Nordic Huntress - WIP Feedback wanted!
vertex
Hi all,
I have a small amount of experience with Zbrush so I tried to start some kind of project to practice and get better with the program. I've definitely bit off more than I can chew but I set out knowing I wanted to make mistakes so I could learn
This is my first attempt at character sculpting, from a random concept I rustled up few days ago.
Started with zspheres to make the basic frame and then sculpted out some rough anatomy
Started to play with fibremesh and watch some videos, but ended up getting really distracted and absorbed in grooming so I decided to just leave it until later. I'm still considering doing sculpted hair because it looks super fun
Started doing the poncho thing but I'm pretty sure Ive messed it up, I tried to shape it from a sphere and then cut out a hole in the middle using mask selections but the inside seems a bit of a lost cause to me, and dynamesh keeps filling the hole again. I'm thinking when I try again maybe I should just move tool the initial sphere to form a circle in the first place.
after i decided to do the poncho again I figured I probably should be leaving that till last anyway as it sits on top of a few things., and started working on the torso. Extracted it and then made a gap in the front where there will be lacing. I think I need to make it less blobby somehow as well
This is where I'm at so far, will post more very soon but just wanted to post this whilst I still had the courage thanks for looking. Also any and all constructive criticism and feedback is super welcome!
I have a small amount of experience with Zbrush so I tried to start some kind of project to practice and get better with the program. I've definitely bit off more than I can chew but I set out knowing I wanted to make mistakes so I could learn
This is my first attempt at character sculpting, from a random concept I rustled up few days ago.
Started with zspheres to make the basic frame and then sculpted out some rough anatomy
Started to play with fibremesh and watch some videos, but ended up getting really distracted and absorbed in grooming so I decided to just leave it until later. I'm still considering doing sculpted hair because it looks super fun
Started doing the poncho thing but I'm pretty sure Ive messed it up, I tried to shape it from a sphere and then cut out a hole in the middle using mask selections but the inside seems a bit of a lost cause to me, and dynamesh keeps filling the hole again. I'm thinking when I try again maybe I should just move tool the initial sphere to form a circle in the first place.
after i decided to do the poncho again I figured I probably should be leaving that till last anyway as it sits on top of a few things., and started working on the torso. Extracted it and then made a gap in the front where there will be lacing. I think I need to make it less blobby somehow as well
This is where I'm at so far, will post more very soon but just wanted to post this whilst I still had the courage
thanks for looking. Also any and all constructive criticism and feedback is super welcome!
Replies
Failure is only achieved when you stop trying.
Experience - is what you get when you didn't get what you wanted.
For your 3d you have some difficult to reproduce the anatomy, maybe you could take more time on that part, don't hesitate to use reference (real one).
To create cloth I personally use a mesh with no thickness as a plane.
Gravity in deformation panel could help, or simply work with the move and standard brushes.
Thanks for the suggestion! Will definitely look into that in my approach to clothing
quick update for today, been sculpting for the better part of today but not much to show for it ha.
Been trying to improve my anatomy as per suggestion (through neck to hands) and started hitting a brick wall with the hands. Ended up deleting the original zsphere mesh and experimenting with primitive shapes, another zsphere mesh. Probably restarted the hand around 4 times haha. Roughly figured out how to use polygroups which has really helped with masking fingers and proportions so far! It's still very much WIP as you can see, but as always feedback and crit absolutely welcome
Here a link to a ref for woman anatomy http://previews.123rf.com/images/digital/digital0811/digital081100153/3821523-Femme-anatomie-du-corps-humain-Banque-d'images.jpg
This way you might be able to practice using ZBrush´s features and process that complex anatomy. Also if you do that I´d recommend you to save your history. Reenacting your sculpting process can give you valuable hints on what to do in early stages when building the base (for example form of the torso).
Which doesn´t mean I want to say to stop your project^^ But maybe this is something to think about when you finish .
@dyo_ooo
Thanks, that should come in handy!
@pixelpatron
That sounds like a really interesting method, I'll be sure to practice this afterwards - appreciate the tip!
@braintrain
Thanks for the advice! I think I need some good ol' repetition learning like you suggest to really nail the anatomy side of things. I do think doing isolated pieces sounds pretty fun, can knuckle down without getting distracted by the bigger picture (which is often the case for me)
Once you have the basic shapes in your 3D modelling programm, start reworkting them for a meshflow that suits sculpting (as evenly spread quads as possible - don't forget it is just a grid, the vertices will be just subdived into 4 new ones each time to increase the subdivision level). I also suggest that you do a solid meshflow for the face because it makes sculpting easier. I think my own base mesh has no more than 5k polys and that is detailed enough to get the proportions right (you can find an old one from me to download for free here if you want to see what I mean -> https://sketchfab.com/models/a9d831efea2f4ece8c2a36b552ebb579 , its far from perfect when it comes to proportions but it will give you the idea).
To sum it up:
- Go back to the basics.
- Modell your base mesh and try to nail the proportions. Ignore clothing for the moment and focus on the anatomy.
- Get the meshflow in shape for sculpting
- Sculpt the anatomy based on references
Alternative - if you want to focus on sculpting, then I would scrap the idea of the whole character and instead doing just anatomy studies of single body parts up until you are really good at sculpting and only then I would attempt a high poly to low poly approach for a whole character. You will have a very hard time learning to sculpt AND learning the basic shapes/anatomy at the same time. Simplify one and focus on the other.
Good luck and have fun
@biomag Cheers for explaining this! I agree that starting with really primitive shapes is a good idea. Since I started sculpting i've been looking and reading into a lot of anatomy and the best way is clearly to build upon these basic blocks.
Just to clarify, after I've made my accurate base mesh using primitive shapes, would it be best to dynamesh and then zremesh for the appropriate meshflow? Or should I use a more manual approach to retopologising in 3D modelling software before bringing it into zbrush? It seems obvious now that it would help with sculpting but I thought that the retopologising would take place towards the end of the workflow.
Thanks for the example base mesh, that helps massively and 5k polys gives me something to work with.
For what it's worth now I finished the hand last night lol
and I was messing around with face sculpting for fun
It really depends on yourself and where you feel more comfortable. From my experience Dynamesh is far more tempting for beginners because they get the feeling they can skip the 'boring' modelling and postpone it till the end, while enjoying sculpting. Problem is - if you are not completely comfortable sculpting your shapes, it becomes a pain of itself.
Dynamesh's strong side is experimenting, but keep in mind once you attach all those parts together you will have to re-mesh it to make it one object and each time Dynamesh does it, it also can destroy finer details. So if you want to go to a game resolution model, you will rather sooner than later switch to regular meshes within the project once you get the basic shape with Dynamesh for it.
The issue that you have using it is also visible on your sculpts - it gets easily this 'wobbly' feeling - as instead of simple low poly meshes, you get thousands of vertices. That's why I said if you want to stay with sculpting, first learn sculpting with simple anatomy pracitices because you will need to get accustomed to ZBrush first, before attempting to go all the way and do a whole character. As much fun as it sounds to finish the whole thing, I've seen people getting overwhelmed by this approach and losing motivation when they took this path before mastering the basic uses of ZBrush.
I recommand beginners to first go with modelling and then add sculpting to do detailing and then try out Dynamesh and see if this approach fits their needs better because it only looks like you can avoid dealing with topology till the very end. To find the perfect workflow their for yourself will take you first to gain some experience.
So how would I do your project in your case at this point?
I would start at the beginning with the base mesh in your modelling software. Even if it means dropping what you already have, you are at the beginning so everything you did already had its purpose by you practicing and trying out stuff, so it wasn't for naught.
I would start with a cube, get slowly additional geometry to get to the basic proportions. I can stay pretty 'boxy' at this stage. I only focus on just getting the proportions right consulting references. Once I have head, legs and arms in one modell I go to ZBrush for my first pass of anatomy. Just moving away from boxes to more organic shapes - I don't even subdivide, maybe just once to give it a more organic look, but I keep working on the lowest subdivision level. And here I start going back and forth between modelling software and Zbrush - I try to get the basic shapes in ZBrush, while working on the meshflow in Maya. Once I am happy with the proportions and meshflow I export the base mesh to ZBrush and start anew with sculpting the geometry up till I have the basics of the body. When I am completely 'happy' with my naked model, I export again the lowest subdivision level to my modelling software and start extracting clothing from the base mesh and create the meshes for it. Those I will bring into ZBrush and sculpt the details again there.
Why starting with modelling? Because you have complete controll of single vertices, edges, edgeloops and so on. ZBrush isn't that precise. You can get very far with your base mesh in your modelling software, especially if you use ZBrush just to give it the shape, while you focus on a clean meshflow in your modelling software. This approach also gives you a good start for your low poly models instead of completely retopologising.
Don't get me wrong - this isn't the 'ONE' approach to all of this, but it is a slow start to get you some practice with both modelling and ZBrush so you don't get overwhelmed. It is just a way to experience both and then see in what programm you can do what faster to fit better your own preferences
Thanks for such a detailed response, very interesting read. I'll get working on it and update as soon as I can!
In regards to Biomag´s posts. It is pretty neat that he takes so much time to critique your work. Not many people do that -gotta value him;)
However I thought I´d share some reasons why I prefer dynamesh over modelling the base mesh as kind of a counterstatement ( I want to state that he probably knows more about 3D than I do though)
- You don´t need to model: duh... obviously^^ but it means you can stay in ZBrush. Moving objects between apps isn´t much of a huge task but it really breaks my flow
- Dynamesh is very forgiving in early stages: You can easily correct huge portions of your sculpt with transpose tools or move brush.errors (which you will have ^^ ) can be sculpted over, no problem
- it forces you to start from point zero: starting from a sphere you have to think about the most basic forms. How is the rib cage shaped, how the pelvis, what´s the angle and distance between them and so on... You can easily cheat on that with vertex modeling and I can not stress more how important those basic shapes are!
- you don´t have to do the topology twice: edge flow for sculpting differs from the one for game models. You won´t get around it for realtime models but you can indeed skip the first one:)
- you have ZRemesher: dynamesh has it´s weaknesses. since it merges intersecting polys together you are forced to leave gaps between arm and body or but cheeks xD also the ability to make global changes fades with increasing poly density. when reaching this stage you can use ZRemesher to generate edgeflow and build subdivision levels with little to no effort. This is a very cool functionality that gives you exactly the edgeflow you need for precise sculpting
I think the main problem with dynamesh is that many beginners use it as substitute for subdividing. So they would build a base and then start to detail one spot, which requires more polys. Then they realize they need to correct another part but because of the high density the mesh will become wobbly when moving it. Also a high amount of polys without subdivisions really slows down your computer.
If you decide to go for dynamesh I can give those tips to you:
- treat dynamesh as your lowest subdivision level. I rarely exceed 30k to 45k polys when building the entire base mesh and I start very very low.
- different body parts need different resolutions, for example the head and hands need more polys than the torso and legs. Instead of bumping up the density to meet the demand for those parts, seperate them to their own subtool and work independently on them. You can always merge them together when you see fit.
- There is a clear border between dynamesh and ZRemesher. Once you move on to subdivisions you can not go back. So make really sure everything is like you want it to be befor you take this step.
I really appreciate you guys giving detailed feedback and explanation, it is tremendously helpful for my understanding.
I think you've hit the nail on the head with beginner problem of dynamesh - that's pretty much exactly what I was doing. I was actually wondering myself at what point was I supposed to use subdivisions.
I think splitting the different parts of the body to different subtools is a very good idea. I was having problems with dynamesh giving my hands webbed fingers so I was forced to up the polys.
Starting from a very low poly count is the biggest thing I'm taking away from this, as I've clearly gone too high too soon with what I've already done. I think this in itself will probably make a huge difference, but I will experiment with both methods of creating the base mesh
Hey guys, sorry its been long time since update. I actually didnt want to post this until I got a bit further but I haven't had a lot of time to work on this and most of the time I did spend on it was trying to figure out how to get zbrush to do what I wanted it to do
Pretty sure I've done most of things in a really roundabout way but oh well. Started with basic shapes in maya, then did some basic shaping in zbrush (first mistake, forgot to actually add some resolution in maya. That caused me problems for a while) . Kept all the limbs as separate subtools.
I still cannot for the life of me figure out how to select more than one polygroup. I've read the documentation and some other explanations but masking then inversing and masking again just removes the initial mask
Now i'm sure i've just gone bonkers on this, but i was struggling to make a low poly head base, so I retopologised the head i did earlier, to help with sculpting, and plopped it onto this body. I'm not sure if it's pointless or not since I have to dynamesh the whole thing to stitch it together anyway, or i finish sculpting whats left (fingers and shoulder region and any other critique anyone might be kind enough to point out) and then Quad Draw on top of the whole thing starting from where i left off on the head. @biomag I appreciate this is your suggested method, but I have to admit the idea of getting the meshflow right and then following it down to the fingers keeps me up at night...:)
I don't know a lot about Game Model workflow, so forgive me for my ignorance, but if I retopologised it now and made some necessary adjustments, would I be able to use that low poly model as more or less the final game ready body mesh? You mentioned doing it this way would be a 'good start' - did you mean that all that would be left to do is the clothing and hair etc. rather than retopologising everything at the end? If that's the case then I would bite the bullet and do it sooner rather than later.
Regarding how to continue..
I would actually retopo here at this point in your case to make it one single mesh (head, torso, limbs) and use that as your base for the sculpt.
My approach at this is that I try to keep the typical edge loops that you can find here at the polycount wiki -> for example this
Once the edgeloops are done I focus on getting the quads as evenly spaced as possible for the body (somey more loops for the hands and head as you can see on my base mesh). The advantage is that any clothing that you extract from the body will be using the same edge loops.
When you now look at your result you have a base mesh with your solid proportions from the first step. Edgeloops that should fit animation needs. And a mesh that is prepared for sculpting. All of this (judging from the mesh that you have shown here) at a low poly count that fits easily real time rendering needs for games
So if you treat this as your 1st subdivision level and just add subdivision levels in Zbrush you can export it back to your 3d software at this 1st subdivision level and it should both - be good enough for games and close enough to your high poly model so that you can bake the normal & additional maps.
Depending on what you are going for and what a project requires you might need to optimize the mesh a little bit (for example deleating faces that can't be seen anyways - like parts of the body that are covered by clothing) or collapse some edge loops or things like that, but this is done quicker than a complete retopo IMO.
I would suggest to finish this first project's real time model roughly at the polycount of your subdivision level 1. Just for practice. So you can test all parts of the workflow once and not get overwhlemed by larger poly counts.
To sum it up:
- Retopo or combine the body parts you have to a single mesh
- Try to get now the edge loops right
- Make sure you have evenly spread quads on your mesh for sculpting
- Import it to Zbrush and start sculpting
Small suggestion for Zbrush worklow:
Once you import you base mesh to Zbrush create a layer called 'base'. Here you are going to make all you modifications.
Once you finish the symetrical parts, create a new layer and do all the asymetrical work on this layer.
If you do any fine sculpting with alphas create a new layer for that too.
This ensures you have a good controll of what you are doing and you can go back to work symetrical all the time. I do this for every subtool I use often even using additional layers for details (like stitches, damages and so on). It also makes sure that if you turn off all layers you have still the same base mesh, without any changes, that you imported from your 3d software.
Have fun and keep up the progress
Don't try to do all at once. Start in smaller steps. If you are using retopo tools you can start by drawing the edgeloops that you want to create first and only later connecting them. So you will know which parts are 'set in stone' and what can be modified to follow those priorities.
I for example always model the hand first and only then attach it to the arm once the edge loops for the hand are solved. Same with head and body treating the neck as a part where I am going to make the reductions to fit the differences between head and body.
I've started following the topology guides on the wiki, except I think I may have made a mistake.
I started retopologising with the deformation edges. Should I have kept the base mesh completely to quads at this stage?
Yes, at the moment you should stay completely with quads as you want to go into Zbrush with this. You want the mesh to be as 'grid-like' as possible. You can take a look at how I handled back then the hands. Its even easier than you might think at the moment and the fingers don't need to be that complicated
So i finished the base mesh and this is the first pass of anatomy in zbrush I've done.
Is it worth refining the overall body even more despite the characters completely covered in clothes bar head and fingers? Or should I finish sculpting high poly details into the head and hands and move onto clothing? Thanks!
I would recommend you though to look at the silhouette and refine the intersection from ribcage to pelvis. Right now it looks a little like an hourglass to me because of the fast tapering ribcage.
Armpit could connect higher to the body as well.
And she is quite slim (looking at your reference) but that´s up to your taste.
I will look into improving it
As for slim (I'm assuming you mean the mesh is too slim compared to the concept) , I'm guessing its because the reference I've been using for the anatomy is quite slim. I would like to have the final mesh a bit athletic so I will probably need to do another pass and get it right before I move onto clothes.
at the bottom of the ribcage and the left, you can see a line that separates the ab muscles from the external oblique. The oblique goes further up to the ribcage and you are missing that. Therefor your silhouette has the shape of an trapeze in this area
http://www.gamearthub.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/358_large.jpg
Is this any better? Thanks for the extra info! Nice ref too
I would say the anatomy definition is fine for the moment. Sure, there are a lot of improvements that you could make, a lot of things that you could practice, but I think for the first run its a good foundation
My suggestions would be to continue with those parts that will be part of the final design, like face and hands. Also start working on the cloth. This will teach you how to separate the meshes into subtools to work efficiently. At the end of the day, this won't be your best model, just the best you did to this point, so you should focus on learning the tools at hands and don't worry too much about the quality of work
So my approach to your situation:
Once I have the anatomy done and I am happy with the result, but before I go into details, I start looking into what parts I will need. In your concept you can see that you will use the hands and face as only parts of the body itself. I would therefore make a copy of the whole body and delete all faces that you don't need (you can do it with masking and delete hidden in ZBrush or simply in your 3d software). In the end you should have 3 subtools. 1 with the whole anatomy - to keep it in the background as reference while working on the clothing just to be sure you keep enough space for the body; 2. the head and neck; 3. the hands and wrists.
Once you have separated those you can work on the head and hands and use the full capabilities of your machine when it comes to subdivision levels (again if you take me for example, I know that 7+ millions of polys in Zbrush start to slow my PC down a lot especially eating away a lot of memory if switching between subdivision levels or turning on/off layers; and anyhow my Maya can't bake more than 4 million polys reliably). So when you are working on the face you don't waste polys on parts of the body that you won't see anyhow.
Same approach with clothing. Just create subtools for the parts that you want to make and block out the outfit. I would ignore the hair and fur for the moment, especially if you don't want to sculpt it, but use fiber mesh instead. Focus on getting the basics right and worry about the hair later
Have fun
oh and believe nobody! if you can´t see an improvement or don´t like or agree with the critique you shouldn´t use it.
I am here to learn as well so my knowledge is far from professional
A quarter and a side view would be nice!
Also can you provide a link to the reference you used? I am curious^^
Hey Braintrain, those are some shots from maya viewport, hope thats ok.
The main ref I've been using is some 3dscans from 3dscanstore, the one above and an ecorche model
@biomag , as always, thanks for the advice! I'll start working on it today :pleased:
So far I've had to separate the mesh in zbrush because I realised doing it in maya removed the higher subdiv sculpting i've already done
the second model looks interesting!
Update on the hand and face, I kind of suck at the finer details haha but this is the best I could do right now. I think maybe the face needs to be smoothed out? I've just seen some other models and they have really smooth surfaces.
Had to separate the hands and head/neck completely into different tools because sub dividing the hand was constantly crashing my zbrush
As usual, CC very welcome
need to somehow figure out how to do clothes now..
Hi all! I'm not dead, just been busy (aren't we all!)
Made all the base meshes for the clothes. Slowly figuring out how to sculpt them all
back of the head definitely looks weird. I would fix it now but for whatever reason my zbrush base layer won't let me record!
Whole thing just feels 'off' now
Was being stupid, need to be on highest subdiv to even turn on recording.
Did some more work on the head, I think its betterish now. I still dont feel right about the profile though.
I can´t really give any advice on the head, since my anatomical knowledge is very limited in this area...
I see some things but I don´t know if that is personal taste or anatomically relevant. You can check out this post though:
http://polycount.com/discussion/76733/john-asaros-planes-of-the-head-high-res-photos
This could probably help you if you didn´t know about it already;) Can´t remember the name of the guy who made me aware of this, but it´s gold!
I'll fix the anatomy soon! Thanks
sorry, I've lost track of your thread, but you made big steps
Probably a little late, but you should revist the ears and neck. The ears should start at the same line as the brows and end at the same height as the nose.
The neck should also be a little wider. Take a look at this to get a better feeling for the muscles there -> https://www.artstation.com/artwork/yYPK
As your character has an elfish look those things might have been intended, but still I wanted to point it out. Also what might help you is to take a real life model or actress as a reference. You don't have to try to copy it 1:1 but it will help you when you are uncertain how specific things should look.
Good luck with it