First Realism Zbrush
polycounter lvl 13
My first realism model, made within zbrush, still a wip. Fresh eyes c&c most welcome ☺
(Reference props to Rin the model.)
(Reference props to Rin the model.)
Replies
You need to go back to basics. At the moment the model looks like a 6 month old baby. You have a good start in that you have a decent base to build from. My main advice is to go to the lowest level, delete higher and then spend as much time as possible working on the fundamental forms/proportions/bony landmarks. Personally I will stay at a very low res(less than 10K points) for as long as it takes to find the primary forms, using 80% move brush. Sculpting starts with these basics and in order to progress you must study anatomy. Later on when you have built up the knowledge and sculpting skill you can work by eye but right now you should concentrate on a more mechanical approach, i.e: set up skull refs or a good proportion guide, in the viewport, to work from. There is no way around a deep study of anatomy if you want to capture realism.
Word, she is a bit smooth and squishy so I feel far from realism atm. Last I was working on the detail around the eyes/nose, but I should probably have another look at the cheeks/cheek bones/ & jaw line. I've done a half skull in the past and used one as reference for the temple area, but I'm sure there's more to be gained from going back to bone and muscle.
While I have you, I realize she needs a lot of work over all, but from the referances are there any key area's that pop out to you as needing improvement or alterations?
Rin does'nt really have a straight on reference unfortunately so it's not really easy to compaire. I actually used the side view img of the girl with the shaved head and a female skull for head size making slight alterations to feature placement using rins eyes as measurement.. Lips should be atleast close to on aswell though I used a seperate reference attached here for that.. ears and brow need adjusting for sure. I probably should have picked an easier study. But ty I'll have another look at the proportions as well, new img I used for her lips might help me with that.
- assume a head is 2 generic Units high, the eyes should be 1 from upper limit and from the chin. Lower 1 Head you can split to 3 (that's why the head is 2 high, because 0,5 would be hard to split by 3). You end up with a pretty equal spread of the tip of the nose and the mouth. If you did that, you would see, that you jaw is way too short. Your ears are too low. the top part of the connection of the ear to the skull should line up with the top boarder of the zygomatic and be on less of an angle.
Also the whole surface construction that forms the cheeks is really off. Where is the Zygomatic visible forming the shape of the face, how does the surface change towards the mandible and eye socket. Check for the planes of the skull to help, where the face changes how. But mainly you need to get the general shape right.
Also, don't make puffy cheeks unless you sculpt her smiling... Or it's looks fat on neutral face. Rin is pretty slim if you ask me.
Start with some basic shape of planes of face. Then smooth the crap out of it or something.
good tips pyr I was starting to notice that aswell musta been an odd angel or puffy day
little update from today
Remove the color. It's distracting.
Soften the planes you made, especially at the temples. It's good that you've notice them, but they're usually not that sharp.
I'm still not seeing a likeness.
Your eye silhouette needs to match the eye silhouette of hers. You have a decent front shot from your original reference photo from above. Use that.
Your bottom lip indents in the middle. She doesn't have that since she has a full bottom lip. Match it.
The inside corner of her eyes are vertically at the same position as the wings of her nose. Right now, her nose wings are wider than they are in the reference photos. The need to be brought in and line up with the eyes. Verify this is so from the reference photos you have.
For parts of Rin's head you are unsure about because of her hair covering ears etc don't be afraid to look at OTHER women for ear reference if you find Rin does not have such ref available.
Don't focus on eyebrows, makeup or anything like that yet. Its redundant at this stage. Besides eyebrows are usually penciled in anyway and don't necessarily follow the natural contours of the brow bone.
Brian forsure the temple area was something that stood out to me aswell. Features I'm sure almost all need tweeking, they were slightly altered to match proportion maps too. Thank you very much for going through key area's I'll look them over.
Thanks final I'll check that out.
Thanks Musashi I have been studying the planes of the face from asaro heads. Recently incorporated the 2 - 1 & 3/3 rule with this model. Also been drawing the underlying muscle and tissue of the female face in my spare time for tackling these features. Agreed there is alot to be learned still, so far I feel like it's a pretty precise process, there are a lot of little nuances that if even off a tiny bit make the whole face look wrong. I may move to other projects, some related some not, then come back to the realism. Going to watch some clay sculpting and some zbrush speedsculpts while at work to see if theres some things I can pick up. Are there some other good key basics I could learn from though?
ty for the reply cyborg. I was actually using the reference below to help with some area's around the eye and brow ect. I have another side view reference of a woman with a shaved head that I use for the ear reference. I haven't messed with the front view of the ear yet much though. As far as starting from scratch I still have my subdivition levels so I can still go back to the lowest poly level. What could be gained from starting all over?
Far as the texture it was just very basic 1 skin tone and red/glossy mat to highlight the lip's border. I can post the next update in greyscale though
Thanks again for the comments!
This stuff takes years and years of dedication, passion, a constant need to learn and improve, and a willingness to be your own harshest critic with a willingness to know you can push things further..........and further. Laziness in this medium is rewarded with mediocrity.
It's great that you're willing to learn and are actively following the sound advice people have posted here, but being too precious with very basic sculpt, that needs a huge amount of work, at this stage in your learning path will stagnate you. I also advocate throwing the piece out and starting again....and again...and again. This is the nature of getting better. You'll have plenty of work in the future(if you continue) that you can cherish.
Also, some parting advice: you shouldn't need to be anywhere near the resolution that you are currently at for the forms you have. As I(and others) have mentioned above, you should be working at a MUCH lower res. Just because you see speedsculpts of artists starting from a high-res dynamesh blob and creating a head doesn't mean that you should emulate. The reason they do is because they have the anatomical knowledge and the sculpting experience. Until you gain some more of each you should stick to the basics. Also, if you are intent on having colour values on the sculpt I recommend greyscale tones. The lipstick/pink skin/cartoon eyes are sending this sculpt even further away from realism.
Said I would post the next in grayscale, textures are very basic just something I set up quickly because I was interested in mat's and found it helpful.
Also, I get that you're only looking to help and I thank you for that but the judgment and critiques telling someone to start over but get better isn't very helpful. If you knowing that I have a base mesh to work from and I'm not working at the highest subdivision level really think that I just need to start over then again why is that better then going back to the base? What should I look out for next time? what needs to be improved on? what are some good tuts or some good references or rules of thumb I should learn from to get better at head anatomy? This info with the critique would be very helpful.
Right now, Rin is not being helpful because it's mostly just glamour photography that will have incredibly varied FOVs, etc. She's beautiful but it's not a helpful reference for what you need.
The planar principles and other general anatomy techniques can still be applied here, just with a better reference if likeness is still a goal.
That being said, it's also not a bad goal to just end with a pleasing, attractive female face for this if you feel like it's taking a little too long to get this done. I've done that before, and it turned out good.
As for starting over, I didn't mean rebuilding/retopoing a perfectly good basemesh - as that would just be foolish - I meant going to your lowest level, smoothing the whole thing out, and starting the sculpt again. Speedsculpting is a very common form of practicing and I highly recommend it. You say you have limited time? Well then, why not just spend that time on throwaway speedsculpts instead of noodling away for weeks. You can always come back to this project when you are more confident with sculpting/anatomy. Of course we all want to have completed projects that we can be proud of, but again,(and I'm saying this from personal experience of my own wasted time over the years) building up skill/knowledge/confidence happens faster when you concentrate on less grandiose projects that you can turn around quickly and use as a perfect arena to practice until you're ready to tackle more complex projects. A likeness study is an extremely involved process that pushes even the most experienced sculptors to the limit.
I'm not trying to insult you here, I'm trying to help based on my own frustrating experience when first learning to sculpt anatomy. If you can't take this kind of critique and are offended by it then don't post your work. If you get a job in a studio or a freelancing gig then you should prepare for critique. We all need it to grow as artists.
Here are some excellent learning resources by some brilliant sculptors(digital artists) who've helped me on my own journey:
Scott Eaton - http://www.scott-eaton.com/portraiture-facial-anatomy-online-course
Steve Lord - http://https//www.uartsy.com/course/female-face-sculpting-with-steve-lord
Raphael Grassetti - https://gumroad.com/grassetti#
Kris Costa - http://https//www.uartsy.com/course/character-creation-with-kris-costa
far as the grey scale again not insulted just alittle confused, I was thinking of the flat grey which I found hard to read. I'll try the greyscale suggestion out.
thank you again, I'll check out those tut's aswell.
edit: or maybe not x) I've got no funds for a full course atm. Thanks for the links anyway.
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-yu_JurM6vqY/UWWVwLkFsXI/AAAAAAAAAHc/pqXlcjzfYAc/s1600/Planes+of+the+Face+Blog.jpg
and here's a skull, these will help.
http://thumbs.dreamstime.com/z/real-skull-human-2181349.jpg