Red Reaper character WIP first organic character
RED REAPER
1. 30 Years Old
2. Caucasian
3. Long Red Hair
4. Seductive clothes/costume
5. C Cup
6. Stomach side huge scar
7. Blue/green eyes.
8. Fierce Expression
9. Seductive Attitude/Expression/pose
10. Small scars all over
11. Athletic body type
12. Chang Gun Staff
Few hours in class modeling and then waiting for the next bit so its slow going right now. They are teaching us Low to High way. We have 5 or 6 weeks to get to to the point of blendshaping a pose out of it. Plan to update the thread as I go.
A 3 smooth of each part as it is right now followed by thier wireframes
I think its coming together well. I have to have a completed base mesh by Monday because we unwrap on Monday.
We learnt Zbrush, they showed us how to make an ear in Zbrush which was like 250000 polys then decimate it to 2500 so maya wont have a heart attack and then they showed us how to use it to quad draw.
1. 30 Years Old
2. Caucasian
3. Long Red Hair
4. Seductive clothes/costume
5. C Cup
6. Stomach side huge scar
7. Blue/green eyes.
8. Fierce Expression
9. Seductive Attitude/Expression/pose
10. Small scars all over
11. Athletic body type
12. Chang Gun Staff
Few hours in class modeling and then waiting for the next bit so its slow going right now. They are teaching us Low to High way. We have 5 or 6 weeks to get to to the point of blendshaping a pose out of it. Plan to update the thread as I go.
A 3 smooth of each part as it is right now followed by thier wireframes
I think its coming together well. I have to have a completed base mesh by Monday because we unwrap on Monday.We learnt Zbrush, they showed us how to make an ear in Zbrush which was like 250000 polys then decimate it to 2500 so maya wont have a heart attack and then they showed us how to use it to quad draw.
Replies
And are my eyes weird, or should the whole ancle area be pushed a little more towards the center?
otherwise. good start
Modeling off an ortho supplied by the college
That is what we are gunna bake our high poly we make in I think Zbrush later onto. Chest is at the poly level teacher told me was what he wanted it at that point. Haven't added any since that he didn't say to add for extruding the crotch down and back so I could attach it at the back for the butt and merge properly.
The top I added one loop to keep shape while I snapped the neck and body together and merged it but thats it. Legs aren't attached yet so they are overlapping some.
Right now it is 172 faces for torso and neck and grand total of 316 for all there atm.
the neck is definitely too wide and i have the feeling that the 8 heads high might be too much, but maybe it is just the neck distorting the head/body proportions, 8 is usually the super hero thingie. I think if you are going the super hero route i'd work on the shapes more, give them more flow and power.
Yeah the theme is Hero/Super Hero so they want it 8 high. This is the base mesh we take to Zbrush i'm working on atm and then the one I bake down onto after.
It's still a WIP with alot more still needed. The neck was too thick because it wasn't shaped yet, it was just extruded up from the torso pretty much.
First off, you should never model from reference of another model. There are anatomical mistakes made in your reference images that you may not be aware of and being new to this, you are going to reproduce those mistakes without knowing that they even exist. Life should be your reference.
Secondly, while it is nice to have some background knowledge of the character you are modelling, most of the information you provided is pointless when getting into character art. There is a big difference between a writer, who would create back stories and such, and a character artist, who would create the physical appearance of the character. Things like adopted by mean people at the age of 5 has no bearing on her physical appearance. When you mentioned tomboy and athletic, now those are attributes that can help paint a mental image of her physical appearance. An athletic build is obvious but talking about her being a tomboy helps describe her posture and the way she would carry herself.
I understand that, being a school project, there is probably very little that can be done about the pipeline you are being taught. You probably just want to make sure that you are working as efficiently as possible and using the most current workflows as you can. It'd be too impossible to get a job after school otherwise.
It's been about 7 years since I have created a base mesh out of box modelling techniques. It's slow and cumbersome and doesn't yield great results.
Instead, try using Zspheres in Zbrush. Way faster and you can still work from image planes if you need to. That how I teach my classes.
AIE Sydney.
Orthograph is just so we get proportions right as far as i'm aware and then we are meant to customize it after that. We also don't know how to use Zbrush yet since we aren't meant to use it until this maya base mesh is ready to put into Zbrush.
That is my attempt redoing the face after seeing This polycount thread. To me it looks like a demented gas mask right now but idk if its better or worse than my other. Right now its just a flat thing as all I am doing is it from the front first.
Can't you just learn zbrush on your own. I know doing work on your own sucks and it easier to passively wait till someone teaches you, but still.
Well we aren't allowed to use Zbrush yet until we are done with the base mesh in Maya and i'm flat out as it is trying to work out this xD
Plus i've tried Zbrush and even following a guide can't get it to work right. Use move tool and can't get result I want for example instead of a nice forhead I end up with 2 lumps cause of pulling too far or not enough or brush being wrong size idk.
Then after I pull it I take pen off tablet and despite not touching tablet with pen anymore the pen still controls the move tool until its like 2cm or more off the tablet every so often.
Peteed I wonder how much work you do outside of uni. But, a good work schedule is 45 minutes of 3D art, 15 minutes rest, then you should doing art from the moment you wake up to when you go to sleep, especially if you really do want to work at Animal Logic. I hope your not wasting time playing video games, on reddit, getting drunk and other stuff.
On the problems you are getting with zbrush, that is why you should be putting in the hours in zbrush now. If you are getting lumps and can't get the forehead correct, then you put more hours into it and not give up.
P.S. All the problems you have mention can be easily solved.
Once you understand how it works, then it's not so hard to make more dense topology while still keeping the structure.
Is that first picture 3 smoothed? Seems to me it is and i'm not too sure if i'm meant to be making it low poly and blocky or smooth without 3 smooth on. I've been trying to do the latter with as few polys as I could as I could thinking if I did as low as that first pic that it'd look horrid.
both are not really good to be honest, the first has tons of triangles the second feels like it is constructed from poles. both things you'd try to avoid for sculpting and animation meshes, unless it is for realtime but still - both topologies do not really look good.
But i agree to the keep it clean and simple part.
First image is persp just to show the general shape, 2-4 are topology for 1 and 5th is the current state of the deletion and dupextracting and changing to make clothes. Only parts of the body that will show skin are the arms and the head and the stomach. Rest will be a Sports Bra and loose pants with flares at the bottom.
Also made a start on the staff she'll use
We learnt Arnold today and will be using that.
This is the 5th bump/update of pics with no replys after the last 4, not sure if anyone is still looking at thread since the forums doesn't seem to show views like most other forums only number of replys. Not sure if thread is starting to break rules by replying with noone else talking in between or not. Unsure if to keep this going or not.
keep it going and be patient with people... theres such a majority of threads going on and most people comment on things that really catch their eyea.. which a basemesh in fact doesnt...
and i have to say theres tons of anatomy issues going on with your basemesh
go to zBrush and get a lot of references now! (https://www.anatomy4sculptors.com/anatomy.php) and then try to get rid of all those problematic areas... make that girl look like a real girl and do not ever go a subdivision higher until you got all the proportions right... this will be a valuable lesson for you and the harder you try the worthier for your scultping and modelling future!
Yeah thats the next step after what I uploaded
Heads way off atm because I fixed its size in maya with soft select but I need to shape it a bit better now
Where were you talking about in particular when you said tons of anatomy issues?
overlay your piece with your reference pictures, look at the forms you have and the human body has
Feet are in boots that come to a point, wouldn't that add length to them since feet don't end in a point?
Breasts are in a Sports Bra, aren't they meant to defy gravity cause the material holds them up?
Rest I agree with needing tweaks to the sizes and shape, which is what i'd planned to do in Zbrush next once I uploaded that pic.
How is this model looking compared to how it was in the latest I changed first post to the other day? I made Zbrush see through and got these pictures that are the closest I could find to the look i'm going for and tried my best to match it.
I know it still needs tweaks and smoothing but in regards to proportions and shape and the like how is it right now?
Not sure why but I look at the face and think Chinese lol, something in the cheeks and eyes yet I know they matched the shape of her eyes when I was sculpting from the front.
Not quite sure if its best to have the newest pics in first post replacing the old like I have been or newest in my replys haha.
also revisit eyes
may subdivide one time to get a better control over the forms
youre getting there
Okay, what you are doing is not properly using your reference. When using a reference for sculpting you should be trying to match your sculpt as closely as possible to the reference. You are not, you are sculpting from imagination. When you sculpt those ears, you are trying to remember what ears look like and sculpting them from memory. When you sculpt that mouth, you are trying to remember what mouths look like and sculpting it from memory. This is going to lead to a wonky looking sculpt, because you don't have an impeccable knowledge of anatomy.
To see how different your sculpt is to the reference I've made an overlay.
Your eyes are too high up; the brow is too high; the nose bridge is too thin, and the nose looks totally different from the references; the nose is too high; the lip cleft is too long; the mouth is too small, too high, and she has no lips (model the lips closed unless you're aiming to rig and skin the inside of her mouth which is probably too complicated); her ears dont look like ears; her neck is too long and slopes too much.
It doesn't match the reference because while sculpting you started to draw from your imagination instead of trying to religiously match the proportions in the reference.
Your retopology of the face is also pretty wonky and is causing pinching and issues around areas like the eyes, ears and mouth.
I would recommend that you start a zbrush sculpt of the head from scratch, drawing out the head from a simple sphere using the move and clay buildup tools. Use dynamesh to give yourself an even surface to sculpt on so you don't have pinching and topology errors. Stick to a very low poly resolution when you start sculpting. You want to have your face references where you can match them. You also want to follow the following: this and this. These are called the planes of the face. Begin your sculpt by blocking in these major forms before you start on details; your face will look more dynamic and correct.
You have similar issues with your body mesh. You're creating your character and building proportions from your imagination, not your reference. Your proportions and really off because of that. Try to follow your references as closely as you can, matching each body part to your sculpt.
Thanks for the advice of how it is better to do it but sadly can't follow it because i'm not in charge of the pipeline I have to follow.
Its a class project so we can't sculpt first and retopo, We have to box model and make base mesh from the supplied orthograph and then modify it into our own.
This person that I am trying to make it look close to is the skin i'll be painting on the mesh in mudbox as the base for my own skin texture.
Only just got the image of the face skin and started trying to match it more to her face a few hours before I posted it, before that it just looked like an alien version of the orthograph I linked in a reply on the first page of the thread.
Teacher spent 5 mins helping doing a few changes to the mesh and then said unwrap it now and use as is for my base mesh. top lip is flat and ugly, ears no different and stuff.
I'm now working on rigging it which he wants me to do first even if thats not the best way because of time constraints since I have clothes and skin to texture, a pose to make, a high poly displacement map to bake onto the low poly.
He said to do the rig then the textures and finally the high res sculpt aka order of importance for course.
like whats even the point to rig a mesh thats gonna be changed a thousand times before you bind it... Oo
this sounds like youre not even allowed to finish this piece properly... maybe you should just do it the ugly way... --> do as he says and try to get the best out of it scrap it asap and then start your own model PROPER pipeline wise... learn all the benefits of sculpting and how to do a proper topology afterwards then nice uving, baking, texturing and finally some kickass rig and animations! then show it to him like, "now thats how it should be!"
I second this. I teach character modeling at a couple of colleges, and your teacher's workflow is the most ridiculous thing I have ever heard. I think you are being taught archaic methods, with little to no theory. I don't know anyone that box models people anymore, the technique is far too slow and doesn't yield great results. The fact that you are being taught to look at someone else's model as reference is huge mistake.
On a side note, when I read the physical description of your character then looked at the model, I giggled. I had to go back up and read it again. You did say c-cups right? Man, did you over shoot the mark.
Don't think it's gunna be changed at all before binding it. I assume you mean the skin > smooth bind by binding. I thought that was skin it not bind it haha.
Far as i'm aware it won't be getting any more changes, we rig it and the rest of the changes are just applying arnold shaders and making texture files and making a displacement map in either ZBrush or Mudbox alll of which won't be a problem to a rigged character? Either way 3 weeks for all that when its the first time and they'll all be slow? xD
Character isn't meant to be animated just rigged to be able to be posed. It was originally due in 6 days time a complete character but they gave us the extra 2 weeks of our holidays to finish because the module was meant to be 2 weeks longer than we were originally given.
We're only 5ish months into the course and the first module was a bit of everything. We ended up making a room and desk with assets on top. Next thing was a little bit of rigging using the luxo lamp from pixar to see how they work. Then we did a sack animation.
4th module is this, our first character/organic. They want to teach us firstly the software independant way to do things so we don't rely on Zbrush which not all people have so we can go to any company and not be stumped by no sculpting programs.
Year 2 also has a character module where we have to have a good character and we do high to low.
Talking about the orthograph? I was under the impression that was meant to of been done by a modeler that made it specifically to have correct proportions for an 8 head high character which is what super heroes are. What else would we be taught to look at for an 8 head high character when real people are 7?
As for the breasts I have no idea what each cup size is really and searches online are very confusing with all these 16C and 36C's and 40C's and some pics the C's are huge but others they are small and some B's are bigger than C's. Couldn't tell which comparison charts were real/right or fake/wrong.
the workflow you use cna be used for a minecraft model that is simple and uberlowpoly but what you aim for your killing yourself if you try to stick to the given workflow and get a decent result...
and that zBrush argument... zBrush and Mudbox are like state of the art? what game company does not use sculpting programs if not for mobile? and even they have their normal maps from zBrush nowadays...
references... its always better to use real life references, because living reference can't do mistakes, sculpts can and do have a super lot of mistakes...
You should be taught what real anatomy is and then stylize it and exaggerate it yourself. You'll learn nothing modeling like this other than needing someone else's model to start with.
I know skin needs more work, I just painted it on in mudbox and thats it for the most part just as a base to start on. I plan to make a hair in a ponytail out of the geometry to make curves to render for hair.