Hello ^..^ This is the first time I take part to a character challenge and I want to learn as much as possible out of this.
I've sculpted some basic proportions for the first concept. I didn't insisted much on the arms (just some placeholders in the form of some floppy blobs), but tell me what you think until now. I will come back asap with an update
Good start there. First off, from front view, she seems to have a pear shape going on. (upper body/torso) Think she's more slim in the concept. Slimmest part of the body, generally is the waist. Yours is somewhere around the rib-cage... which is too high.
Second, from side view, she seems pretty thick. (thighs, stomach area).
Upper arm too short, but you said you haven't gotten that far yet
Now, when women (or men) wear high heels, your weight balance would shift more forward. From side view, draw a line straight down from around the ears... That's kinda sorta where your weight is. On high heels that line gonna be more around the toes, not the heels. Unless she pushes her boobs out and pushes her neck backward.
so you have the right ideas but haven't formed them quite perfectly yet. To much form on the outside of the knees, shoulder blades too far out, biceps facing upwards, ab and oblique divide. They're there but not quite accurate, keep at it!!
Got the body formed, base pieces for cloth layers on, and touched up the face a bit. Still need the heals, shoulder seam lining, gold chains, second details...sigh haha, I think i hit proportions alright-ish though; have to change the breast size.
Hello! After a pretty long delay I am back with an update. Took my time to study some anatomy + trying to integrate Zmodeler into my workflow :chuffed: Can't wait to hear your feedback ^..^
@Aveon I just want to point out some small things regarding your work so far ... hope it will be helpful.
First
of all the positioning and inclination of her neck. It's forming almost
a perfect straight line with her back and that is creating a detriment
for your model, resulting in the sensation that the chest area is way
too big. Try to tilt the neck a bit forward.
Secondly, the ears
are too big. Usually big ears are associated to old people. The older
you get the larger your ears will become. Ofc this varies from person to
person, but mostly the top part of the ear is in line with a point
between the eyebrows and the center line of the eye (the point will go
up or down depending on the person).
And the last thing I want to mention is the shape of your heels. You made it flat, and I think you should make it a bit curvy.
Hello, just under a month and Im late to the party but here's to hoping I can get something finished. Just blocked out some rough anatomy before I start placing the base for the clothing in -
Thanks Aveon, I've blocked out a bit more on the model in what spare time I've had the last few days. Head and feet tomorrow, if anyone knows how to make cleaner extracts in Zbrush then Im all ears as the upper chest wrap (?) looks a bit shabby to me but I don't know how to make it look any cleaner without being destructive to the edges using the smooth brush.
Heya guys! I've been slowly chipping away at this challenge after work. I actually started towards the beginning of July, but I was mostly sculpting and scrapping portraits for her that I didn't feel like I could fix up. Still doing a lot of tweaks to everything right now though!
@FuzzyOwl I'm not sure how much better it is at not being frumpy-lumpy, but I'd try to extract, fix up the general form with the move tool, clay polish, then do a quick zRemesher. If you want it even sharper than that, I think you could probably mix in a polygroup-by-normals and then turn on 'Keep Groups' in your zRemesher options. I'm not sure how well that would bake though! Only other way I could think of would be manually retopologizing the base mesh after you got its form down. Maybe someone else has another possible solution though?
FinalDragon Really like what you have for her costume there. The wrinkles and folds around her arms don't seem realistic enough. I don't think they would behave that way. But I'd urge you to focus more on her face first. She looks quite ok from the frontview, but from the sideview, she needs good amount of work.
@madelin_tiana Thank you for the critique, I did not know that fact about ear size relevance to age, thanks for the enlightenment! I'm done with the sculpt, changed the ear size, face, heels, neck angle and finished cloth layers, chains and such.
I'm going to try an experiment with her hair, where I'll transfer the vertex normal of the sculpted hair instead of a basic shape to drive reflections on the cards. If I set the cards right I'm expecting some very interesting results, but if not then I'll fall back on using the sculpted hair geo solely and follow closer to the overwatch style I hope to capture and learn more about.
For now though I'm off to retopo~. Also included a color test shot.
@Aveon Good progress there mate Since you mentioned the vertex normal transfer, I should tell you that i had issues with the shading in Marmoset Toolbag (In case you're using that for rendering too). The shadows looked polygon-ish. Not sure how to explain it so I'd love if you report back your results with it ^^ Cheers and keep it up!
@DanaosC Thanks man! I am using Marmoset for rendering but I've used the method before and it hasn't caused me issues, so I'm not sure the problem you're having with it? Thanks for the cheer! I'll let you guys know how it goes, finishing retopo and UV's today~
@Aveon Oh I see, at least it's something i am doing wrong and not the engine's fault. I think I had a pic somewhere from my tests. So here it was in Marmoset, see those shadows on the hair? It was like they were moving polygon my polygon, if that makes sense.
I use 3Ds Max for modelling, unwrapping etc, so I only moved to Maya to transfer vertex normals and then imported it back to Max. Did you follow a similar workflow or you did everything in Maya? Any specific export settings you have when exporting the file? Cheerio
What do you mean by edges of the hair? The texture didn't have to do anything with it. Maybe it was because of the poly count indeed, but it shoulnd't happen as it would be pretty obvious with other's work as well. I ended up just not trasfering vertex normals but it was a cool trick I wanted to use.
@DanaosC Just off the bat I'm with @PyrZern , the faceting you have going on in your cards looks like you forgot to soften edge normals on the cards before importing into Marmoset. If not that then maybe you forgot to soften the edge normals on the mesh you transfered vertex normals from? If not THAT then maybe there's data lost in-between going from Maya to Max? Unfortunately I work only in Maya (Mac atm) so I can't replicate it to see. Last possibility I can think of is that, if you baked a normal map out using fibermesh as the HR, that you didn't have the edges of the cards softened upon baking, meaning that the hard edge's woulda been baked into the normal map. That's about all I've got for you haha, best of luck! Do make sure you thicken up the hair on the sides there
Hmm, I see what you guys mean right now. It's surely not the texture as it's like that even with a default material. Indeed it looks like I haven't smoothed it out. Here's how it looks in Max (there is no square-ish shadows). I think it looks proper.
Oh well, thanks for the help! I'll give transfer vertex normals another go when I'll have to make hair Cheers!
@PyrZern Sure, I have one I took at the time. Unfortunatelly I can't go back and test more stuff as of now. Here it is. (See the "individual" shadows that shades the polygons? It's more apparent to the big planes. In realtime when changing the lighting it's a lot more apparent).
And for comparison sake, here is the non-vertex normal transfered one. (Which I ultimately used)
Hey @DanaosC, sorry it's been a bit, but 3 questions. A, can we see the mesh you're transferring vertex normals from? B, do you have a normal map on the hair? and C, are you exporting FBX or OBJ? If FBX do you have smoothing groups turned on?
Hey @Aveon I was transfering the vertex normals from his head (And now that I think about it I may have not smoothed out normals for that or something). I did use normal map on the hair but the same problem was happening to the textured and the default one. I tried both obj and fbx if I remember correctly but not sure about the settings. Honestly I called it done many weeks ago so I dont want to waste more of your time with it as I cant go back and test stuff I am super grateful for your help and if I stumble upon this problem again in the future, I'll go ahead and make a thread ^^ Cheerio!
Hey. Thought Id joint this challenge. Not sure if I can finish on time, but Ill see how far I can get until the end of Aug. and maybe a couple of days beyond that . Heres my first wip screenshot.
Hey @Aveon I was transfering the vertex normals from his head (And now that I think about it I may have not smoothed out normals for that or something). I did use normal map on the hair but the same problem was happening to the textured and the default one. I tried both obj and fbx if I remember correctly but not sure about the settings. Honestly I called it done many weeks ago so I dont want to waste more of your time with it as I cant go back and test stuff I am super grateful for your help and if I stumble upon this problem again in the future, I'll go ahead and make a thread ^^ Cheerio!
Best way that I've come across to fix those hard edges on hair planes is to retopo a solid mesh for the volume of the hair, and then smooth and transfer vertex normals to the hair group. Might need some tweaking of the volume mesh, but it'll take care of those harsh edged shadows. Character is looking good too man.
@smessier Thanks mate, I'll surely pay more attention to it next character You can see the finished project here if you'd like: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/N4GXD @PyrZern Oh that's an excellent idea, didn't think to have a mesh covering the hair! I'll surely do it tha way in the future. Cheers!
@DanaosC haha I try, don't give up on your vertex normals :pleased: I swear I've been working haha. Got 5 or 6 days left so think I can pull through. Got the map bakes down and crisp, had a hard time with the chains on capes baking correctly (Turns out triangulating your Lowrez before bake makes for a better bake? who knew?).
I wanted to ask you guys if you had any knowledge on anisotropic direction maps? There's an old 2012 tutorial on here to paint it yourself, but the results look almost identical to a world space normal map, so I plugged that in; works decently but not the full affect. I want to get this close to Blizzards "Overwatch" style, so still have to add that wave they have in their anisotropic reflections. For such cartoony stuff it's very technical haha
Anywho here's shots of where I'm at, thought I'd upload before I move into painter. Still have to do the alpha cards for the front chains and then setup her eyes, eyelashes and eyebrows. She's sitting at about 15k atm. Using 4k texs but I'm gonna crop them down to 2k once I'm done.
Ow that's a nice one! Do you think we could use a similar approach to the realistic artstyle or make the hair shader look better? Plus, Panda posted examples of maps used for a hair card or something, question is how to paint a map like this for unwrapped hair mesh (Like the one Aveon is doing I am assuming). All handpainted and hope you dont mess up the direction?
Well here it is ladies and gentlemen, clocking in at 20,200 tri's with 2k's on the body and 1k's on the hair (512 on the eyes and 1k on the chains). Pretty satisfied with the result, wish my lighting hit the color of the original more, and I think i may have changed the face too much, probably wouldn't pass for a AAA studio model (as far as likeness to the concept is concerned) so I'll have to hit it even harder on next months contest. For now though it's time to go back to my personal work and studio applications! Thanks for all the help you guys, it's been a blast!
Nice finish @Aveon The only thing I noticed is that she is cross-eyed:
All you have to do is rotate her eyes a couple degrees out and they should look normal.
I will be starting a new challenge in September, stay tuned! Also, anyone who wishes to continue working on their models past the end of the month is more than welcome to do so!
I had to do a project to make a 3D-Printable Figure in Uni and decided ill use the Model i startet to create here. Here are the results. (mind that i am not that good at polypainting xD)
Hey guys, sorry I have posted in awhile. But I'm still working on my female character So I will not be doing the next month. Because going to try to finish off this character from this challenge. Before trying out more later on down the track. But I will keep posting update here as I go along.
Replies
I've sculpted some basic proportions for the first concept. I didn't insisted much on the arms (just some placeholders in the form of some floppy blobs), but tell me what you think until now. I will come back asap with an update
Second, from side view, she seems pretty thick. (thighs, stomach area).
Upper arm too short, but you said you haven't gotten that far yet
Now, when women (or men) wear high heels, your weight balance would shift more forward. From side view, draw a line straight down from around the ears... That's kinda sorta where your weight is. On high heels that line gonna be more around the toes, not the heels. Unless she pushes her boobs out and pushes her neck backward.
Keep going man !
Tell me what you think guys :pleased:
My anatomy isn't solid, so take this with a grain of salt.
* Her shoulders might be too wide, and too high. (like she's shrugging) Push em down, and in.
* Collar bones should be more leveled, not at that angle. Unless her arms are up. (which they are not)
* From side view, she seems to be.... missing her rib cage altogether. Both front and back.
* Her knees seem to be too high. And the back of her knees are even more way too high.
* Her hip bones might be too low... I'm not so sure about this one. They look off to me.
* Work more on her boobs, I'm not commenting on them yet.
Good job thus far. Keep going man... or.... miss...
Reference.
Feel free to C&C so far if you want!
Can't wait to hear your feedback ^..^
First of all the positioning and inclination of her neck. It's forming almost a perfect straight line with her back and that is creating a detriment for your model, resulting in the sensation that the chest area is way too big. Try to tilt the neck a bit forward.
Secondly, the ears are too big. Usually big ears are associated to old people. The older you get the larger your ears will become. Ofc this varies from person to person, but mostly the top part of the ear is in line with a point between the eyebrows and the center line of the eye (the point will go up or down depending on the person).
And the last thing I want to mention is the shape of your heels. You made it flat, and I think you should make it a bit curvy.
Keep going with the great work!
Heya guys! I've been slowly chipping away at this challenge after work. I actually started towards the beginning of July, but I was mostly sculpting and scrapping portraits for her that I didn't feel like I could fix up. Still doing a lot of tweaks to everything right now though!
@FuzzyOwl I'm not sure how much better it is at not being frumpy-lumpy, but I'd try to extract, fix up the general form with the move tool, clay polish, then do a quick zRemesher. If you want it even sharper than that, I think you could probably mix in a polygroup-by-normals and then turn on 'Keep Groups' in your zRemesher options. I'm not sure how well that would bake though! Only other way I could think of would be manually retopologizing the base mesh after you got its form down. Maybe someone else has another possible solution though?
I'm going to try an experiment with her hair, where I'll transfer the vertex normal of the sculpted hair instead of a basic shape to drive reflections on the cards. If I set the cards right I'm expecting some very interesting results, but if not then I'll fall back on using the sculpted hair geo solely and follow closer to the overwatch style I hope to capture and learn more about.
For now though I'm off to retopo~. Also included a color test shot.
Good progress there mate
Since you mentioned the vertex normal transfer, I should tell you that i had issues with the shading in Marmoset Toolbag
Oh I see, at least it's something i am doing wrong and not the engine's fault. I think I had a pic somewhere from my tests.
So here it was in Marmoset, see those shadows on the hair? It was like they were moving polygon my polygon, if that makes sense.
I use 3Ds Max for modelling, unwrapping etc, so I only moved to Maya to transfer vertex normals and then imported it back to Max. Did you follow a similar workflow or you did everything in Maya? Any specific export settings you have when exporting the file? Cheerio
Maybe it was because of the poly count indeed, but it shoulnd't happen as it would be pretty obvious with other's work as well.
I ended up just not trasfering vertex normals but it was a cool trick I wanted to use.
Indeed it looks like I haven't smoothed it out. Here's how it looks in Max (there is no square-ish shadows). I think it looks proper.
Oh well, thanks for the help! I'll give transfer vertex normals another go when I'll have to make hair
Cheers!
Sure, I have one I took at the time. Unfortunatelly I can't go back and test more stuff as of now.
Here it is. (See the "individual" shadows that shades the polygons? It's more apparent to the big planes. In realtime when changing the lighting it's a lot more apparent).
And for comparison sake, here is the non-vertex normal transfered one. (Which I ultimately used)
I was transfering the vertex normals from his head (And now that I think about it I may have not smoothed out normals for that or something).
I did use normal map on the hair but the same problem was happening to the textured and the default one. I tried both obj and fbx if I remember correctly but not sure about the settings.
Honestly I called it done many weeks ago so I dont want to waste more of your time with it as I cant go back and test stuff
I am super grateful for your help and if I stumble upon this problem again in the future, I'll go ahead and make a thread ^^
Cheerio!
Best way that I've come across to fix those hard edges on hair planes is to retopo a solid mesh for the volume of the hair, and then smooth and transfer vertex normals to the hair group. Might need some tweaking of the volume mesh, but it'll take care of those harsh edged shadows. Character is looking good too man.
Thanks mate, I'll surely pay more attention to it next character
@PyrZern
Oh that's an excellent idea, didn't think to have a mesh covering the hair! I'll surely do it tha way in the future. Cheers!
I swear I've been working haha. Got 5 or 6 days left so think I can pull through. Got the map bakes down and crisp, had a hard time with the chains on capes baking correctly (Turns out triangulating your Lowrez before bake makes for a better bake? who knew?).
I wanted to ask you guys if you had any knowledge on anisotropic direction maps? There's an old 2012 tutorial on here to paint it yourself, but the results look almost identical to a world space normal map, so I plugged that in; works decently but not the full affect. I want to get this close to Blizzards "Overwatch" style, so still have to add that wave they have in their anisotropic reflections. For such cartoony stuff it's very technical haha
Anywho here's shots of where I'm at, thought I'd upload before I move into painter. Still have to do the alpha cards for the front chains and then setup her eyes, eyelashes and eyebrows. She's sitting at about 15k atm. Using 4k texs but I'm gonna crop them down to 2k once I'm done.
http://polycount.com/discussion/comment/2240742/#Comment_2240742
Plus, Panda posted examples of maps used for a hair card or something, question is how to paint a map like this for unwrapped hair mesh (Like the one Aveon is doing I am assuming). All handpainted and hope you dont mess up the direction?
Hi-rez is also here: http://imgur.com/DKg0OEE
The only thing I noticed is that she is cross-eyed:
All you have to do is rotate her eyes a couple degrees out and they should look normal.
I will be starting a new challenge in September, stay tuned!Also, anyone who wishes to continue working on their models past the end of the month is more than welcome to do so!
http://polycount.com/discussion/175612/the-bi-monthly-character-art-challenge-september-october/p1?new=1