Beginner Troll

Artelios

Been working on a troll for a friend. He wanted a short, fatty little man creature with a bulbous nose, headphones and a t-shirt on. So far I've been working on getting proportions and muscular anatomy down on it. Feel free to see more WIP at the image location (my blog). I'd love to get more feedback on it; right now I feel I'm having trouble with his squat, muscular legs. Let me know about any other critiques. Thanks


SUB3


SUB2

SUB1

SUB1Back

SUB1WIRE

Bartalon

Try not to work at too high of a subdivision level when blocking out your proportions. Doing so will lead to a lumpy, waxy appearance as well as cause some tools to not function as optimally as they should (move, smooth, etc).

Artelios

it's actually not. It's on subdivision 3. I work on each layer separately before moving up. I just posted the third subdivision instead of the blockier mesh before it. Check the image location or my blog to see the one before it. It may be I need better topology on the legs.

Dimfist

What he meant was lock down your forms at a low sub division so it won't be lumpy. Right now you have some glaring anatomy issues that should be fixed before you start detailing. You admit you are having problems with his legs but the muscles in his shoulders on down to his hands are really off. At the lowest sub d you should be able to move some things around until you get the forms right.

Brian "Panda" Choi

Visually speaking, you should be seeing rather visible faceting with the quads if you're at low sub-division levels.

Shiniku

I think you missed the point of Bartalon's critique, Artelios. Essentially, the forms and basic structure of your model need some work, and it is easier to focus on those aspects of a model at a lower subD, especially for a beginner. Not bad though, keep at it!

Artelios

Sorry about that, I'll post the subd's and other pics with a wireframe tomorrow or tonight if I can help it. Glad to see all the feedback though! Thanks everyone (I'll re-edit the original post with the different bits of progression)

Brian "Panda" Choi

Keep cutting more subdivisions. It's still too smooth.

Artelios

SUB1 is the first subdivision (or subdivision 0) and roughly 9k polys. How do I go about reducing it from there? Thanks for the reply back Jade.

snake85027

try the Reconstruct subdiv button under the Geometry tab.. Or turn on dynamesh, make the scale lower than 1.0, resolution at 64 and swipe the screen to have it calculate.

Dimfist

You should draw the skeleton on top of the troll and see where you might be making bad decisions on the anatomy.

BradMyers82

I see people at the beginning stage, learning how to make creatures and stuff all the time here.
The crits about stepping down in sub-ds are spot on... but also you will need to play around with sculpting in general until you really can grasp things. Just keep noodling around with things get a bunch of reference. You will get there!

Artelios

Erased the sublevels and went back to the basemesh and reshaped it to more humanlike proportions. Is this better?
As for reconstructing the subdivision, I saw that Mudbox has a whole 'reduce mesh' function but it totally destroys the topology of the character and triangulates it. At this point, do I want to worry about retopology after I've begun sculpting it more and recreate UVW's later? Right now I have my original UVW's I've created for this mesh still intact.

Shiniku

I wouldn't worry too much about UVs. It depend son your goals for this model, but a typical workflow for games is to create a high poly model frist, often with incredibly messy topology, and only use it to bake textures for a retopologized version of the model that is created over top of the high poly and is UV mapped.

Artelios

Alright; I was always taught with such heavy emphasis on topology and uvw's before and after. My goal for this one is to produce a simple animation video of a simple 'headbang' (it will have a baggy t-shirt and giant headphones). How's the proportions this time around though? (I'll enlarge the hands once everything looks more believable).

Brian "Panda" Choi

Proportions and forms are still bad.

You need to get to a more blocky version of this so you can concentrate on getting good proportions and anatomy before you commit to anything higher. Your digits are too thin and overall, your muscles, fat, and body surface is still feeling really lumpy.

When I say blocky, I mean as blocky as the model on the left in the image below:



If you're trying to get a head bang, do you see how that might not look good when there seems to be no neck from the profile view?

If you're trying to make a troll, use this guy for reference:

Suba

Try to get an interresting silhouette. Right now it doesn't really feel like a troll imo.
Second ref of JadeEvePandais really good.
Have you worked with other references until now?

Artelios

I have been, but friend wanted to avoid the Lord of the Ring's esque troll's face. Is the face at least decent enough to keep around? I'll rework it after work today; I'm glad to have constant feedback right now.

BARDLER

If you are a beginner get reference and stick 100% to it. You are not going to be able to learn how to model, learn basic forms, and design a troll all in the same project.

Suba

Agreed with BARDLER. Trying to learn everything at once is really fucking difficult. That's what I did for my very first character, and it was painful.

I think your face is not defined enough. It's like he has no bones. Try to work on that and infuse some personality into it. I have the feel you want him to be a nice little man, pretty clever and fast. Looks more like a gnome to me but anyway, try to search for gnome references maybe. Or at least any ref that can help you to go in a precise direction.

Keep going

Artelios

Have dropped polycount to about 4k now (just realized my 2k eyeballs were accounted for in the previous polycount i mentioned above); however right now it's without feet. I'll get to work on it and have more to show on Monday/Tuesday. None of the loops have been relaxed/etc yet. Just trying to get a workable basemesh, and I've thrown the UVW's to the wind. Here's a crappy Max render.

Artelios

Original mesh was 4k polys*

Brian "Panda" Choi

Dyou fix the Tpose proportions? He still seems to lack a neck.

Artelios

Here's the new body/proportions for basemesh (2k polys)
(layer0)

and some base sculpting (layer 1)

layer2-( liking the legs better but need to go back and fix the too heavily defined bicep, then detail/move the fingers/toes). Better/worse?

cookedpeanut

Really good improvement,the feet don't look like duck feet anymore.
Keep it going bud!

Artelios

Brian "Panda" Choi

Is this solely going to be a naked troll?

Artelios

Other than a t-shirt/ headphones; yup. I'm thinking some leather straps with a battle-axe might be mandatory though (afterward).

Brian "Panda" Choi

So, just as an encouragement, I'd take some time to sit down and conceptualize what you're making right now.

I don't know if it's just me, but there's a bit of disservice done to 3D characters that lack solid concept thrust, especially if they are not made from a piece of concept art to reference.

What kind of troll is it? Is it a violent one? Does it have a job? What would it like people to know it as? Does it meet people at all? If you can answer questions like that confidently and have the art reflect those decisions you've made for the character, you can definitely propel this character past "troll #5."

Artelios

Panda, I wholeheartedly agree and while I have sketches and references for just about everything, I never solidified anything about the troll and the friend I'm doing this for didn't provide me with much to work on. I could've taken it with creative license and done a lot more with it, and in that regards I've failed.

This troll to me at this point was more of a stepping stone to take what I've learned thus far in modeling and make a clean bake and mess around with specular maps because I've yet to do that. I've only baked one item, so it's my personal goal to mess around more with that.

Seeing as it's the dawn of a new year, how about my next item I'll make a portfolio piece correctly from start to finish?

I'm also more of a pencil pusher artist at this point and 3d modeling was just something for me to mess with, but I'm enjoying it thus far. I really appreciate all the feedback on everything though (you have no idea!) and wish I had used Polycount sooner. 7: (I'll work on a scribble/paintover of the troll)

If I don't reply sooner, Happy New Years to everyone!