Elf [Character]
interpolator
WORKFLOW BREAKDOWN (post#25) Zbrush armor sculpting
LATEST UPDATE
Hi there Polycounters!
I recently began working on a new character for my portfolio. I chose a concept made by Bang Seung-ho (his CGHub gallery : http://victorbang.cghub.com/images/).
The main reasons I chose this concept are :
- I'm slowly getting comfortable sculpting stylized female characters and I want to push this further.
- The highly detailed armor is gonna be a challenge as I've never done something like this.
- Pushing my texturing a lot more than I usually do.
Here's the concept :
Here's what I've got so far
This is some very early stuff. I'm just blocking in the proportions of the armor before modeling the clean meshes.
You may have noticed that I didn't follow the concept for the face as I want to add my own personal twist to it
I would love some critiques !
LATEST UPDATE
Hi there Polycounters!
I recently began working on a new character for my portfolio. I chose a concept made by Bang Seung-ho (his CGHub gallery : http://victorbang.cghub.com/images/).
The main reasons I chose this concept are :
- I'm slowly getting comfortable sculpting stylized female characters and I want to push this further.
- The highly detailed armor is gonna be a challenge as I've never done something like this.
- Pushing my texturing a lot more than I usually do.
Here's the concept :
Here's what I've got so far
This is some very early stuff. I'm just blocking in the proportions of the armor before modeling the clean meshes.
You may have noticed that I didn't follow the concept for the face as I want to add my own personal twist to it
I would love some critiques !
Replies
My only crits are anatomy wise. To me it seems like the arms connect too low on her shoulders, almost like her arms are attaching underneath her armpit, rather than a shoulder attaching to her back.
Also, because you/the concept have lengthened the torso and legs, it is making the arms look too short to my eye. The bicep actually looks fine, it's the forearm that seems too short, and also a bit thick compared to the delicate legs and body.
Last, the face you have has an overall shape like a triangle pointing down. Her cranium is very square starting at the temples, narrow, and long. Concept, if you're going for a recreation, is shorter, more round, but you got the pointyness of the chin - its mostly just the top of the skull shape that seems off.
If you are not going for recreation, I still think the eyesockets could have more shape, and flow better into the temple.
Anyways, hope I was clear. Ignore me if you disagree, since the work is looking great the way you are going.
ysalex : It think you are correct about the forearm, I'll change that. however I don't want to stick to exactly the same anatomy as the concept as it is too stylized I think ^^ Head super small and super long legs as you can see more clearly on this paint over :
And about the head I wanted to do my own thing, a mix between anime and realistic, something like Terra (that's the only example that comes to my mind right now ^^). As I think the head on the concept look too childish because of its roundness.
Thanks for the crits man
Next step is to make the clean meshes in 3D-Coat and Blender. After that I'll finally sculpt all the little details on the armor.
The few crits Ive got is that the brow could be smoothed out and its reading a little sharp, same could be said for the nose too. Also the fringe of the hair should be hugging the head when you look at the concept....unless youre diverting from the concept to create an area of interest.
I enjoyed you Amon thread so Im looking forward to seeing what you come up with. Good luck.
I would say that her arms are too short, and also where her arms connect into her shoulder may be too low. I would also say that the shoulders are too narrow. While women obviously have narrower shoulders than men, hers might be a bit extreme.
Nice work so far though! Keep up the good work!
almighty_gir : I'll have a look at my refs to see what is exactly wrong with that area. Thanks for the pointer.
Just my humble opinion
Edit: woops I mean just too close not too big
Let me know if there is still some errors.
What's with the strange edges on the shoulderpad though? Z-fighting?
I'm making Ramza Beoulve and I'm struggling with his armors>_<"
here's your own "after":
and here's my critique:
face:
- change the shape of the eye slightly, make them more angular toward the inside of the eye, it'll give a more seductive appearance.
- change the angle of the eyebrow slightly to match the new eye shape, again it will give a more seductive appearance.
- try to accentuate the cheek bones a little more, but keep the transitions smooth. smooth out the transition from cheek bone to nose a little more, and pull the jaw out a bit just below the ear, it's looking a little concave at the moment.
back:
- have drawn the muscle groups on the back for you to take into consideration. the biggest issue is the insertion/origin of the teres minor/major muscle group. on your sculpt they look like they're inserted under the tricep when they should originate above the tricep but below the deltoid.
- the scapular (shoulder blade) is covered by the teres group, and has the trapezius wrap over the top of it. bear that in mind in your sculpt.
torso:
- very rough drawover, you're going in the right direction. but pull the abdominals in a little more, they're still spread a little too wide which gives the illusion of a pot-belly.
- personally i'd say look at the shape of the boobs a little. they feel like two balls that have just been stuck on, rather than an organic part of her body.
keep it up man!
I'm glad you brought up the breast looking like two balls, because it has been bothering me since the beginning. I consider her breast armor like a corset, so it has to squeeze her boobs. But I was not too sure what they should look like under the armor. So I took one of Hazardous' old sculpt as a reference. What's your opinion of this matter?
13.5k triangles so far, maybe I'll manage to stay under 18k.
How do you determine what pieces to be separated and what pieces to stay as one solid mesh ?
Like, are the hands same pieces with the sleeves, or the kneepads same pieces with her knee, or elbowguards and shoulderpads, and what to do with all the separated pieces after.
And how many kittens do I gotta kill to shadow your work process. @_@ Gosh, I'm so lost.
There isn't really any "rule", it's common sense to most artists. A good way to get this common sense is to bake a lot of character and animating them too. My first characters were a nightmare to animate because I kept separated some objects and they would intersect with the body when moving. Or I kept as a whole mesh some other stuffs and I couldn't move them correctly later.
To sum it up, it's something you get with experience and a lot of trials and errors.
sefice : Thanks! All the masks are made with the masking brush. Lazy mouse helped a lot, I just discovered I could use it with the mask brush too ^^ (hold Crtl to get mask brush and activate Lazymouse in the Stroke menu). Ctrl + Alt + click on the mask to make it sharper was helpful too. I would sometime use Claypolish if some of the details were not crisp enough. And always working on very subdivided models.
Hope it helps!
Anyway, made the lowpoly of the face, opened her mouth and painted the skin and eyes in Zbrush.
She's slowly coming to life, hope you like it!
I'm currently in the texturing process. Only diffuse work so far, so not very interesting but I managed to quickly make a spec and gloss map for the face (only the skin, ignore the shiny hair).
The UV seems are very visible so if I can't correct that I'll just hide it with the hair planes.
And I changed her mouth, I think it's way better now!
Just a tip though about the face presentation, the camera focal is not really adapted for face close-ups, it deforms the face quite too much.
Here's a little example to illustrate my point.
Everything is still very WIP but I thought it would be a good idea to show it here and get some harsh crits! Just keep in mind that fur, hair, everything that needs alpha is still untouched.
You're colors look beautiful, but the concept's low saturated lighter colors really sell the elf look.
Lavitz : I see what you mean. When the diffuse is done I'll play with the saturation to get something closer to the concept.
I still need to find a way to make a good transition at the root. And I still wonder if I should use hair cards too for the hair that is pulled back.
Can't wait to see more progress on this!
Adn here's a quite block out of the shapes in Blender.
marcel gold : Glad you like it so much! I don't plan to give her a helmet, I wanted to be true to the concept art concerning the armor.
Sculpt and lowpoly of the sword done. I still have to optimize the lowpoly.
Currently texturing it but I'm running in some issues as I can't really get the kind of metal I want for the blade... I'll get on this tomorrow then
Miche Thanks for the pointers! Yeah it's too uniform now, I'll put some more color in that face.