[WIP] Getting into ZBrush, need critiques

Badhacks

So I started with blender but really wanted to get into Zbrush. But it was super intimidating for some reason. I watched a Ryan Kingsley video and it broke it down to a point so I figured id give it a go. Heres my stuff so far, not much but I would like some critiques. Better I learn what I'm doing wrong now and correct it before I put a lot of time doing the wrong thing. 

Lastly id like see if anyone has any advice as to what courses, or tutorials I should watch and in what order maybe. Aaaaaaand I realize I'm asking people to make my curriculum, haha, but really any advice in that aspect would help tremendously as I don't have a lot of time to learn so I need to make sure when I do practice and learn it is productive. 

Thanks in advance. I work in restaurants so I have a VERY thick skin. Trial by fire, please. 

Alex_J

great start. looks like you are paying attention to the important stuff like the underlying bone structure. Thats like, 99% of the work, just seeing and knowing whats there. The rest just comes from iterating. I think it's best to make many sculpts as a beginner, rather than trying to make one grand masterpiece. Both routes to the same goal, but one is faster it seems.

You should be able to point to an improvement with each finished piece. That will be easy for awhile. Once you get to the point you dunno what to do in order to improve, may be worth looking for professional mentorship. Or maybe you'll be ready for a job or whatever your goal is. Just make sure you know what the goal is, and its something clear and measurable.

Scott Eaton is a big name in human anatomy courses. Michael Pavlovich is the Zbrush guru. Most of the learning content available out there can be found through the wiki on this site.

To point out something specific about these works, looks like the skull proportions are pretty far from normal on the human. As everything is based off the skull, really important to get that right. But that shouldn't be a big mystery, because there is a number of skulls ready for you in zbrush lightbox and you can buy scanned skulls for cheap. Compare the good ones against yours, then go and read a bit about human skulls, and you'll be good to go. May be an unpopular opinion and this is just my personal opinion, but I don't think game character art needs surgical measurements. It just needs to be believable. So if you got some method to measure the earlobes against the nostrils for the magic formula, you might got your priorities skewed. You can get some gumroad tutorials from the big character artist like Frank Tzeng or that italian dude that does god of war, cant remember name, and you'll get an idea how they work, where they focus most time, etc.

The alien is an interesting start and can become something cool I think, but obviously has many more hours to go. Remember to stay at minimal resolution to keep things very easy to work with until you nail down the perfect proportions. Be sure to learn about how to use layers and morph targets -- gives you the flexibility to work experimentally without stress. It is a bit weird using layers in zbrush and not super intuitive, but man I wish I would have gotten keen on that sooner. Save a ton of headache.

Keep in mind with digital work, it ain't like building a house. Nothing should ever be set in concrete. If you feel locked in with what you got at most any point, your workflow could be improved. Just a general rule, but you always want that ability to be able to experiment and make changes big or small. Don't just learn three brushes and quit there. Always be looking to pick up new tools and tricks as much as possible.

One thing that helped me get a lot better at understanding anatomy from reference was using 3d scans and ecorches. 3dsk or Ten24 are  the big sites to get one of those. Zbrush has a couple good ecorches in lightbox though, so maybe no reason to purchase one just to get started. It's just really useful to see how a real scanned human looks as a matte grey model.

Oh, and study from real life. Lots of error and misunderstanding in translating 2d to 3d as a beginner without extensive real life study. I think a big mistake we make as digital artist is we do all our work... digitally. But a lot of these mysteries you sit at the screen sculpting countless models trying to solve, are immediately cleared up when you just look at the real life thing. The brain just understands it more deeply.

Badhacks

My God man.. my jaw is on the floor. I couldn't have asked for more. I'm seriously at a loss for words, thank you so much. Thank you for investing that time to write that out for me... feeling much more comfortable learning after reading that. 

I'm 28 now so I'm not sure if I can still make this a career but I would love to. Thankfully here in a couple of months, I might have the chance to move to Mexico and work like 15 hrs a week and invest the rest into learning. I haven't decided if it's worth the risk of focusing on game design. I'd be learning to program as well but after reading this I'll have to invest some of that time to modeling/texturing/topology. I know I can't do it all.. but I am keen to become more of a generalist.. not sure if I'm shooting myself in the foot with that.

as for the models, I definitely see what you mean. The cranium and back of the skull seem too small. That's just at a glance so I will most def compare it to some skull models to start training my eye to observe and balance the proportions. 

I made that mistake with the alien on going too high in the points, so I might just have to zremesh to a lower count and start the block out process again as right now I'm stuck with the details I've laid in. But the next couple of days of studying ill focus on layers and morphing targets until it becomes second nature. 

Thanks again!

Alex_J

No problem. Just trying to mention all the shit I learned over past two years. I started when I was 30, so I just a few years ahead of you is all.

One thing a bit off topic from the original intent of the thread but I think worth mentioning, you don't gotta get a big job to make some money from your 3d work. I don't wanna speak too soon as I haven't published my game yet, but we got enough steam wishlist in the first couple days to already make a lot more money than we predicted (assuming most wishlisters do buy the game.) And that is a game I have made with one other person in 2.5 months, and after only two years of learning 3d. I've also made a little money here and there selling some rather junky models on asset stores (like stuff I made when I had no idea what I was doing, still they do sell a bit).

So ya know, where there is a will there's a way. Jonas Ronnegard is a good example of a successful content creator. He is making tools and goodies for artist mostly, but if you follow him you get a sense for how he operates, what quality of work he puts out, how he stays visible, etc.

Badhacks

Alex Javor said:

No problem. Just trying to mention all the shit I learned over past two years. I started when I was 30, so I just a few years ahead of you is all.

One thing a bit off topic from the original intent of the thread but I think worth mentioning, you don't gotta get a big job to make some money from your 3d work. I don't wanna speak too soon as I haven't published my game yet, but we got enough steam wishlist in the first couple days to already make a lot more money than we predicted (assuming most wishlisters do buy the game.) And that is a game I have made with one other person in 2.5 months, and after only two years of learning 3d. I've also made a little money here and there selling some rather junky models on asset stores (like stuff I made when I had no idea what I was doing, still they do sell a bit).

So ya know, where there is a will there's a way. Jonas Ronnegard is a good example of a successful content creator. He is making tools and goodies for artist mostly, but if you follow him you get a sense for how he operates, what quality of work he puts out, how he stays visible, etc.

To be honest, in my heart that was my thought process all along. So reading all that hit close to home. The idea is to make my own simple games and learn, then eventually find a team to join or create one. With seemingly every engine and production software moving more towards facilitating indie development, It seems silly to not at least try and make your own games. You're a testament to that haha.

My other failsafe to keep my sanity during the process was selling models on asset stores, but with the growth of AR and MR, I'm humbly predicting the job growth as a 3d artist or generalist will rise. I currently am working on AR art, but it's on a 2d scale using parallaxing layers.

So I took your advice on the head, and I found a reference skull to compare it to. I know not all skulls are shaped the same but this was a great exercise. The difference is very noticeable and adding the proportions to my visual library will def help. 
here are some comparison shots. It is by no means perfect as I essentially just quickly used the move, and inflate tool to reshape the mesh, but I don't plan on spending much more time on this head so I'll take what I got and apply it to the next sculpt as you recommended. 

Alex_J

Nice improvement. It's been a minute since I was working on anatomy so I probably shouldn't make anything more than very general critiques. Proportions do seem more believable now. There's a bit of wobbliness that comes from working at a high resolution, but you'll work that out easily enough as long as you see it.

As far as making games goes, there is a lot of good advice on these forums if you search around. Regarding where to find a team, what a proper team looks like, red flags to watch out for, etc. My TL:DR is try to find a very competent, adult programmer who is working alone on a game, and be like, "yo dawg lemme get you some art. Let's collaborate."  You want somebody that you can learn from, ideally. Workign with more than 1 other person means an inordinate amount of energy will be spent on social aspects, which can be a waste of time if main goal is to learn technical skill and practice art.

Brian "Panda" Choi

Do you know what the planes of the face are?  Or at least the idea of it?

Badhacks

Brian "Panda" Choi said:

Do you know what the planes of the face are?  Or at least the idea of it?

Cant say with confidence yes. Still studying. To clarify, that was the very first thing I ever sculpted In zbrush so the idea was to have fun. I feel I was inspired by the guy from ghost In the shell haha. I still want the face to make sense overall. So I'm all ears. 

Brian "Panda" Choi

Study and recreate the Asaro PLanar Head.  Figure out what bone landmarks and muscles 'drive' the planes on that face.

Have you taken drawing classes before?

Badhacks

Brian "Panda" Choi said:

Study and recreate the Asaro PLanar Head.  Figure out what bone landmarks and muscles 'drive' the planes on that face.

Okay, def going to do that. Waiting on my anatomy book in the mail. Thanks!

Brian "Panda" Choi

Look into taking figure drawing classes.  Anatomy without a sense of gesture, form, or rhythm is a medical drawing.

Badhacks

Brian "Panda" Choi said:

Look into taking figure drawing classes.  Anatomy without a sense of gesture, form, or rhythm is a medical drawing.

Yea I have,  very good advice. Dont have time or income to invest into more classes currently so I'll find a way to make it happen in my own way. The book I'm getting is focused on anatomy for sculptors, or two books, one for the body and one one for the head. That's actually the name, anatomy for sculptors. If you have any other book you recommend feel free. 

 After looking over the asaro planar head and my sculpt last night before bed... where I went way wrong is blatantly obvious. That's what happens when you sculpt with no reference and dont have the visual library to cover the lack of, clearly.. 

Thanks for the heads up. 

Badhacks

Alex Javor said:

Nice improvement. It's been a minute since I was working on anatomy so I probably shouldn't make anything more than very general critiques. Proportions do seem more believable now. There's a bit of wobbliness that comes from working at a high resolution, but you'll work that out easily enough as long as you see it.

As far as making games goes, there is a lot of good advice on these forums if you search around. Regarding where to find a team, what a proper team looks like, red flags to watch out for, etc. My TL:DR is try to find a very competent, adult programmer who is working alone on a game, and be like, "yo dawg lemme get you some art. Let's collaborate."  You want somebody that you can learn from, ideally. Workign with more than 1 other person means an inordinate amount of energy will be spent on social aspects, which can be a waste of time if main goal is to learn technical skill and practice art.

Yea I think the practice in the cranial shape alone was great. By using the move tool I wacked out the position of the nose, mouth etc.. but again this head here is just a willing victim.
I'll be posting some new heads based of pandas advice for sure. 

This makes a lot of sense. I got a while to go but I will definitely take your advice on starting small when I am ready to start/join a team. I want to soak up as much as possible from that process so I think you're 100% right on that approach.

Badhacks

Finally got some time to put into zbrush. Heres my current WIP. I remeshed the alien, went down a couple levels, found the full bodies form and added the first level of detail. 

apollo580

Good start! But I think you're focusing too much on the high details. I think your should be at a fraction of your current polygon count. Try to get some proportional reference and anatomy books. It becomes easier when you have good reference and are building something that makes sense. I would personally stay away from aliens and monsters when you're starting off because in my opnion they are hard. You need to get a good understand of anatomy (human and animal) before you start building completely new things.

Check our Andrew Loomis and his books:

Also check out this book, I love it:

Badhacks

@apollo580

Excellent tips. I'll be honest I went with an alien for the opposite effect, to practice anatomy a bit but not be so stressed with making an exact human.. my time to sculpt is limited so I wanted to be able to have fun and not get burnt out. my desire is to make him hunch over once I rig him in blender and have him deal with the weight of his head. I also focused on the back and neck muscles to make that believable. My idea is to make a staff and clothe him on marvelous designer (trial haha). I'll practice retopology, substance painter, etc. And push him all the way to basic rigging. The idea is to get comfortable with that pipeline so when I do go back and make a human. I wont have to be watch a tutorial every 5 minutes to figure my next step. The funny thing is, in my head hell be a little but character in a bigger procedurally made environment scene haha

Badhacks

@apollo580 isnt there also 6 head people? not to mention my aliens head is also including a shaman headpiece 

apollo580

Badhacks said:

@apollo580 isnt there also 6 head people? not to mention my aliens head is also including a shaman headpiece 

For sure, there aren't any strict rules you need to follow regarding sizes and all that. But it's generally easier to make something look accurate if you have fundamentals of human and anatomy understood. For reference, below is the first model I ever created roughly 4 years ago. I knew no anatomy and very little of Zbrush. The model beside it is what I'm working on now, its a recreation but with all the knowledge from before. Just trying to illustrate how anatomy helps create something more realistic.