I do transpose master > zsphere rig > TPoseMesh > *build the rig* > rigging > bind > *adjust pose* > tranpose master > Tpose to SubT... "succesfully blah blah in 0 seconds" and then instead of getting my mesh back in the new pose it just gives me a sphere... :C

Any one know why it's messing up or got a different method I could try?

Edit: In case anyone finds this having had a similar issue. I fixed it by saving out the tool as a ztool and then loading it into a fresh project.