Hey all! So today is the start of the summer character workshop i'm hosting. I've encouraged the other guys to make their own threads and as/when they do i'll edit this post to contain their links. Please critique them and me as much as you can.
Joe Atilano:
http://polycount.com/discussion/174026/summer-character-workshop-most-high-ceoptra#latestTom Lishman:
http://polycount.com/discussion/174043/summer-character-workshop-nemesis-demon#latestShana Vandercruysse:
http://polycount.com/discussion/174047/summer-character-workshop-the-baker#latestSanna Kempe:
http://polycount.com/discussion/174058/summer-character-workshop-the-swordmaster#latestNathaniel Ramsey:
http://polycount.com/discussion/174074/summer-character-workshop-illaoi-fanart#latestStevie Cole:
http://polycount.com/discussion/174109/summer-workshop-neko-mancer#latestAs promised, i'm going to try to make this as easy to follow along for anyone that wants to as i can.
Today was all about finding a concept. Each person had a whole bunch of potentials that they liked the look of, and ultimately had to settle on one. Some of the things we talked about were:
- Having a folder full of concepts, and overviewing them as thumbnails, picking out the ones we found striking, whether it's from lighting/composition, or the posture of the character.
- Looking at how interesting a character was from a technical level (do they have interesting materials? is it something you've done a lot of before, etc).
- Whether it's something you think you'll genuinely enjoy... If it's not, don't do it, because you'll stop halfway through and fail.
- And finally, how challenging is it for you? It needs to be challenging enough that you'll learn something, but not so far out of your skill range that it's impossible to finish. again, stopping halfway through sucks.
So after weeding through all the concepts in my folder i decided on this one:
Jeanne D'arc by Sheng Yuan
It had the right elements to make me interested... I enjoy fantasy themed characters, it has a nice assortment of materials to work with (soft and hard leathers, different types of cloth, and some hard surface). And i quite liked the poise of the character, she looks like she's looking down on something/someone but ultimately comes across as a badass. And she's wearing enough clothing/armour to not fall into certain traps
With all that in mind, we talked about breaking down the concept into reference material. Going out and finding real world examples (or in the case of some of the people doing stylised stuff, finding examples in films that do similar). And mapping them to the concept image.
While doing this, finding and pulling apart trouble areas of the concept and hidden/vague things. In my own concept i noticed that she's not actually wearing boots made of cloth/leather. Those are actually almost stockings that go over some kind of armour. She's wearing heels. And is wearing at least three different types or thicknesses of cloth. The chest armour has some kind of pattern on it, what is it? It's likely that i'll have to flesh that part of the concept out so that i have it clear in my mind when i come to sculpt it.
Here's what i came up with:
Tomorrow i'll be doing some concept sketches of the areas that i can't quite make out, like the chest, and any armour that could be under the stockings. I'll also be trying to clear up the pattern on the skirt so that it's easier to texture later on.
Replies
Are you making a game engine model here or a 3d sculpt for printing thing ?
Starting with body... The concept depicts a strong woman, someone who (from the look of her clothes) has seen her fair share of scraps and scrapes (though lack of scarring on her skin? i might change that...) and neither armour or swords are particularly light. So i want to find a body type that looks like it could handle all of that. But being that she's also from some kind of fantasy world looking somewhat medieval in setting, i need to bear in mind that her form would likely develop naturally rather than by spending hours pumping iron.
This isn't strong enough....
But this is too strong!
The kind of body i'm looking for is someone who walks around wearing extra lbs in weight (due to armour/sword), which means they'll likely have quite a round butt, and well toned thighs. As a personal preference i normally prefer girls to have a bit of bodyfat to soften things out, but i can't imagine this being the case here. So that means some fairly visible ab muscles, and some good tone to the deltoid/biceps. It also means boobs that aren't particularly huge as well.
So with all that in mind i went and found some reference that i thought would be close to what i'm after, and started sketching over it... with my sketch overs i was looking to try and solidify my understanding of the forms i was seeing, highlighting contours on a face (convex and concave shapes), isolating what i'm looking for in the shape of the lips (something i see a lot of people do with cupid's bow actually, is to sweep the top of the lip downward, instead of slightly upward, hopefully you'll see what i mean in the pic below).
I also need to take into consideration how a corset will affect her form... I'd normally do a lot more sketching than this, but i'm working at the same time as running the workshop, so i don't have as much time as i'd like.
I tried to record a timelapse of the whole thing but today when i loaded the video from last night, i forgot to start recording before i got to work... so i only got the turntable at the end. Sorry guys =/
Anyway, i'm not sure how visible it will be in the video but i tried to impress upon the guys the importance of:
1. setting up a scale reference before you start ( i like to make a box for the character to stand on, and have a plane at the target height of the character, and then build everything within those bounds).
2. not staying in a single view for too long: i'm constantly moving around the mesh, usually every two or three brush strokes. doing this means i don't get locked into making one view look good only to find rotating around breaks everything. keep moving, keep iterating, and things come together quite quickly.
3. move brush! almost everything i did last night was the move brush. i don't think i really moved past that brush at all until today.
Timelapse here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d3ZTb1V4jxk
love this initiative of yours btw! will be a great pleasure following you and your "students" progress through this whole thing
Last night we all started doing a retopo stage. This is based on my own personal workflow for humanoid characters (particularly where the concept is solid/set), where if i'm not already starting from a basemesh, i like to create a retopoed lowpoly as early as i can.
In my mind this serves a dual purpose:
1. it gives me some good topology to work with.
2. it means i don't have to do it again later on... i can just move to the lowest subdivision level and call it "done".
I was using 3ds max for my retopo pass, i put Arshlevon's baseman in the background for me to use as reference while i worked, and i started out with some cylinders for the body, legs, and arms. arshe's baseman had 8 sides for the arms and legs, and 12 for the body. Mine is going to be twice as dense, with 16 for the legs and arms, and 32 for the body. I also had to make an actually retopoed head instead of his blank one.
Unfortunately after recording for 2 hours the video crapped out. I've sped it up into a timelapse for you all if you're interested in seeing the process. but basically i just took some cylinders, and used max's conform and relax tools on the whole thing. it made retopo very quick, and i'm happy with the base i've got now, it'll probably be my basemesh for future projects, and i'll upload it shortly when i've done a couple more tweaks.
video is uploading now... will take a couple of hours =/
https://youtu.be/M3qwxCN6I6k
unts unts unts unts unts unts unts unts
So here's my almost finished high poly, i still need to do the second, longer skirt, and plot out her hair properly, as well as do a final detail pass. But i'm starting to feel pretty happy with the results so far.
To come next week: Some delayed writeups on how i did the chainmail (micromesh, no big secret), and the cool metal things on her hips (path deform modifier in max).
A few months ago i made a procedural skin substance, it handles freckles and veins, and creates subdermis and transmission maps for me based on input colors that i choose...
Damn that sounds awesome. I'm not that much of a substance designer guy so it appears like black magic to me, but since it is procedural how does it know that the freckles should only apply on a certain area of the face ?
@Amaury The answer is most probably masks. You control where things happen in substance (and really in PBR texturing as a whole) through masks. Now how you actually go about generating said masks is another matter entirely; there's effect generators (noise, cloud, scratches, grunge etc), you could use the maps you baked (AO, transmission, curvature etc) or you could just paint in the masks old school.
@PyrZern Substance designer is a node based program and has no layers so one substance has everything. Substance painter on the other hand does have layers and give you the ability to paint textures on separately.
Bingo bango!
I did have a version of this running where it could reasonably judge fleshiness (through a combination of thickness map, and curvature), and generate redness/yellowness in the correct places based on that, but it became rally sluggish to use. but there was no really reliable algorithm for placing freckles in a way that looked consistently good.
So now all i do is create layer duplicates (so the base skintones match) and add freckles or veins where desired, or even change the base tones if i want redness (lips/cheeks etc.), then use masks to make it all tie together nicely.
It looks like this in painter:
Aaaand i'm still working on the lighting in toolbag:
this might have been asked already but whats your plan for the eyes, since they are closed like that.
I think the noisiness may be coming from the detail map, i haven't masked it off at all yet anywhere so there's just a constant noise across everything.
The eyes are closed as a result of planning! I created a layer in zbrush with the eyes open, and exported that to use as a morph target, so i can open the eyes as much or as little as i like. I wanted them closed so i could texture the eyelids better.
As you can see from the painter screenshot, i have the eyes, and insides of the mouth duplicated and offset so i can texture them external to the head with no problems
But there are no real budgets other than "be reasonable and sensible".
In my time freelancing i've seen just about every bind pose i can imagine. There was a game i helped with, where the characters were only ever running and carrying guns, the arms required such a small range of motion that they wanted the character modeled with the elbows bent 90 degrees, and the fingers almost completely wrapped. I've seen riggers request such minute things that it makes your head spin, and EVERY rigger wants it done differently, they all think they're special snowflakes who know best lol.
Anyway, have an update (i'll get round to lashes/brows at some point i'm sure):
Man i'm terrible at lighting...
Finally managed to finish her up!
Want to thank everyone who took part in the workshop, Nathan has already finished, Joe is almost done, Sanna and Shana are almost there, can't wait to see everyone's stuff smashing it!
Yeah i'm not happy either but... time to move on!
That said, testing out TB3 stuff...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wf2qhd0pBxQ
overall the process and workshop in general was a blast to follow, hope you do it again sometime!
updooted renders!
It is a bit late for this, but as you are going to take another look I might as well chime in as well
I think lowering the upper eyelid would make the expression a bit more relaxed, making the pupil a tad larger might also help.
I would take a look at the eyebrows, as a blonde I know that blonde eyebrows are scary af (I darken them myself as I don't want to look like a creature from the dark ^^). Take the tone a bit darker and she should look better. If I google "blondes" the array of eyebrow shades is big, but never as light as yours. Especially with darker make up, the eyebrows also need to get darker. Trust me, I used to be a make-up artist
For the hair I think if you could just tuck away the parts where the cards intersect with the head with new cards, you could get rid of that issue you have there. Hope this image explains how. Also gave the eyebrows a different look...
Hope you don't mind me giving my 2cents, and happy birthday brah!
I'm echoing some of the comments here already but I agree that the eye area could probably use another pass. The eyebrows look a little too slick and shiny imo. @shanana is on the money with the colour and while i'm personally fine with the shape you chose it does seem odd to have a really shiny specular on there. I also feel that the eyelashes could be a little more visible and the eyes themselves could benefit from a subtle top shadow card. As for the lighting i think a simple rimlight to pop some of these dark edges would help loads, especially given your choice of dark background. The silhouette of the front view especially really fades away into the BG. I did a quick thing-
These crits aside this is badass work man, especially in 2 months while also taking the time to mentor your group. And happy birthday! Hope you had a good one