Need help! [--FINISHED--] Manica

vavavoom

*FINISHED* (sculpt)




My take on Manica concept by Anzka Nguyen.

Still a little tidying up to do before I'm ready to call it done, so any feedback would be great ~

Portfolio: https://www.artstation.com/vomo

vavavoom

kanga

Putting an image in your first post will help you get more views.

vavavoom

Thanks, @kanga
 
It does get lonely on here with no feedback ~ 

kanga

Hi vavavoom.
Yeah well if you see the amount of work on here then its sot of normal to not get much attention.
The work looks great. I like the bangs. 
No comments are also a great indicator. Its a nice piece but what I thought when I saw it is watyagunnadiwitit? Will she get a body? Are you going to make a game ready version? Are you going to rig and animate it? Are you going to put it in a scene? There is loads you could do with it. 

vavavoom

Thank you~ 

I'm not gonna make a body for the character, just follow what's in the concept drawing, which is what I have right now.
My goal is to finish up smaller details in the sculpt, like hair detail, and then I was thinking to try for a lower poly retopo at game level resolution for improving my skills, as i've never gone through a Zbrush to game engine ready pipeline before.

The ultimate goal is to have a nice looking model in my Artstation portfolio I can feel happy with and show where I'm at with my 3D skills, also as motivation to finish up other sculpts i'm chipping away trying to improve.

vavavoom

Do Lips position to match reference, tidy up the ears, shade the eyes and face more, then I'm pretty much done. Took way longer to get here than expected, had to chip away at it when time and energy allowed.






Played around with some alternative colors.

dGreenberg

I'm loving that silhouette and how clean everything looks, @vavavoom! I think the red hair has a lot more punch to it, but the darker colors work really well too

fanazepam

I did this, too. My work https://www.artstation.com/artwork/3okeZv

vavavoom

Thanks @dGreenberg~     It took me way to long to work out the best way to make it clean, especially the hair, but a good learning experience for future projects.

@fanazepam nice work ~  I think this concept has been done a lot, it's seems pretty popular. The artist has another concept with 2 characters, would be cool to make both characters together..... someday ~



Concept by Anzka Nguyen, lovely style.

vavavoom

Now it's finished, I'm gonna try and make a turntable if i can...

vavavoom

I've hit a wall...

Decided it's time to try and go through a character pipeline from Zbrush to low-poly.
I searched/watched tons of tutorials and stuff how to low make hi poly sculpt into 'game ready' style. This was exhausting trying to take it all in...

First goal was make low poly retopo, not too tricky as as all hi poly tools were built up from low sub level,
so, 
1. duplicate hi poly subtool
2. go to lowest sub level, delete higher
3. do any manual retopo touches i felt were necessary

That got me here:

It's not 100% finished, i still want to make mesh cleaner, less dense in some areas. but it's an idea of where i'm at.

Each color is how I intended to break up the model into parts for unwrapping.

So, I followed some tutorials on how to UV unwrap in Zbrush (UV Master), just starting with the head part for now to see if i can get that right first.
here's what i tried:

A: try to keep it simple as possible
B: split into polygroups

I have no idea and can't find a clear answer which is the right way to go.

This is the first hurdle i need to get past, so any help would be awesome.

oh, and should this post should go in technical talk?

Thanks~~~~

HarlequinWerewolf

You're definitely on the right track, and there are undoubtedly more experienced people here who could help you more than me but I'm just going to throw in my 2 cents. 

When I'm working on a character that is going to have an expression or a series of blendshapes, I create my high poly in a neutral expression. I then retopo and unwrap this between 3D Coat and Maya. I'm personally, not a big fan of using Unwrap Master unless it's for a quick project on I just want to practice texturing, but, it does what it says on the tin. 

Then I take this low poly model back into ZBrush into the same Tool as my high poly. I project all of my high poly detail onto the low, sub dividing, then projecting, sub dividing, then projecting until I have a nice smooth mesh pretty much identical to the original high poly. Now I have a high poly that is correctly retopoed and UV Unwrapped. It's usually at this point - after making sure everything lines up properly and making any small tweaks - that I bake out my maps. (Normal, AO, Curve, Position etc. Whatever you need). But, you're only doing one expression, so my guess is you want your normal etc. to match the expression rather than the neutral pose. 

So, in ZBrush, I make a new layer and sculpt in my character's expression/any blendshapes. (New layer per blendshape). Now, I use the Maya Blendshapes plugin which automatically exports each layer at its lowest subdivision into a new file in Maya as blendshapes - it's great, I love it! But, if you're just doing one expression, you can bake down the layer, go to your lowest subdiv and export that low poly. Now this low poly model has UVs and the expression you wanted. Now, as this is just one expression, you can go back to your highpoly and now bake out your maps (Normal, AO etc etc.) onto the low poly with the expression. Now your normals etc will match with the high poly expression.

Now I realise that this is quite a roundabout way to get baked out maps - and the low poly and unwrap you have do exactly the same thing - but this workflow is, ideally, non-destructive, meaning you can go back and add more expressions/blendshapes and you have a neutral, unwrapped low poly to use as a base. 

Wow, that was a lot of info. I'm still learning, but this is a workflow I picked up this year and really enjoy! Let me know if this made sense or not, cos like I said, I'm not even close to being an expert and there will probably be someone come on here with a more solid workflow. Either way, I hope it helps

dGreenberg

Just like HarlequinWerewolf said, I think you're on the right track. With the mesh density, the eyeballs, the clasp on the front of the cloak / hoodie, and her pendant thing are maybe a little bit heavy. I know you're still working at it, but I think you've pretty much got it down otherwise. You could even get away with adding some more polygons to the head just to make sure you're keeping the rounder shapes. 

For the unwrap, are you planning on just using ZBrush? I'd say having things as clean and spaced out as possible like version B would be better, but it just depends what does the job better for what you need. If you're sticking with poly paint in Zbrush either version works. If you want to bake out maps or bringing her into another program to be textured, then it might be helpful to have some of the different parts connected to avoid seams (like the neck being connected under the head). As long as you're not hand-painting anything that shouldn't really be a problem though. 

If you haven't, I'd recommend checking out some of Marc Brunet's tutorials. He's created some great topology reference sheets over the years that have really helped me out. For UVs I don't know as much about the UV Master Tool in ZBrush, but if you need any suggestions I think that Maya, 3DCoat, Topogun or even Blender would all be great alternatives. Good luck moving forward!

vavavoom

Thanks so much guys!  That's a great help. I will be keeping the model in the same pose, I'm not ready to delve into blendshapes yet, or any other technical stuff. Perhaps for future models once I feel confident at the basics, I will give the further advanced stuff a try

So will keep it as is for now to try and get it done a.s.a.p.   
(I do have 2 versions of the Hi poly head, both identical except for the lips/mouth area expression:
one is a neutral pose, the other has the concept drawing expression - I made by moving the polys around at low subD level)


HarlequinWerewolf described.   Hope I got it right and I can get this done!

Thanks again so much!!!