A head a day
polycounter lvl 3
Hello! My name Is Andrew, I have been a long time lurker, always to scared to show my work, But I hope to change that with this thread. I've decided to start my year off with sculpting a head a day for a month. I know I have a long way to go if I hope to bring my 3D work up to a professional level, making this thread as well as my desire to succeed will be the driving force behind my want to improve. I highly encourage feedback, and like wise I will try to be more active on the forums with critique and updates.
I am currently using Blender's sculpt function. I can't afford Zbrush at the moment, so im working with what I can get.
Anyway, enough stalling, here is day one!
I am currently using Blender's sculpt function. I can't afford Zbrush at the moment, so im working with what I can get.
Anyway, enough stalling, here is day one!
Replies
http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=76733
Okay, perhaps week one should be studying eyes, nose, mouth, ears? I downloaded the reference for the planes of the face, awesome link, thank you very much!
Is mudbox easy to pick up quick? I have spent a good deal of time in Zbrush and blender, is it going to function much different than those? I will definitely pick it up and play with it!
Not as annoying (subjective) and difficult to control (objective) as Dynotopo, but not quite as powerful/feature rich as Zbrush out of the box. Every single brush I've used in it comes across as very... mushy. Not as textured and satisfying to use as Zbrush tools. It may be a matter of settings, though, since I don't like using the Standard brush in Zbrush either. Certainly, I'd rate it better than Blender as a dedicated Sculpting app but just kinda different to Zbrush. It's not radically, completely, you're-going-to-have-to-spend-a-year-getting-used-to-this different, though.
Things to note are trying to get those volumes i highlighted, the really important one i belive is the green colour 'node" area. Another important area is teh corners of the clips, really try to tuck the buttom lip under the upper, it sells it a lot more!
I also did a few quick cuts using dam standard brush to get the main shape of the lips, you can see jsut by a few strokes you can get a lot of information for the liips, once again the corners of the mouth, im really digging out the form to make it look like the bottom lip is going in deep.
Another tip is do get the muzzle of the mouth in, the arc form from corner to corner will help. I forgot to illustrate that
Your lips seem to have to have slight smile in them, you should try to sculpt it in a netural pose to learn, then you can do poses later on.
Hope this helps
turntable (View in 3D)
Lastly, try to keep your subdivision levels to the absolute minimum. That is to say, push the sculpt as far as you can on your current subdivision level and THEN subdivide once and continue working. You need control of your sculpt as you develop your model, having too many polies on screen makes things a lot harder for yourself.
Good luck!
And yeah its good to know the relations with other parts of the face, keep it up.
http://www.stanprokopenko.com/blog/images/drawlips/tooth-cylinder-affects-lips.jpg
http://www.stanprokopenko.com/blog/images/drawlips/tuna-can-tooth-cylinder.jpg
(He has a lot more awesome images like that btw).
Compare those to:
https://classconnection.s3.amazonaws.com/337/flashcards/5270337/png/maxilla_bone1347144230141-13f07a9a2b26337fb7e-147F4E5909C014A8623.png
See how you can simplify shapes to make it easier to grasp?
(And combining that with JadeEyePanda's advice on using images where the face is broken down in planes, super handy).
In the end it's not so much "replicating" the image, as it is decoding it. Things like: "Why does the light play across this shape to indicate that it bulges up? Is there something underneath? A bone? What muscle? How does it affect the area around it?".
The mesh is cleaner too, but could use a little more love in that department. Break the face into bigger, easier shapes and have your eyes go across the these. Compare those areas to reference and ask what kind of information you are giving in your sculpt with the work you have done. In other words, you describe the surface of something so is it as smooth as in the reference? Is it showing the underlying forms as it should? For example the radius around the mouth (Orbicularis Oris: http://www.chengguo.co.uk/files/imgs/MF/chengguo-orbicularis.jpg) is indicating/describing peaks and valleys to an extent where this would not occur in a real person. The curvature and smoothness/consistency of the surface is a little off if that makes sense. This is definately hard to spot when you are starting out though, so keep going. It's something you need to develop an eye for (and something you probably never stop improving. I certainly still am).
Keep it up!
PyrZern: I'm trying to mix in doing full pieces as well. But I want to make sure I'm giving each feature as much time as I can while I'm studying.
Dean: Again, awesome advice! Speaking of the understructure, I was trying to decide the other day if modeling a skull with muscles would help me better understand the underlying shapes that were affecting the skin? I'm not sure if that would be time wasted... Still I will get back to studying, thank you again for the insight and resources!
Np. Yes! That's an excellent idea. It'll help a ton. You can never do enough studies, certainly not time wasted. In fact, I've probably wasted a ton of time by not doing them early enough or just enough in general. The more you can get out of thinking "what goes here, shit, what muscle is that, or is it something else underneath here? Why does this look the way it does, crap, gotta look for more reference" by having a better understanding of anatomy, the more you are able to "play" within the parameters you are learning. More intuitive, more creativity, more fun, less of a clusterfuck in your head (mind you, reference is always good).
It might sound daunting, but try to learn the names of the muscles/bones as well. This will ensure you make a good mental map of them, it helps a TON with learning what is located where. To give you a head start: quite a few of the names "indicate" their position or role on the face. Even something as weird sounding as "Levator labii superioris alaeque nasi" only means "lifter of both the upper lip and of the wing of the nose". Some terms get reused, so it really isn't all that hard to remember in the end, just have to learn the code
The "cheat" I use is that every time I catch myself making guesses and not laying down confident strokes on whatever I am working on, I think: "Stop, more reference, analyse until you *do* know exactly how it works and is structured".
EDIT: Regarding the sphere, yes. It's a lot easier to model an eye around the sphere. Having that structure as a guideline is very helpful.
also, for some strange reason These black lines are appearing on my model, any idea what thats about? The wireframe is off on all my layers, and I don't have an overlapping model. I cant figure out where they are coming from 0_o