Road to excellence (Female portrait project) ( Zbrush + Details + texturing + rendering + sobbing )

J0rdan225

Despite the title I am far off from excellence, one step at a time moving forward I'll come close to this excellence only to see the path is on going. 

Anyway this is my first post and wont be the last, I'm working on a female portrait at the moment to learn key elements that would help with future projects, anatomy, topology, texturing, color, lighting, rendering and even things I'm not yet aware of. 

This is where I hope to find some information in pushing this forward with suggestions, critiques or leads to helpful information elsewhere. 



At this stage I still tinker with forms to the best of my current ability, changing things that appear off to me. I would then like to add surface details like pores, stretches and subtle wrinkles. I see a lot of artists use the resource 'Texture XYZ' in order to get top notch details that otherwise would be near impossible to do manually.




Here's a great example of the level of finish I would like to achieve in my sculpt but I'm kind of at a loss of how to get this, so many methods and approaches. I would appreciate any advice in doing so or general theory. 
 
Cheers

(Ps I intend to use this post in  a blog type fashion as reference for development, if its in the wrong section then by all means let me know)

carvuliero

You are doing pretty well . Just few area are that you might want to investigate a bit further : neck torso connection , frontal eminence and glabela planes and relations ,zygomatic bone/arch , nose bridge and overall form blending

J0rdan225

I took note and will look at these points, thanks buddy

J0rdan225

Small update

carvuliero

Multiple views will be helpful .From this view alone I can tell you that her cheek muscle/fat are not going in the right direction -> mouth corner and I have seen muscular middle aged male with same forehead so maybe give her something a bit more delicate

FourtyNights

Looks like your character doesn't have an openable mouth, it looks watertight. It's a good habit to have an openable mouth with a mouthbag where you can place gums/teeth and a tongue, for that even further "excellence" as you're trying to achieve.

Also, if you sculpt the mouth just slightly open, you'll get cleaner bakes around the corners of mouth. Especially with the ambient occlusion bake, you'll get a nice smooth falloff for shadowing from outside to the inside of the mouthbag.

Here's a quick cross section of my basemesh how I've set up it with a mouthbag and polygroups.

Show for your future employers that you have what it takes to create a professional game ready head model for riggers and animators.

J0rdan225

This example is pretty helpful @FourtyNights I understand the mouth cavity is needed now. Would you recommend this be made in the retopo phase or in zbrush itself? Here's an update, my next step was to retopologize the mesh with the mouth cavity in mind. 


https://texturing.xyz/pages/tutorials 

FourtyNights

In my case, I already had a mouthbag in my basemesh before I started sculpting. Once I finished my sculpt, I retopoed the whole head including the mouthbag. I imported the new topolgy to ZBrush and projected my sculpt to the new topo with "Project All" function, sub-d by sub-d, because projecting straight with the highest sub-d level usually gives artifacts. Then I added a 3D layer, and sculpted a blendshape that closes the mouth. Now I have both high and low sharing the same topology. That way I can create new facial expressions and bake those separate wrinkle maps if I need them.

But bear in mind, that specific topology you see on my image I posted last time, is just a basemesh for sculpting, not a final animation-friendly game res mesh.

Anyway, answering yo your question, you could do this:

1. Retopo this sculpt, and model a mouthbag beyond the lips, to the inside.

2. Bring the new topo to ZBrush, on top of your original sculpt as a new subtool.

3. Subdivide your new topo to a similar polygon count level your original sculpt is.

4. Mask the mouthbag area to prevent it getting projected.

5. Project All, by starting with the lowest sub-d level, and project each level individually going from the lowest to the highest. Remember to hide subtools you don't want things to get projected on top of, such as eyes.

6. Once you've projected everything, check for possible projection artefacts and fix from there.

7. If you're happy with your sculpt and your new topo hasn't warped too much after additional sculpting (if you need some), use the lowest sub-d as your low poly... if it's warped due to heavy handed sculpting tendencies, retopo the final animation-friendly game resolution topology, again.