Sculpting vs Modeling characters. Noob questions

Ariannwyn

Hello

I am pretty new to this forum, and I have some questions about character modeling. Not sure if this is the right place to post this or not.

I have no experience in sculpting programs. I don't own Zbrush, and have no way of getting it. I do have Mudbox, but I haven't learned how to use it. It seems kinda complicated and I am not sure how to get started. 
I use Blender most of the time, but I typically have worked on environments or props. Right now I want to get into making characters and I would like to know the best way to do that. I want to make the characters animation ready, because thats good practice, and I am not sure how to do that either. 

Basically, my question is, for making a character, do I need / should I take the time to figure out sculpting, or can I make a good quality (probably stylized / hand painted) model without sculpting?
Does anyone have any tutorials or anything that they would recommend? 

I think that I have learned a lot, but there are still a lot of gaps in my knowledge since I have been teaching myself. Any advice you have is quite helpful. 

Thanks!
Emily

Steppenwolf

Since you use Blender already you can learn the basics of sculpting and retopo there. Plenty of tutorials around.
Not worth it learning Mudbox in that case. I recommend you get a tablet if you don't have one yet.

Ariannwyn

I do have a tablet. So the sculpting in blender works just as well as Mudbox? That's good to know. 

Is it better to sculpt characters rather than just modeling them? (I am not sure if there is another term for modeling in blender / maya, etc...)

Steppenwolf

It's been a couple years since i have used mudbox but i got into Blender recently and what i've seen from the sculpting tools they are solid. Good enough to learn the basics anyway and i saw some artists use them for character modeling.

If you want to make some detailed and organic characters then sculpting is by far the best way to go about it.
Just search for Blender Sculpting on Youtube. Enough videos to get you started.

Ariannwyn

Thank you very much! I will give it a go

Ariannwyn

Oh, another question: Is it better to model the character, and then sculpt out the detail, or sculpt the entire character from scratch?

Steppenwolf

I'm no character artist myself but from what i know you usualy start with blocking out the shapes in your 3d tool before sculpting or use whatever methods the sculpting tool offers. I've heard good things about Blender's dynatopo, which allows you to basicly start from a cube and more topo to work with gets added automaticaly when you start sculpting.

Ariannwyn

Awesome! Thanks so much

Sunray

I'm learning character sculpting at the moment i think a good way to go is sculpt them in ZBrush. Zbrush i used a lot in the industry this means that the are a lot of people that can help you and a lot of good tutorials. As modeling goes I'm not a big fan of modeling the base i like to start off with a sphere or zspheres.