Here's some changes after @Brian "Panda" Choi's critiques. I studied my reference more closely with that helpful chart in mind, and yeah, I wasn't looking close enough. Just a little change makes a big difference, so I'll continue working on these areas, and probably find some other areas needing more attention to. Thanks.
Anoushka Shankar is the reference, but please keep in mind I don't have the inclination to go for a full 1::1 likeness. My goal is to just capture her basic character, and of course have a believable human face.
Also note, I am only concentrating on area's that will be seen, so there is no work done behind the hairline so far.
@Brian "Panda" Choi , I still have a bit more work to do with the lips and I actually found it necessary to change up the entire mouth region a bit, but I do think it's starting to look a lot better.
This is where I am at currently, still working at the moment but I definitely appreciate further critiques:
Little bit more progress here. I'll wait and see what you guys have to say but I'm feeling like the age is reading better now, I'm closer to the reference, and she's prettier overall while still having that hawk-like look. Definitely more time with the mouth and eyes made a big difference, but I also did more work refining the skull structure and the way the cheeks are sitting: I found that sometimes when you think an error is in one spot, it's actually in the way another area is influencing it, if that makes sense. So like, I made some edits to the lips, but that threw things off, then I realized that the way the whole mouth area was resting on the skull wasn't quite right. Very small pushes and pulls but it makes a big difference.
Adding eyebrow with eye area , also you have to give her bullet shape face and in side view check has to move a lot forward ,wider mouth ,chin, nose and bigger eyes if you want to look like her
Its far from perfect if look close she is turned toward camera slightly but is the best I could find from a simple image search , probably her chin sticks out even more
Ah, I see. I had the impression it was like, a photo taken especially for artist. I've mostly been working from videos as 2d reference images can be so different it kind of screws with me.
I am amazed how far off my jaw was. I have a 3d skull that I put inside to kind of make sure I'm not doing anything too crazy, but I guess either jaw sizes can vary greatly or maybe my proportions were just fundamentally fucked. Either way, will get to the bottom of this.
Screenshots from a video is a viable option I use it for actors most movies have at least a few shots with 90 degree head turn of the actor I am looking for
It helps me a lot seeing the person or object in motion. Also my wife has a pretty similar formed face so I am bothering her all the time, haha. She is pretty sick of this model by now.
Changing the jaw in such a major way is forcing me to go over everything much more carefully. Will probably take the rest of the day and maybe into tomorrow before I can come back with updates. Thanks again.
This is looking a lot better now. I may have smoothed out the brows a bit too much and have a few more small tweaks to make, but I think this is definitely getting much closer to the reference. It took a lot to make her not ugly -- surprising how hard it is to make a person not ugly -- but now I think we've got her longer, lean looking face but with the pronounced cheekbones and it's neither to gaunt nor too wide. I think the fundamental flaw I was making before was that I was trying to force Anoushka's head onto somebody else's skull, so I just ended up with a weird mashup. Once I forced her into the helpful bounding boxes @carvuliero provided, then I had to go back and rework the whole skull structure to make sense. I even had to adjust the eyes inwards slightly. Total overhaul. But now it looks -- to me at least -- much more like the reference.
Anyway, learning a lot and happy with progress. Thanks a lot for the suggestions guys, and please keep them coming! At some point I'll have to say "ok this is good enough" and continue on, but I think the face could stand another day of work or two just focusing on the anatomy and forms.
I'm always open to more critiques, but I'm gonna go forward into skin detailing.
Here's the sculpt in Toolbag with vertex paint. I like to test it out with different lighting, move everything around. Not sure if final scene will have dramatic shadows or more even lighting like this, so I want to make sure it looks good both ways.
No, this color info is just for visualization only right now. I start by projecting an image with spotlight, then just kind of smooth it out and touch up. Just a quick and dirty thing to help me visualize the final product -- same reason I take the sculpt into toolbag so I can look at it with the SSS shader and all that. But once I get into Substance Painter, I'll probably just start from scratch -- possibly use the vertex colors as a starting point since they do have a nice tone I think.
My plan right now regarding her colors is to start with a realistic tone but kind of buff it a bit with golden yellow to give her just a touch of other-worldly feeling.
Picture below : This is a doll and not realistic at all, but I like that glowing orangey-yellow and think going towards that just a little would help her feel really goddess-like. So I will start with the realistic skin with the different values where there is more blood flow and so on, but then I'll try to make her look kind of idealized and perfect, which may end up with a more even hue. But I'll just have to play with it and see. Final image should be a balance between believable realness and idealization. That's just the art style I've always enjoyed the most.
edit : I think I see what we're talking about. It's not so much about making the bone pop out, but how the skin there should be sitting on it. Kind of hard to see in a lot of these photo's but let me do some more work there and see if it look's beter.
For the nose bone, or the lacrimal IIRC, do you expect that part to be slightly protruded? I was looking at some charts, and then at my reference, and I'm not really seeing the "landmark". I mean, I know the bone is there and then it becomes cartilage, but I just kind find the delineation by observation.
Here I have exaggerated it from what I had. Is this more the kind of shape you expect to see?
@Brian "Panda" Choi , I think this looks a bit better. I guess that spot doesn't have any meat on it, so the skin should hug the bone a bit, and show a subtle but noticeable contour when seen from the front. Hopefully I'm understanding this correctly. Overall looks better to my eye now anyway.
Nevermind the ears, things got moved around a bit, will fix those up later. I'm liking the face -- about ready to make the executive decision to call it done and start on the crown, but I won't go into baking/texturing until all the sculpting is finished for everything, so I can incorporate any feedback.
Yikes. Those are hanging down too far, right? I think I was just too heavy handed and got focused on something else and didn't quality control that good enough.
I wouldn't say I copied the paintover, more like I tried to understand why the area's he pointed out were wrong.
I don't disagree, but I want to understand what I am doing, not just relying on somebody else's expertise to get the work done. So I look at the paint-overs, then at some anatomy references and my own reference and lots of different people's faces, and I try to understand what's going on, what I missed, why I missed it, and so on. It's a little slower but I'm developing a much better understanding of how the human face is that I can take forward from here.
I think I understand what I was missing each time now, and it's really too much to type, but basically it just boils down to me not having a solid enough understanding of the human head and thus misinterpreting the reference I was using. Some parts I exaggerated too much, other parts I didn't notice at all. Just general inexperience is all.
Also, process matters. I'd change one area which would make something else look off, but the real issue was broader -- like changing the lips can be endless if the jawbone isn't right or the nose its out of place, as an example. So, as a theory I understand that it's important to nail the big forms first -- however, in practice, now I understand that I had not nailed them when I thought that I had.
Just a matter of spending more time studying and working is all. You guy's have helped speed up the process immensely for sure. I'm not as critical and don't know the tell-tale things to look for yet. I would've said "good enough" too soon, but no doubt the face is much higher quality at this point than from before ya'll jumped in. I can see a lot more of the likeness, and also my ecorche is fitting inside perfectly even though I haven't used it as reference since taking your guy's critiques.
Yeah take some time to learn all the volumes that make a head but if you plan to make humans you have to put the time
Forehead brow lips and chin are all on the same line which is a big weird check last image [pro tip if you connect further most point on the nose and chin that line in most cases will hit bottom lip]
Learning planes of the head could be really good to keep yourself in check
Maybe give her one more try and let her rest till you finish the rest of the scene , pretty much leave face for last
Yeah, good call. I think I'll do that. Kind of excited to get started on all this jewelry and get the whole thing at like 70% before I drop a ton of time just working on anatomy.
Working on the crown, I made a bunch of modular pieces for an insert mesh brush and just go crazy with it. I keep the jewels and any pieces that need separate material properties as different subtool, that way I can bake them into an ID map for ease of texturing later. All the gold parts I just dynamesh together, so it appears welded together just like a real life crown like this would be.
Mask by smoothness is handy for getting the red paint where it belongs. This is ofcourse just materials in zbrush for my own visualization right now, but the final textures will be pretty similar.
This was hard to get started, trying to figure the most efficient workflow, but now it's hard to stop. Lots of fun trying out different designs.
Second pass with the crown. I improved my modular pieces, and now that I got the workflow kinks settled I focused more on the design this time. Before I go into the rest of the high poly pieces like this, I'm going to build a low-poly and do some test bakes. Make sure this is all gonna work out how I plan.
Going ahead with some bakes will also give me a better idea of how low-level I should go with the details. As you can imagine, this is very time consuming, so I don't need to waste time working on details so small they'll be blurred out even with a 4k material. But I don't want to design something that only looks good with 4k materials. As far as I know, I don't think resolution that big is usually used in games? I dunno, but it should still look decent if I downsize, so I'll try to accomplish that.
This time I am waiting to combine anything until the end. I want to keep this as malleable as possible so I can make any design changes if I change my mind at any point.
This is definitely pushing my patience, and I'm not even half-way finished. But that is exactly the purpose of this project. Without challenge, you don't adapt. And if you aren't in the habit of making adaptations, you won't survive.
Just got the low poly ready yesterday, then an goddamned earthquake trashed the house and broke my computer, among other things. May be some time before I can get it repaired and back to work.
Not much here, just updating to make myself feel ike there is progress after having to sit around not doing 3d for a couple days. Had to replace the motherboard on my pc, but everything's ship shape now. I added a little and changed some design a little bit. Will update the low poly and get baking done tomorrow then.
Not sure about a good way to cap off the end of the serpent tail. I just put a sphere there. Maybe it's an easily overlooked detail and doesn't matter, considering how much extravagant shit like this will be in the scene. I also messed around with having the coiled tail sticking out a bit, but that ended up looking kind of like a japanese samurai style.
Got the main part of the crown all tested out with good results. A few boo-boos to correct and a couple places where I will add some geometry rather than rely totally on normal map. But overall, everything has worked at good after just a bit of experimentation. Progress this previous week has been slowed down due to complications after the earthquake, but I hope to hammer out some good work this week and this is a good start.
About 7,000 tris, but I haven't gone through with targeted welding yet so that may be reduced a little bit still. The side-pieces with the snakes and the wreaths will add a lot. Object ID map makes complex organization a breeze. Just organize my subtools based on material qualities and I'm set. Now targeting all the different gems and gold and painted gold will be a cinch. Again, I got to praise Marmoset Toolbag for making this type of thing so darn easy.
Posting textures may be helpful as well. You can see a few spots where I need to match my low and hi a bit better. Still plenty of work to do but at least now I know that it can all work.
I don't have much hard-surface experience. I have straightened some areas that are hidden just to make packing a bit tighter. Although this is a metal object, it is kind of hand-formed and organic in a nature, so there isn't any real hard edges. However, if any of you hard-surface guru's are looking at this and pulling your hair, please let me know. You won't hurt my feelings and I'll love you forever.
Finally hit a milestone. Retopo sucked more than I could have imagined. I had to do it many times to get things to bake well. My first attempt was actually fine, but the process was so tedious I thought "there has to be a better way." So I tried other ways but none of them were as good.No way to automate any of it with optimal results. Just had to be done all by hand.
But, I didn't die or go blind so the low poly for the crown is now finished. I went ahead and did some real quick and dirty textures just for fun. Please disregard the worlds ugliest gems -- that is something I have to study a bit. I put a generic "flakes" normal map on them -- that's not part of the sculpt. But it's just temporary textures for fun is all.
Now that I've gone through the complete process with the crown, I will do the rest of the ornamental pieces. I will try to avoid more frilly edges as it gets heavy fast. The crown weighs in at just over 20k tri's, mostly due to the frilly edges. They were really slow to do but I think it makes a nice silhouette. I don't want anything in the scene to look like, "oh it's for a game so they have to cut some corners." This is a Hindu goddess. It's got to be just absolutely extravagant. But, since the rest of the ornamental pieces will be against Durga's body, and thus not contribute to the silhouette, I don't think it would be worth the time to do frilly edges on them anyhow.
I won't put up the UV map because I have it split into two materials and not optimized. I'm not sure how I want to combine everything so I'll just get it all finished first and then do that at the end.
there is a normal map glitch on the apex of the topmost tear-drop wreath. Something to fix. Gem colors are not final. I will mix them up a bit so it looks nice. But probably stick to red and white colors. I'll lower the tri count a bit more by going through and doing some selective vert welding on a few pieces I was sloppy with. Increased the size of the snake/wreath pieces. I think that looks cool with them larger like that.
Nothing to be jealous of. No secret technique or anything advanced -- just purely a test of patience. I had to adjust my mindset so it didn't drive me crazy. I kept telling myself, "You are Da Vinci painting the Sistine Chapel."
I think with digital art, it is easy to get into a mindset of expecting things to be done quickly. But sometimes you just got to weld thousands of verts one by one. Might as well find some way to enjoy it, or at least not hate it. But anyway, I am glad I'm done with that shit. For a little while at least.
I will say this about the topology : it's way easier if you just throw all the rules out the door and just go crazy with the multicut tool, putting edges whereever you need and then saving thoughtful cleanup until the end. Trying to think carefully through it all as you go is too taxing.
If you call redoing things progress, here is some progress.
A few reasons for redesigning the crown one more time:
One, I picked up some fantastic ornamental decoration pieces from Artstation store and I wanted to incorporate them. Two, I wasn't happy with the design. Parts of it looked sloppy to me and the shapes/lines were kind of ugly. And three, I wanted to make a design that wouldn't require such a high poly count from the game model. So I did away with many of the frilly edges along the silhouette. Overall this will be easier to retopo and bake but also looks better as well.
I swear I won't redo it again even if I really want to. It's good enough.
I think this is more pleasing shapes, especially with the snake.
This damn snake head took me forever to do. I don't know why, it was just really hard to make look right.
Now that I've got my ornament IMM's all sorted, got the full workflow greenlighted, I think I will take a break from that for a moment and work on touching up the saree, and sculpting the arms. Try to get the whole thing to like 70% before I get into tedious placement of doo-dads again.
Got arms roughed in and some small jewelry pieces. Gonna be gone for a few weeks, but hopefully can get all the small jewelries finished in the next few days and maybe a bit of work on the clothes as well.
Been dreading the intricate designs to be made on the saree, but I did two things which have given me a lot of confidence and energy to take the challenge on -- 1, i did a bunch of digital drawing/painting tutorials in photoshop, and 2. i did some test runs of working with displacement maps in zbrush. So that's the two methods I'll use for the saree, and turns out it's not so hard and now I am excited to see what I can do.
The arms are the only exposed part of the goddesses body. I feel it's important to show respect and not try to sexualize her, and also I want to imagine her in a way that I think people thousands of years ago might have. However, she is a goddess of war, who slays demons of chaos with an arsenal of like 10 different weapons, so I think it's not in bad taste to give a little bit of a fitness vibe with what little we see of her body. Nothing crazy, but I think she should have a little sinew to her forearms. I mention this because, compared to ancient notions of beauty and femininity, this may be a bit more contemporary. But I think it's a reasonable compromise.
Here's a little lesson learned :
I spent a solid chunk of an afternoon sculpting this snarling tiger, only to realize I couldn't fit it anywhere without it looking silly. But, layer I realized it would make a good ring, so there you go. Lesson learned is, well, just work from concept rather than making design up as you go. But if you won't do that, be sure to not get upset when you waste time. Always be looking for something to learn so you aren't literally just wasting time.
I think it would help to add a bit more asymmetry to the face (if you haven't already) Also perhaps check the proportioning between the head, neck and body (with regards to the actress reference) And great work on the crown and ornaments!
Thanks Nikhil. I will double check those things when I get back to the body/face. The body proportions are only slightly modified from a base mesh, so definitely below the head it's going to be different from the reference. But I was fine wiht the way the saree sat on the base mesh so I just went with that.
Definitely I'll add a touch of realism to the face by making it slightly imperfect. And the mouth especially needs a lot more attention.
One thing I want to try and accomplish is to get the skin on her skull feeling very taught -- kind of an intense look -- not really sure how to explain it but hopefully I can just show with the art.
because anatomy is so important for the character artist, I want to get all the rest of the high-poly finished so that I can just relax my mind and take all the time I need to get the face and arms looking perfect. should finish all the jewelry and necklace this week, then I'll be gone about two weeks and should come back fresh to finish off the high-poly strongly.
and thanks for following along. It really helps keep up the motivation.
january 2nd -- minor updates not gonna bump the thread for it but I did a little poking at the face in addition to working on the collar piece.
Jan 3rd. Almost there.... just got to finish the belt tomorrow morning, then I'm done with this damn jewelry (except for all the props/weapons I'll have to do later)!
Finally got the belt done. I don't like to see the same details repeating across the different pieces of jewelry so I made a lot more unique pieces and also used a texture to tile across the mid part of the belt. Also did a bit fancier shape that I think is more flattering. Just pulling bits and pieces I like from different references.
If you are wondering, the little detail pieces come from several places -- some I build from purchased clip art. I use spotlight to paint black polypaint onto a plane, mask by intensity, delete the extra, and then just use inflate and panel loops from there to make some little doo-dad pieces. Some of the more complex pieces are from a package of scanned ornate doo-dads you can find on the art station store. And a handful are things I just sculpted by hand, usually using reference photos of temple jewelry as a guide.
So that's that for the jewelry then.
The rest of the week I'll touch up on the saree and also do some experiments to see how the thicker parts of embroidery will look doing them via displacement-to-geo in zbrush versus doing 100% in substance painter. I expect I'll use a bit of both. Especially the sleeve cuffs on the top may be thick enough to warrant some geometry support from the low-poly.
Once that's figured it will be on to finishing up the anatomy, which should be done by the end of next week if I can stay within my schedule.
Post-vacation blues made me try to race through it fast with impatience, which ended up costing me way more time because I had to do things over and grumpy with myself. Always got to remember, slow is smooth and smooth is fast.
Post-vacation blues made me try to race through it fast with impatience, which ended up costing me way more time because I had to do things over and grumpy with myself. Always got to remember, slow is smooth and smooth is fast.
You really have gone all out on the detail. Make sure to have some good close ups of your presentation of the low poly to show how intricate it all is!
building up a new head from scratch just for the sake of more practice, also it seems beneficial to have a couple designs side by side -- gives a better perspective about what's working or not than just having one. Also built a new low-poly designed to give a little easier time sculpting the little corners on the lips and eye lids. I hate having to subdivide just to get those spots to sculpt good.
Not following my reference of Anoushka Shankar super closely anymore. Just kind of going with what looks right for the character. The ref is still up on my screen of course but I'm trying to look more at my actual work and judge it by itself rather than fussing over whether or not I'm nailing a likeness, as that really isn't the goal anyhow.
Old head is on right, new one on left. Will work on the face for a few more days probably.
im thinking left looks a bit too young. I like right pretty well -- she seems more serious and has a more dignified feel -- but perhaps she can use just a touch more of the youthful features.
jan 29: finally hitting something I like, after hours and hours of sculpting in circles. Learning little bit by bit about head anatomy. This time I started with the brain, studied the crenulations, and then mapped the nerves one at a time... joking, joking. But if you are a real artist, that's where you'll start.
Getting a little closer to likeness. I said I wasn't going for that, and I'm not, but Anoushka Shankar is just the perfect face for this model and whatever I had simply didn't look right. Gonna continue pushing the primary and secondary forms until Michelangelo rises from the grave and blesses me.
wasting too much time sculpting in circles, wondering if I'm getting anywhere. Problem was I haven't made enough complete characters to really be able to read a sculpt and know when it's where it needs to be. So I made a quick unwrap and did some textures to see how it's gonna look. Overall I am liking it. Eyebrows and eyelashes I just painted because this is only for visualization, but I think this is gonna look pretty good. Durga is not supposed to look mean or angry, but I think i'll give a little more angle to her brows just because, I dunno it seems weird with such a soft expression.
Gonna move down to the arms and shape things up down there for now. Once that is done I'll post it around and see what people have to say about the anatomy.
I'm thinking the face needs more definition, mostly in the lip area, right now it looks pursed for some reason. Could you provide a side view in orthographic. Detail on the accessories is excellent. Are you going for a realistic or semi realistic/stylized look? Adding pore detail would also bump things up a notch. And I highly recommend rendering with unreal 4's digital human shader over marmoset, what a difference. https://polycount.com/discussion/206285/star-trek-khan-noonien-singh-game-ready-model-upgraded-realtime-render
i'm making a few adjustments to the face today then I'll throw up some images for critique. I'm going for fully realistic -- I'll probably stick with marmoset just because I already have my plate full with this. The textures right now are just quick n dirty because i wanted to see how the sculpt would look more finalized. I have added a bit of skin detailing on the sculpt, but do you think it should be more visible?
about the lips... I am pretty confident they are matching my reference. She has pretty unique lips, not as much of a curve as others. Of course the slightest expression and they change a lot. But they shouldn't look pursed... I'll play around with them further.
Replies
Here's some changes after @Brian "Panda" Choi's critiques. I studied my reference more closely with that helpful chart in mind, and yeah, I wasn't looking close enough. Just a little change makes a big difference, so I'll continue working on these areas, and probably find some other areas needing more attention to. Thanks.
edit -- I posted shots of an older version.
@carvuliero , I was hoping you would show up!
Anoushka Shankar is the reference, but please keep in mind I don't have the inclination to go for a full 1::1 likeness. My goal is to just capture her basic character, and of course have a believable human face.
Also note, I am only concentrating on area's that will be seen, so there is no work done behind the hairline so far.
@Brian "Panda" Choi , I still have a bit more work to do with the lips and I actually found it necessary to change up the entire mouth region a bit, but I do think it's starting to look a lot better.
This is where I am at currently, still working at the moment but I definitely appreciate further critiques:
Little bit more progress here. I'll wait and see what you guys have to say but I'm feeling like the age is reading better now, I'm closer to the reference, and she's prettier overall while still having that hawk-like look. Definitely more time with the mouth and eyes made a big difference, but I also did more work refining the skull structure and the way the cheeks are sitting: I found that sometimes when you think an error is in one spot, it's actually in the way another area is influencing it, if that makes sense. So like, I made some edits to the lips, but that threw things off, then I realized that the way the whole mouth area was resting on the skull wasn't quite right. Very small pushes and pulls but it makes a big difference.
Where did you get that perfect side shot??
I am amazed how far off my jaw was. I have a 3d skull that I put inside to kind of make sure I'm not doing anything too crazy, but I guess either jaw sizes can vary greatly or maybe my proportions were just fundamentally fucked. Either way, will get to the bottom of this.
Changing the jaw in such a major way is forcing me to go over everything much more carefully. Will probably take the rest of the day and maybe into tomorrow before I can come back with updates. Thanks again.
Anyway, learning a lot and happy with progress. Thanks a lot for the suggestions guys, and please keep them coming! At some point I'll have to say "ok this is good enough" and continue on, but I think the face could stand another day of work or two just focusing on the anatomy and forms.
Here's the sculpt in Toolbag with vertex paint. I like to test it out with different lighting, move everything around. Not sure if final scene will have dramatic shadows or more even lighting like this, so I want to make sure it looks good both ways.
My plan right now regarding her colors is to start with a realistic tone but kind of buff it a bit with golden yellow to give her just a touch of other-worldly feeling.
Picture below : This is a doll and not realistic at all, but I like that glowing orangey-yellow and think going towards that just a little would help her feel really goddess-like. So I will start with the realistic skin with the different values where there is more blood flow and so on, but then I'll try to make her look kind of idealized and perfect, which may end up with a more even hue. But I'll just have to play with it and see. Final image should be a balance between believable realness and idealization. That's just the art style I've always enjoyed the most.
For the nose bone, or the lacrimal IIRC, do you expect that part to be slightly protruded? I was looking at some charts, and then at my reference, and I'm not really seeing the "landmark". I mean, I know the bone is there and then it becomes cartilage, but I just kind find the delineation by observation.
Here I have exaggerated it from what I had. Is this more the kind of shape you expect to see?
I wouldn't say I copied the paintover, more like I tried to understand why the area's he pointed out were wrong.
Also, process matters. I'd change one area which would make something else look off, but the real issue was broader -- like changing the lips can be endless if the jawbone isn't right or the nose its out of place, as an example. So, as a theory I understand that it's important to nail the big forms first -- however, in practice, now I understand that I had not nailed them when I thought that I had.
Just a matter of spending more time studying and working is all. You guy's have helped speed up the process immensely for sure. I'm not as critical and don't know the tell-tale things to look for yet. I would've said "good enough" too soon, but no doubt the face is much higher quality at this point than from before ya'll jumped in. I can see a lot more of the likeness, and also my ecorche is fitting inside perfectly even though I haven't used it as reference since taking your guy's critiques.
Working on the crown, I made a bunch of modular pieces for an insert mesh brush and just go crazy with it. I keep the jewels and any pieces that need separate material properties as different subtool, that way I can bake them into an ID map for ease of texturing later. All the gold parts I just dynamesh together, so it appears welded together just like a real life crown like this would be.
Mask by smoothness is handy for getting the red paint where it belongs. This is ofcourse just materials in zbrush for my own visualization right now, but the final textures will be pretty similar.
This was hard to get started, trying to figure the most efficient workflow, but now it's hard to stop. Lots of fun trying out different designs.
Retopoing this will be fun.
Going ahead with some bakes will also give me a better idea of how low-level I should go with the details. As you can imagine, this is very time consuming, so I don't need to waste time working on details so small they'll be blurred out even with a 4k material. But I don't want to design something that only looks good with 4k materials. As far as I know, I don't think resolution that big is usually used in games? I dunno, but it should still look decent if I downsize, so I'll try to accomplish that.
This time I am waiting to combine anything until the end. I want to keep this as malleable as possible so I can make any design changes if I change my mind at any point.
This is definitely pushing my patience, and I'm not even half-way finished. But that is exactly the purpose of this project. Without challenge, you don't adapt. And if you aren't in the habit of making adaptations, you won't survive.
Not sure about a good way to cap off the end of the serpent tail. I just put a sphere there. Maybe it's an easily overlooked detail and doesn't matter, considering how much extravagant shit like this will be in the scene. I also messed around with having the coiled tail sticking out a bit, but that ended up looking kind of like a japanese samurai style.
About 7,000 tris, but I haven't gone through with targeted welding yet so that may be reduced a little bit still. The side-pieces with the snakes and the wreaths will add a lot.
Object ID map makes complex organization a breeze. Just organize my subtools based on material qualities and I'm set. Now targeting all the different gems and gold and painted gold will be a cinch. Again, I got to praise Marmoset Toolbag for making this type of thing so darn easy.
Posting textures may be helpful as well. You can see a few spots where I need to match my low and hi a bit better. Still plenty of work to do but at least now I know that it can all work.
I don't have much hard-surface experience. I have straightened some areas that are hidden just to make packing a bit tighter. Although this is a metal object, it is kind of hand-formed and organic in a nature, so there isn't any real hard edges. However, if any of you hard-surface guru's are looking at this and pulling your hair, please let me know. You won't hurt my feelings and I'll love you forever.
But, I didn't die or go blind so the low poly for the crown is now finished. I went ahead and did some real quick and dirty textures just for fun. Please disregard the worlds ugliest gems -- that is something I have to study a bit. I put a generic "flakes" normal map on them -- that's not part of the sculpt. But it's just temporary textures for fun is all.
Now that I've gone through the complete process with the crown, I will do the rest of the ornamental pieces. I will try to avoid more frilly edges as it gets heavy fast. The crown weighs in at just over 20k tri's, mostly due to the frilly edges. They were really slow to do but I think it makes a nice silhouette. I don't want anything in the scene to look like, "oh it's for a game so they have to cut some corners." This is a Hindu goddess. It's got to be just absolutely extravagant. But, since the rest of the ornamental pieces will be against Durga's body, and thus not contribute to the silhouette, I don't think it would be worth the time to do frilly edges on them anyhow.
I won't put up the UV map because I have it split into two materials and not optimized. I'm not sure how I want to combine everything so I'll just get it all finished first and then do that at the end.
I'll lower the tri count a bit more by going through and doing some selective vert welding on a few pieces I was sloppy with.
Increased the size of the snake/wreath pieces. I think that looks cool with them larger like that.
Nothing to be jealous of. No secret technique or anything advanced -- just purely a test of patience. I had to adjust my mindset so it didn't drive me crazy. I kept telling myself, "You are Da Vinci painting the Sistine Chapel."
I think with digital art, it is easy to get into a mindset of expecting things to be done quickly. But sometimes you just got to weld thousands of verts one by one. Might as well find some way to enjoy it, or at least not hate it. But anyway, I am glad I'm done with that shit. For a little while at least.
I will say this about the topology : it's way easier if you just throw all the rules out the door and just go crazy with the multicut tool, putting edges whereever you need and then saving thoughtful cleanup until the end. Trying to think carefully through it all as you go is too taxing.
Been dreading the intricate designs to be made on the saree, but I did two things which have given me a lot of confidence and energy to take the challenge on -- 1, i did a bunch of digital drawing/painting tutorials in photoshop, and 2. i did some test runs of working with displacement maps in zbrush. So that's the two methods I'll use for the saree, and turns out it's not so hard and now I am excited to see what I can do.
The arms are the only exposed part of the goddesses body. I feel it's important to show respect and not try to sexualize her, and also I want to imagine her in a way that I think people thousands of years ago might have. However, she is a goddess of war, who slays demons of chaos with an arsenal of like 10 different weapons, so I think it's not in bad taste to give a little bit of a fitness vibe with what little we see of her body. Nothing crazy, but I think she should have a little sinew to her forearms. I mention this because, compared to ancient notions of beauty and femininity, this may be a bit more contemporary. But I think it's a reasonable compromise.
Here's a little lesson learned :
I spent a solid chunk of an afternoon sculpting this snarling tiger, only to realize I couldn't fit it anywhere without it looking silly. But, layer I realized it would make a good ring, so there you go. Lesson learned is, well, just work from concept rather than making design up as you go. But if you won't do that, be sure to not get upset when you waste time. Always be looking for something to learn so you aren't literally just wasting time.
Also perhaps check the proportioning between the head, neck and body (with regards to the actress reference)
And great work on the crown and ornaments!
Definitely I'll add a touch of realism to the face by making it slightly imperfect. And the mouth especially needs a lot more attention.
One thing I want to try and accomplish is to get the skin on her skull feeling very taught -- kind of an intense look -- not really sure how to explain it but hopefully I can just show with the art.
because anatomy is so important for the character artist, I want to get all the rest of the high-poly finished so that I can just relax my mind and take all the time I need to get the face and arms looking perfect. should finish all the jewelry and necklace this week, then I'll be gone about two weeks and should come back fresh to finish off the high-poly strongly.
and thanks for following along. It really helps keep up the motivation.
january 2nd -- minor updates not gonna bump the thread for it but I did a little poking at the face in addition to working on the collar piece.
Jan 3rd. Almost there.... just got to finish the belt tomorrow morning, then I'm done with this damn jewelry (except for all the props/weapons I'll have to do later)!
If you are wondering, the little detail pieces come from several places -- some I build from purchased clip art. I use spotlight to paint black polypaint onto a plane, mask by intensity, delete the extra, and then just use inflate and panel loops from there to make some little doo-dad pieces.
Some of the more complex pieces are from a package of scanned ornate doo-dads you can find on the art station store.
And a handful are things I just sculpted by hand, usually using reference photos of temple jewelry as a guide.
So that's that for the jewelry then.
The rest of the week I'll touch up on the saree and also do some experiments to see how the thicker parts of embroidery will look doing them via displacement-to-geo in zbrush versus doing 100% in substance painter. I expect I'll use a bit of both. Especially the sleeve cuffs on the top may be thick enough to warrant some geometry support from the low-poly.
Once that's figured it will be on to finishing up the anatomy, which should be done by the end of next week if I can stay within my schedule.
Post-vacation blues made me try to race through it fast with impatience, which ended up costing me way more time because I had to do things over and grumpy with myself. Always got to remember, slow is smooth and smooth is fast.
Not following my reference of Anoushka Shankar super closely anymore. Just kind of going with what looks right for the character. The ref is still up on my screen of course but I'm trying to look more at my actual work and judge it by itself rather than fussing over whether or not I'm nailing a likeness, as that really isn't the goal anyhow.
Old head is on right, new one on left. Will work on the face for a few more days probably.
im thinking left looks a bit too young. I like right pretty well -- she seems more serious and has a more dignified feel -- but perhaps she can use just a touch more of the youthful features.
jan 29:
finally hitting something I like, after hours and hours of sculpting in circles. Learning little bit by bit about head anatomy. This time I started with the brain, studied the crenulations, and then mapped the nerves one at a time... joking, joking. But if you are a real artist, that's where you'll start.
Getting a little closer to likeness. I said I wasn't going for that, and I'm not, but Anoushka Shankar is just the perfect face for this model and whatever I had simply didn't look right. Gonna continue pushing the primary and secondary forms until Michelangelo rises from the grave and blesses me.
Gonna move down to the arms and shape things up down there for now. Once that is done I'll post it around and see what people have to say about the anatomy.
Detail on the accessories is excellent.
Are you going for a realistic or semi realistic/stylized look?
Adding pore detail would also bump things up a notch.
And I highly recommend rendering with unreal 4's digital human shader over marmoset, what a difference.
https://polycount.com/discussion/206285/star-trek-khan-noonien-singh-game-ready-model-upgraded-realtime-render
about the lips... I am pretty confident they are matching my reference. She has pretty unique lips, not as much of a curve as others. Of course the slightest expression and they change a lot. But they shouldn't look pursed... I'll play around with them further.