[Anatomy] ~ I require help to understand human proportions (3D sculpting)

Steamy_Steve

I've been assigned a task to create a generic human NPC.

And here's my initial attempt (actually the second)....







Now, please ignore the arms being too long, the feet being too small and the loins lacking volume.
What I'm interested in is the overall proportions of the structure.

I had issues with the head, so I decided to start from understanding the proportions and placement of each landmark.
Once done with the head I referred to this scheme for the proportions of the rest of the body...



According to this, my model has nearly perfect proportions (except for arms and feet, of course!).
Nearly everywhere I looked I found a similar subdivision.

But my head is clearly too small!!

What am I getting wrong?
What are my eyes missing?
Any other, more correct reference I should look at to understand the distribution and proportions of landmarks in the human body?

What's your *Bible*, when it comes to sculpting the human anatomy?

Notink

Hey ^^ I am not an absolute expert in anatomy, but maybe you could put the legs in a more natural way first to help you visualize better unless it's what your client wants. The neck is also too short for me (on the profile you can see it when compared to your reference). I also think that you should finish the base mesh before starting to sculpt the details on the face to focus yourself on the general anatomy first before going into details.

And for the references I am using this website which has lots of interesting stuff : https://characterdesignreferences.com/character-anatomy

Hope it helps ^^

Steamy_Steve

Notink said:

Hey ^^ I am not an absolute expert in anatomy, but maybe you could put the legs in a more natural way first to help you visualize better unless it's what your client wants. The neck is also too short for me (on the profile you can see it when compared to your reference). I also think that you should finish the base mesh before starting to sculpt the details on the face to focus yourself on the general anatomy first before going into details.

And for the references I am using this website which has lots of interesting stuff : https://characterdesignreferences.com/character-anatomy

Hope it helps ^^

I'm not sure I'm understanding everything you said....

If I make the neck longer, either the back of the skull or the shoulders will have to move along....as a consequence, the proportions according to the "8ths method" would get messed up....or not?

There is no "base mesh", I put together a starting point with ZSpheres, and then started sculpting on that.
If by "base mesh" you mean the base structure, then you just nailed the point of my help request: the "base mesh" has wrong proportions, hence I cant move ahead.

I'll give a look at your link, but at a first glance it looks like a gallery of sketches devoid of any explanation. And most of the drawings seem to follow exactly the same proportions as in the scheme I've uploaded.
I need to know what I'm doing wrong, I just cant pinpoint it by myself. =p

akiratang

It looks a little blobby at the mo. Focus on the forms at a lower subdiv before going high. I think the head and the feet need to be bigger.

JohannesAg

I´m no anatomy expert but here are my two cents, your legs extend beyond the eight head measurement you are going for and the body is generally two heads wide but yours goes a bit further and makes the head look smaller. Sorry about the half assed paint over, i´m not much of a 2d artist heh, hope it helps anyway

Steamy_Steve

JohannesAg said:

I´m no anatomy expert but here are my two cents, your legs extend beyond the eight head measurement you are going for and the body is generally two heads wide but yours goes a bit further and makes the head look smaller. Sorry about the half assed paint over, i´m not much of a 2d artist heh, hope it helps anyway
[....]

You've just gained my love and gratitude.

I eyeballed the height proportions using a measurement technique seen in a tutorial, which involves using ZBrush's mask selection box (which features a mark right in the middle) to determine the half of each distance.
Thus the distance between the top of the head and bottom of the feet would appear at the crotch line.....which is why I'm a bit baffled, now, looking at your subdivision showing otherwise.

And thank you for the 2-heads-wide tip.
Any specific place where I could go harvest this kind of notions?
Like a, I dont know....a quick course on the human figure? ^^'

JohannesAg

Well i mostly look at figure drawing resources, even though i´m not great at drawing I find they still help. Proko.com  is great for example, and even if you don´t want to do the drawing exercises the info is still solid. Anatomy for sculptors is also really nice. If you google something like "human body relative proportions" you should find plenty of measurements to go by, i´ve got this one printed out and up on my wall by my desk for example https://i.pinimg.com/originals/1c/27/ef/1c27efea83185a4860269840ff18f9b6.jpg   for measuring you might want to just copy your head and stack it eight times to check your proportions. I like to make a box the same size as my head and stack that in  different colors behind my model to use as reference.

Steamy_Steve

JohannesAg said:

Well i mostly look at figure drawing resources, even though i´m not great at drawing I find they still help. Proko.com  is great for example, and even if you don´t want to do the drawing exercises the info is still solid. Anatomy for sculptors is also really nice. If you google something like "human body relative proportions" you should find plenty of measurements to go by, i´ve got this one printed out and up on my wall by my desk for example https://i.pinimg.com/originals/1c/27/ef/1c27efea83185a4860269840ff18f9b6.jpg   for measuring you might want to just copy your head and stack it eight times to check your proportions. I like to make a box the same size as my head and stack that in  different colors behind my model to use as reference.

Your mouth dispenses molten gold at every word, kind sir!!

Steamy_Steve

JohannesAg said:

Well i mostly look at figure drawing resources, even though i´m not great at drawing I find they still help. Proko.com  is great for example, [....]

Sorry to furtherly bother you, I have one question: did you try Proko's lessons?
I've watched the presentation video and, I gotta say, it looks like a very high quality product, with the potential to keep its promises.
The price is a bit high, for my wallet, but I'd gladly spend for something that is worth its weight.
Your word?

JohannesAg

yeah I watch his stuff, I would say it´s worth the money personally. oh also if you don´t tag people when you reply they won´t get a notification, I just saw your response be coincidence.  

HixaLupa

Switching Dynamic Perspective on/off might help when working into proportions

Steamy_Steve

JohannesAg said:

yeah I watch his stuff, I would say it´s worth the money personally. oh also if you don´t tag people when you reply they won´t get a notification, I just saw your response be coincidence.  

@JohannesAg Thank you!
And sorry, I thought quoting already yielded a notification.... =p

Steamy_Steve

HixaLupa said:

Switching Dynamic Perspective on/off might help when working into proportions

@HixaLupa
Could you elaborate? Like....how may I put it? Can you make a practical example, by your own experience?
Like, sculpting a particular area of the body....?

Steamy_Steve

@JohannesAg

By the way....













Still a WIP, studying anatomy piece by piece.
Feet are a draft, the back of the legs (triceps?) needs some work, and I'm not sure I'm truly understanding the transition between buttocks and obliques.
Oh! And the neck has no muscles beside the back ones, that's why it looks so thin from the back view. ^^'
At this point, rather than a flowing anatomy, it's more like a Frankenstein's monster of second thoughts and reviews.

But, all in all....improved? ^.^
Anything you'd like to point out that I should review? What would you fix?
I could use a stranger's eye, at this point.

JohannesAg

it´s  better yeah, though there´s still some things you could fix. Again I´m not the best person to give advice about this stuff but i can try to help out as best I can.
I think your time would probably be better spent just nailing the big forms and not getting too deep into all the muscles at this point, especially if this character will be wearing clothes. Anatomy is fun to learn but it can be a bit of a rabbit hole, for example the shape of his arms from the front and back is pretty off and fixing that big shape is a lot more important than getting all the muscle definition down. Also be careful not to overly define the muscles, when doing anatomy stuff it´s easy to forget that people have skin and fat, take a look at this guy for example https://www.3dscanstore.com/shaded-male/shaded-male-06-pose-2  he´s fit but you don´t see every muscle on him. Also looking at scans for reference is really great,I´d recommend  that you buy one or use pics from the scanstore as ref. it´s a really great resource. 
happy sculpting!

Steamy_Steve

JohannesAg said:

it´s  better yeah, though there´s still some things you could fix. Again I´m not the best person to give advice about this stuff but i can try to help out as best I can.
I think your time would probably be better spent just nailing the big forms and not getting too deep into all the muscles at this point, especially if this character will be wearing clothes. Anatomy is fun to learn but it can be a bit of a rabbit hole, for example the shape of his arms from the front and back is pretty off and fixing that big shape is a lot more important than getting all the muscle definition down. Also be careful not to overly define the muscles, when doing anatomy stuff it´s easy to forget that people have skin and fat, take a look at this guy for example https://www.3dscanstore.com/shaded-male/shaded-male-06-pose-2  he´s fit but you don´t see every muscle on him. Also looking at scans for reference is really great,I´d recommend  that you buy one or use pics from the scanstore as ref. it´s a really great resource. 
happy sculpting!

@JohannesAg
I've already fixed a number of bad spots, in the meanwhile, including forearms (although I have no idea whether for the better or for the worse), and I've moved on to the head.

I needed to make muscles visible to give myself a visual aid of what hides beneath skin and fat.
The acromion process, as an example, is an extremely important landmark, no matter how swollen or atrophic the muscles are. And I've seen it depicted completely wrong in a number of sculpts.
Interpretations of interpretations, copies of copies. That's how you learn things wrong.

The head, for one, has come out pretty decent, compared to my past attempts, and that's thanks to the underlying skull I had previously sculpted/studied.
But, I guess, I will start over for the model I need for my task. After all I only need the head and the neck, the rest can be modeled directly in lowpoly.

Once again thank you for your help, you really made a difference.

JohannesAg

sure thing, good luck with your project