Road to sculpting
polycounter lvl 3
Hey! I'm back again! This time I'll stay active haha.
Anyhow, I finally got the guts to tackle sculpting and so far, I've been starting with the face. I guess that I'll document my progress, my thoughts about this all, ask for help and so on. Perhaps I hope that this can stimulate others to start sculpting as well!
Day 1:
I had no idea what I was doing, to be honest. I ended up at 300k tris. The anatomy hurts my brain and it's just derp. For this, I had to use a basemesh for the head because I was so lost.
Day 2:
Began to look up some tutorials to understand what the crap I was doing. I learned as an example to actually use my tablet and to make the start mesh myself with two orbs. I also found the miracle of the clay-like texture on the material. It showed me the details so much better. However, I faced A LOT of issues along the way. First of all, to get the details I needed I had to increase to 1 mil tris. My potato laptop was NOT happy. The polygon around the eyes began to break and then I made a big mistake. I subdivided 1 mil to 2 mil tris. I had to force shut Blender and lose a lot of progression.
I figured out that my biggest mistake was to subdivide the poly around the eyes by hand because I forgot to select a few polygons while doing so.
Day 3:
I asked around for help and got some AMAZING advice by @Pior. I had to use Dyntopo on a more low-poly mesh. And boy, did this help. I started at around 200k-ish and ended up with 300k tris. THEN. I made a big mistake. I was looking into the modifier list to find something I could play around with and I found the "skin" option. I figured "huh why not". I clicked it and it froze up, directly. An hour later, Blender is still frozen. So there goes my eyes progress. Luckily enough I can still screenshot!
There's a lot of things I would like to change, such as the anatomy around the neck, make the eyelids better, make EYEBROWS, try out my first ears. But oh well, that's my own fault for not saving often enough.
Now let's see where the other days bring me! Can't wait till I get comfortable enough to make complete bodies.
Anyhow, I finally got the guts to tackle sculpting and so far, I've been starting with the face. I guess that I'll document my progress, my thoughts about this all, ask for help and so on. Perhaps I hope that this can stimulate others to start sculpting as well!
Day 1:
I had no idea what I was doing, to be honest. I ended up at 300k tris. The anatomy hurts my brain and it's just derp. For this, I had to use a basemesh for the head because I was so lost.
Day 2:
Began to look up some tutorials to understand what the crap I was doing. I learned as an example to actually use my tablet and to make the start mesh myself with two orbs. I also found the miracle of the clay-like texture on the material. It showed me the details so much better. However, I faced A LOT of issues along the way. First of all, to get the details I needed I had to increase to 1 mil tris. My potato laptop was NOT happy. The polygon around the eyes began to break and then I made a big mistake. I subdivided 1 mil to 2 mil tris. I had to force shut Blender and lose a lot of progression.
I figured out that my biggest mistake was to subdivide the poly around the eyes by hand because I forgot to select a few polygons while doing so.
Day 3:
I asked around for help and got some AMAZING advice by @Pior. I had to use Dyntopo on a more low-poly mesh. And boy, did this help. I started at around 200k-ish and ended up with 300k tris. THEN. I made a big mistake. I was looking into the modifier list to find something I could play around with and I found the "skin" option. I figured "huh why not". I clicked it and it froze up, directly. An hour later, Blender is still frozen. So there goes my eyes progress. Luckily enough I can still screenshot!
There's a lot of things I would like to change, such as the anatomy around the neck, make the eyelids better, make EYEBROWS, try out my first ears. But oh well, that's my own fault for not saving often enough.
Now let's see where the other days bring me! Can't wait till I get comfortable enough to make complete bodies.
Replies
I learned that Blender has autosave. SO I could continue working on my previous sculpt, which was lovely!
Making the ears was honestly the most relaxing part so far. Found some good references and tadah! And it brought the face together quite well! Right now debating if I want to add hair or call this done and work on something else.
Okay. This has been a hell. I know that this isn't really sculpting, instead it's polygon planes. But still! I think it's nice to show my progress.
I first build up the planes without any reference or concepts. It made me dislike the front bangs a lot but too late to fix that now. It just doesn't suit the face if you get what I mean? OH WELL. That was the easiest part. Then came the texture. </3 I was on the edge of crying. Very long story short, I thought that my textures had a black background instead of turning transparent. Turns out it was the planes casting such a harsh shadow onto the face that it looked completely black. So that was 50% of my progress, wasted.
I'm honestly quite pleased with how this looks like. There are some tiny patches that lack the texture but I figured that making the head brown will fix that. I also think that I can add more planes for more texture but since this is a test run, I find 50 planes enough.
I'm right now debating how I'm going to add the shadows and depth into the hair. I've heard about using alphas, but I'm not sure how to add that into Blender. Adding more than one texture hasn't been my strongest point so far.
While speaking I'm also installing Unreal engine so I can try to create a hair material for this hairstyle. Perhaps that will do the trick.
OH. For anyone who follows my progress, I do have a question. I've been googling for hours and hours but I can't get a lot of help. How can I apply physics (especially in Unreal engine) to the planes? Do I have to rig each plane to a separate bone (which is then applied to the main bone in the head)? Or are there easier ways?
Seems a little too concave, coming out too much, to my eye? perhaps slope it inwards more.
If you post bigger images and without a 'shiny' material, it may be better to crit the anatomy perhaps.
i'd like to see bigger images of the head without the hair, and from the side view to see the skull shape and anatomy more.
It does look good at this stage, though. Nice work!
I can definitely see what you mean around the neck. I couldn't seem to capture the same shadow without the clay-material I use, which is rather annoying. However, the collarbone seems too aggressive and the transition between the muscles is also a bit too much. So I'll work on that for sure!
OH thank you for taking your time to write this down by the way!
EDIT: Messed around a bit more with the lightning and found something that revealed the neck better!
I've never used this program before so i've no idea about the material options. In Zbrush there's loads of sculpt material options to choose from to find a good one to display details well. Maybe blender has various choices too? But i guess every person has a preferred material for sculpting/showing, so I couldn't really recommend which is best as i'm no expert
Does blender have a less bright, grey clay material? or 'mud'? From the pro guys i've seen on here, these seem to be pretty popular materials for sculpting.
Looking good. I think for critique images with profile views, perhaps not using 'perspective' view might help? Perspective view can give a distorted look of the proportions i find...
Also, it might save time to not render images, just take a straight up screen grab in the interface if possible at this stage just to get anatomy crits.
I would say the head seems a little 'egg-shaped', or pointy at the top. BUT, that could be because of 'perspective' view of the sculpt.
Is there an option for 'orthographic'? I find this is really good for front/side profile images to judge the anatmoy.
Keep it up! I'm following eagerly as i'm on the same 'road to sculpting'
Thank you for all the advice.
I found a more clay-like material and I found orthographic view. I honestly can't stop with laughing. I never expected her to look so derpy in orthographic view.
Anyhow. The skull indeed looks a bit egg-shaped. I raised the neck backward slightly and pushed the ear and jawline back as well. It helped fixing the egg-shape a bit, but I'm not done yet.
But that front view. Oh my lordy. Where do I even start.
I'd say you got good anatomy going on here
I don't think the skull looks too egg-shaped now that it's in orthographic view. Just lower it a tiny bit at the top/front area perhaps?
It's looking better each time.
Do you have a particular style or concept you're aiming for? It seems to be in the realistic style right now.
It has a very young/child-like proportion going on also.
I can only give general anatomy crits without a concept or description of what you're aiming for. However, it does look anatomically very good
The ears are separate objects? perhaps it's better to sculpt them as one whole piece. BUT, this might be fine, i'm just a hobbyist with no pro credentials, so it might be perfectly ok.
I just have my current '(NSFW) Character Sculpt' thread going on at the moment that you've commented on (thanks!). I had from time to time thrown out other projects on the forum in the past that never really took off, and i'm kind of embarrassed now looking back at them.... wish i could delete them!
Hahaha it's very matte, I agree. Luckily the main purpose is to make game models so the matte/shiny issue is something that the game engine can focus on!
I'm honestly free-styling everything. I did use some references for the ears and some for the nose shape and so on, but I don't stick too closely to them. All I'm trying to do is pick something realistic and give it my own swing to it. Stylized realistic as some might call it. The young features are not something I was looking for, though. SO time to fix that!
Really, thank you so much for all your help! I'm so happy!
I made my first full body sculpt (the hands need some work, or well, the end of the finger tips) but all in all, I'm super proud. I had some anatomy help and I couldn't have gotten this without them (all the shoutout to the people who helped).
Now, my laptop is not happy with the high poly base so the next step (after fixing the fingers) will be retopology. After I have the 'Low-poly' base I'll sculpt the outfit on high poly so my laptop will have an easier time with it all. It's going to be cinderella by the way! That's why she's on her toes.
Oh. This is also my first sculpt in Zbrush. That really, REALLY had a deep learning curve, holy shizze! But I managed with the help of some people and lots of YouTube.
Keep learning and good luck
@Elithenia It's really a honor to be able to show my progress and I'm so happy that I am actually improving. And I'll totally keep it up, thank you for the sweet compliment!
Then hell continued, I had to add the flowers in the hair. WOEH. Another few hours later. It was amazing though to have my own brushes with the flowers, so I could just pop it in. I added the skin details, fixed the smiling wrinkle so she looks less old and worked a bit onto her expression to give her the innocent look.
Day 17 tasks:
Get my shizzle together and start working on the hair again, it really needs some more details.
Finally add the horns. (Which is why the flowers don't go too high)
Perhaps a few leaves in her hair would be adorable. Would also work around the horns.
However, when it comes to putting it into the hair, I would say that the roses should be bigger compared to the other flower, as you usually don't get that small roses, unless they are the miniature version. I would make the roses bigger and maybe bunch them up into a small flower arrangement, and then intersperse the hair with the other flower.
Do you have a concept that you are working after?
As for the flowers, they are actually based around the miniature "mini white roses", most often found in wedding hairstyles. But now that I'm taking a closer look, I do think you are right about bunching them up. Most of the mini white roses come in patches/small arrangements which I totally forgot because I was just dropping them around and shouted 'OKAY GOODNIGHT'. So I think that I'll make the roses even smaller so they fit the reference better and begin to actually arrange them. Thank you for noticing!
I'm not following any concept what so ever. I have a view in my head with what I want, but I honestly didn't expect to go this detailed for a first try sculpt in Zbrush. For my next few sculpts I will be using concepts by the way, just to avoid such mistakes!
Keep on working, you'll get there
Anyhow, I will! Right now I'm at work so I can't sculpt but meh. TONIGHT I'll try to finish it!
As for the flower girl head, I don't have the screenshots but I've started on placing the smaller flowers more appropriately. I also reduced the lip size a bit, pushed up her cheeks to make her smiling more warm and made the shoulders broader and thus her head looks less big.
First of all, pardon me for the tiny pictures. Working from my small laptop screen. Quite annoying.
Anyhow. Gosh, this girl has been a pain in the butt. Mainly because I messed up and figured out that my rose brush contained 0,1 mil points. So after 10 roses I had 1 mil points. Because of this, I had to lower it but now the roses have ugly holes. Oh well no one will see it from afar! But still, with 5 mil points my laptop could barely handle it. One save takes me over 15 minutes! Next time, less roses and flowers.
I also noticed that I had no idea with what I was doing with the hair and kinda just gave up on it. SO that's something I'd have to focus on. I also learned that I love to make wood texture. Those horns mhm
Anyhow, some "beauty" shots below aka screenshots because I have no idea how to make beauty shots.
(See that hairy mess? YEh I gave up)
All in all, I'm proud. This is my first Zbrush sculpt after all. Looking back I would've changed a lot, such as working more with references to get the anatomy right, study hair sculpts instead of messing around and avoid placing 100 small flowers and killing my laptop in the progress. But I'm happy!
Now, I'm debating between either a mecha girl, a girl with a huge flower crown (With HUGE flowers so I won't need too many flowers aka I'm saving my tris/points/thingy) orrr some type of alien girl.
Great job starting out. Looking forward to seeing more
I decided to lower the polycount of the face and add some laughable rings to the eyes and mouth in an attempt to understand retopology and then failed a lot. So that'll be a learning progress for another day. I also felt the need of actually texturing so I could progress in that so, well!
Funnily enough, I had to change the base quite a bit. Nose got smaller, lips got smaller, eye shape changed. I didn't notice how flawed her anatomy was until I began to texture her. I also decided to remove her horns and flowers and turn her into a wildling!
These were some screenshots I created of the texture when I still had no idea what I was doing.This first texture pass made me call her "horrorface".
Once I applied the hair-mesh and did some research on hand painted faces, I began to make slow progress.
After that I switched the concept to make her seem more interesting and kept going until I had the final result! Can't wait to texture the hair.
The body will be used for this queen! It was a quick sketch, some colors are off but that'll be fixed once I texture her.
(For the sake of it, the queen design will be used for my own personal project so I'd rather not have people using it/copying it)
Keep at it.
Oh I'll never get used to how ugly JPG files are. Anyhow.
I've finished the main face for the queen sculpt! (making it my 4th facial sculpt and 2th blender face sculpt). It was really a pain. I had to redo many MANY parts quite a few times because of Zbrush suddenly closing on me. For this face I started off with planes for the face and applied muscles until I had something that I was happy with. Then I just began to sculpt, trying to make her look a bit like the queen concept. In the end I made a shift from a realistic attempt to stylish, which I'm happy for. I think it captures the stiffness of a queen way more!
Now, while writing this I already fixed a few stuff that I noticed after the facial pass. The weird and sharp curve at the start of the eyelids and the lack of shadow at the end of the eyebrows. But all in all, I'm pleased!
I also looked at the muscle advice and continued working on it. It looks way better, atm lacking a screenshot though but yeh. Thank you!
I decided to stop posting my queen updates here and made her an own thread instead of clogging my study thread with her.
http://polycount.com/discussion/186955/wip-the-queen/p1?new=1
I'm just wondering if the sculpt will be too stylized, considering my style is inbetween realism and stylized. Oh well. Only time can tell and if it is too stylized I can continue tweaking it until it's my own style.
I'm quite happy with the results so far! I want to remove the expression of her face, considering she needs to look completely blank. Anddd do a proper anatomy pass with the placement of the nose and the mouth and the eyes. But comparing this to the queen model I'd say I've made a big improvement.
I just noticed how the skull shape near the top is incorrect, but besides that, I think the head is pretty much done. Might raise the res and smooth out the ears but that's it. Also fun fact, I've resculpted the eyebrows for over 10 times now. Not because I wanted to but because they kept disappearing. Who needs eyebrows anyway. But yeh, think it's done! Next up, the body.
And the body! Still tweaking it a lot, really unhappy with the hands and the belly can use some tweaking. I used a really basic base mesh because I'm still a bit puzzled over how to start a body properly and began to beat the devil out of it!
https://www.artstation.com/artwork/gNr2G
https://www.artstation.com/artwork/2Qkve
So I've finally figured out what to do with the body and head, and changed her into my "elf" Arizia. Adding all the scarring on the face and body was such a fun thing to do, despite the fact I literally ruined her face now. (Note, I'm not following the sketch of the face fully. I couldn't be bothered with the accurate ear-shape and the face is old by now and has some mistakes I'm ignoring).
I did realize though that sculpting hair is a nightmare and I highly prefer stylized polgyon strands and/or hair cards. But it is what it is, it'll be fully sculpted for now and once the sculpture is done I'll retopo and go wild with the hair! I also learned how to make a curved brush for the braid which I'm beyond happy with.