Mook (Finished!)
polycounter lvl 8
Update: Calling him done!
Hey all! I figure since it's been 5 and a half years of lurking it's about time I got in on the art sharing. I'm well versed in Maya (primarily as an animator) but I like to pretend I'm a generalist. I got into all this because I liked drawing, and as much as I love animation I still have the itch to create something from nothing, like a character!
This is my first time ever using ZBrush, so I'm sure I've got a lot to improve on. So far I've basically used 3 brushes and dynamesh, because I literally can't figure anything else out.
Based on a doodle of a cannon-fodder, nameless-minion type baddie (hence "Mook"). Some elements of the design have changed in the sculpt since I'm literally working from a 1.5 in. sketch:
So far I've got the rough form fleshed out (minus the feet, but I need to call it a day for now):
And while I have you all here, being a ZBrush noob, can anyone help me with the problem below? I don't know what this is or how to fix it. The fingers were all subtools that I merged and dynameshed onto the larger mesh, so it's possible something went wrong there?
Anyways, I plan to use this to teach myself the full ZBrush -> Maya -> Substance -> UDK pipeline, so any feedback at this early stage (and all others) is greatly appreciated. Anatomy, proportions, design decisions, it's all fair game. Thanks!
Hey all! I figure since it's been 5 and a half years of lurking it's about time I got in on the art sharing. I'm well versed in Maya (primarily as an animator) but I like to pretend I'm a generalist. I got into all this because I liked drawing, and as much as I love animation I still have the itch to create something from nothing, like a character!
This is my first time ever using ZBrush, so I'm sure I've got a lot to improve on. So far I've basically used 3 brushes and dynamesh, because I literally can't figure anything else out.
Based on a doodle of a cannon-fodder, nameless-minion type baddie (hence "Mook"). Some elements of the design have changed in the sculpt since I'm literally working from a 1.5 in. sketch:
So far I've got the rough form fleshed out (minus the feet, but I need to call it a day for now):
And while I have you all here, being a ZBrush noob, can anyone help me with the problem below? I don't know what this is or how to fix it. The fingers were all subtools that I merged and dynameshed onto the larger mesh, so it's possible something went wrong there?
Anyways, I plan to use this to teach myself the full ZBrush -> Maya -> Substance -> UDK pipeline, so any feedback at this early stage (and all others) is greatly appreciated. Anatomy, proportions, design decisions, it's all fair game. Thanks!
Replies
I'm not too keen on the feet and I can't decide if it's the design itself or just proportions/shaping, but I think I like the shape of the hands at this point. Also, after a little bit of playing around with folds on the pants I've discovered that I have no idea what I'm doing and it's probably going to be the hardest part for me.
Any feedback is greatly appreciated. Thanks!
Something close to what you are going for on the lower part at least.
I've done a little bit of costume exploration, exploring them as tribal creatures as well as conscripts in the Big Bad Evil Guy's retinue. In my mind they live on the outskirts of society, raiding farms and being a general fantasy-setting nuisance, so I figure the idea of pants is not entirely foreign to them.
I'm leaning towards costume A because I think the relative simplicity would benefit me as I learn my pipeline, but if people think a different one would be more beneficial to pursue I will happily do so. If nothing else I need to do a better job of planning things (like the pants) before trying to sculpt.
Thanks for the feedback!
also check out these creature box foot designs, notice how they flare out in certain areas for a dynamic shape.
Love the neck folds!
@root Thanks so much! I'm really pleased with how rapidly I'm becoming more comfortable with sculpting. I did consider a tail for a while, but for a few reasons (mostly personal taste, tbh) decided that I liked him better without it.
@purplekami Thanks! All great points in favor of sticking with A.
I'll be sorting out the feet next, and then moving on to the pants sculpt from there. One question for all you experienced ZBrushers out there: What's considered the standard/best methodology for creating clothing? I've been masking the naked body and extracting the mask, but I've run into two issues:
1) Sculpting around the edges of the mesh keeps pushing the mesh thinner and thinner, making it hard to work with as well as making it look like paper.
2) I'm struggling to get clean enough masks, leading to the edges being inconsistent and blobby. Is there a better way to handle this?
Thanks for all the interest and help, guys.
2) On the right side where you have the list of tools there's a "masking" tab, under that tab there's a variety of options that may improve the quality of your mask, namely "sharpen mask" which will make nice hard edge masks.
I figured out a foot design, did a little work on the skull, a tiny bit on the hands, and worked on the folds of the pants. I'm aiming for a slightly-thick hide material and have been looking at reference of that. I'm trying to find a balance between areas of folds and smoother fabric and I like how it's going so far. Of course, if there are glaring problems with the fold patterns I'd love to hear.
And because .gifs are fun: a low-quality, hand-rotated turnaround!
@purplekami and @tectonic
Thanks for all the advice! I've been reading up on polygroups and loops and they make great sense. I pretty much used the inflate and flatten brushes to clean up the extraction, but I'll keep the masking tools in mind for next time. Again, the more I learn the more I'm having fun!
As always, thanks for looking and for all the help.
I really like the way you did the eyes. Care to elaborate on you achieved that look?
The eye is just a sphere with some quick and dirty polypaint slapped on it so I could make sure the sockets weren't obscuring his vision, so not much going on there. I didn't really need to do anything more than a dot to accomplish that but painting a little iris gradient and hot-spot makes presentation more fun. :P
The lids were made by inserting a sphere, slicing it in half, and rotating the two halves around the eyeball to form lids. Those were then dynameshed into the eye socket and the shape was adjusted from there. Honestly, I went a little overboard with the socket itself and I intend to bring some of the cheekbone up (like it was in older sculpts) which may force me to adjust the shape of the lid again.
I'll of course try to implement any notes, but I'm currently about 50% done with the re-topo and we'll see how motivated I end up being to revisit the sculpt as needed. I'm shooting for 10k tris, which is a fun challenge for me as I come from an animation background (and one without zBrush at that!) and my tendency is too prioritize edgeflow and shape control over polycount. Thanks for looking!
Note: I changed the title of the thread as this has grown beyond just a sculpt. Hope that's alright!
I was a little over my target of 10k tris, but I'm thinking I can remove some geo from the head and possible even the shoulders, we'll have to see. Honestly I'm not too worried about it.
I also finished the first round of textures. After trying to produce a scale pattern in Designer I discovered it had way too much detail for a model this simplistic so I had to tone it down. I like where I landed with it though, now I just need to decide if there's enough texture detail overall or if I can just tighten up what I have.
Next items on the to-do list are to fix the necklace and baking errors, finalize materials, and get him rigged.
model
And for fun, I got a rough rig up and running in UE4! (sorry for the .gif!)