Anatomy/Character learning, CC please~
greentooth
Better make this a sculpt sketchbook thread now.
Base anatomy sculpting.
*Current progress*
Took a break from male body sculpt as was getting too zoned out working on the same thing too much. Gonna get back to finish it soon I hope.
Base anatomy sculpting.
*Current progress*
Took a break from male body sculpt as was getting too zoned out working on the same thing too much. Gonna get back to finish it soon I hope.
Replies
It's as if you're taking a character like Admiral Ackbar and setting him in our world.
Reminds me of the fish newscaster from Spongebob lmao
Please be careful with designing from your head. This can reinforce bad habits. You must use reference if you want to breathe life into these characters and make them believable. That can range from clothing, fish, scale patterns, hardsurface armor. I suggest picking up the app, Pureref and begin building your visual library.
Cheers
Yeah, that makes good sense. Will definitely look to references to further push the characters, especially for detailing.
It is fun 'bashing' away and seeing what sticks as I don't feel so much pressure on myself to produce something that is comparable to a given character concept drawing in terms of matching it.
I'll get back to finishing the other project I'm almost done with before pushing these any more, as I'll never get a full project actually finished...
Hope to make some more characters like these soon...
Tried to screengrab them to give a sense of comparative size to each other side by side (only got MS paint at work, so not great but I hope it gives a better sense)
Keep it up
I was thinking more laser guns and spaceships in a sci-fi fantasy world when I was making these, but anything goes~~
So many ideas and characters to make, so little time and knowledge... I'd love to polish and finish these all up, make an environment.... dreams~~~~
Gonna start blocking out the rest of the body next to get a better handle on proportions.
Yeah, that's a good spot. I didn't make as much progress today as i'd hoped. The back doesn't really have have much going on at the moment. I spent today's sculpt practice trying to tie down overall proportions , particularity the waist and hips are hard work... The body lost a lot of mass as I tried to improve posture and anatomy, i'll bulk him up again after I give the legs and back more sculpting.
Here's today's effort...
Fingers quite chunky, but they'll be made thinner on next pass. Thinking to retopo at this stage to start clean it up and work on details if anatomy is ok...
Took half a day to just get it to this stage...
...I see a lot of really nice character models let down by poor looking hands. I wonder if hands are generally considered the most difficult part among artists out there? I guess it's each to their own, but i'd be curious to find out...
Yeah, I should probably put a ref image plane into Zbrush from now to get better proportions.
Here's today's effort...
Looks nicer in perspective view than ortho... I can't put my finger on it, but it feels off somehow in ortho view....
Maybe the pose is too unnatural?
If you are in zBrush a neat trick is to place a program like poser or daz under neath and make the zB interface transparent (you can do that with a slider top right of the UI). That way its easier to check your volumes.
Cheers
adjusted pose and proportions, then went into some detailing. Gotta fix the lower back, got a bit messy when I was making proportion adjustments.
Will focus on the hands and feet on the next pass.
Gonna work on the face as soon as body is completely finished, I'll attach it and work on the features more to make it better then.
Hope this is a step up in progress...
Today's sculpt practice I spent ages tidying up , adding more detail but ended up unsatisfied with the result.... I couldn't get it looking right, it started looking worse.
So, instead of spending more hours going round in circles, I grabbed a decent looking ref from Google (sorry can't find the artist name, I used Google image search) and went about sculpting my existing model into the ref.
Here's the result:
The ref:
I would have loved to have got mine looking nice without directly copying someone else's sculpt as reference, but I realized that wasn't gonna happen and I would waste more time going in circles. Aside from the arms position, the feet, hands and head, the body is a direct attempt at the ref. It's not finished yet, but I feel I made some progress today.
Grabbed a different ref (real life this time) with different body style to challenge myself to keep pushing anatomy learning.
It looks like you are using the dynamesh system for your sculpt. While this is a truly terrific approach it is more suited to experienced artists and when starting with figures it doesnt allow you to change the resolution of the mesh while sculpting. You can start off with dynamesh and then remesh it at anytime and remesh will give you pretty good topology but I like to send my base mesh to a 3d app to edit it to make it easier to work with. While you can freeze subD levels and use the modelling brush to edit your mesh in zB, it doesn't always work.
I use GoB to send my mesh to Blender to edit it. GoB is a variation of zBrush's GoZ utility. You can use GoZ with a number of existing 3d applications. When in Blender I make sure the mesh has a continuous center loop then delete a half side of the mesh and fix any loop issues, add a mouth cavity, add eye, ear and mouth loops, and remove excess loops from the arms, legs and hands. Then use a symmetry modifier to reestablish the edited half. Sending your model to an outside application isn't really necessary. I just like it as I find it easier to sculpt from a good base mesh.
Characters are based on reality and they are variations of that. DAZ is free and the Genisis figure base is a fantastic system that allows you to change parameters like pose, muscularity, figure part sizes and for sculpting reference you can switch off the textures and control specularity if you want.
I have a cheap monitor connected and placed next to my laptop which I use for reference material while I am sculpting. The figure above I posed with the hips slightly forward, the feet are tilted down a little at the toes for heeled shoes in the final stages, the head tilted so the face is in a horizontal position with the head scaled down just a bit to add vizual height to the model and the arms are in an A pose with forearms bent slightly forward. I switched off the textures and lowered the specularity so the figure isnt so shiny. This is a good pose as its relaxed and helps lend the figure optical weight and is more pleasant to sculpt than a ridgid pose.
In DAZ I hid the left arm and leg so I could get a clear picture of the torso side view and the inner leg and foot. The other side view gives me a reference for the outside of the arm and leg. If you draw a center line down the middle of the figure it should be balanced to compensate for the slight forward position of the hips. In DAZ you can switch to front side and top and bottom views then hit Cntrl + F to place the figure in the center of the viewport at the right size for screen shots.
In zBrush you can set up reference planes and edit their scale and position under the draw menu. The above shot is in perspective but to use the planes switch to orthographic view and while orbiting press shift to snap to a view.
The model becomes transparent and allows you to see through it. Take your model down to its lowest subD level and use the move brush to make adjustments.
Hope this helps.
I had started in dynamesh at the very early stages, but projected it onto my cleaner base mesh a while back. It's quite a bit messy now cause of pushing/pulling as I worked on it more. Once it's complete, I'll re-project it onto a nice clean base mesh again.
Again, thanks so much @kanga for taking the time for help and advice, I'll read through it again tomorrow when I'm refreshed
after posting, i realized I had fudged up the groin/hips....
So, here goes again...
I'll try finish it up tomorrow...
I lost the details on the torso, but I hope the pose and forms are better and it looks more appealing overall. I really want to start more high res detailing from now, if everything is correct...
*Just noticed the chest seems way to flat.... why I always spot these things in posted images that I never see in the actual Zbrush program whilst I'm modelling?!!
I've been super consumed trying to finish this anatomy model so haven't checked in your work lately
I already mentioned it's not in dynamesh (a few posts above). I have been tweaking the pose using the method described.
I'm pretty happy with it now, just a few more detail passes , particularity the legs and back and I think I'll be finally satisfied...
I should fix the head soon though, I think it doesn't match the body well and it's throwing it off a little.
Thanks, for having a look~~~~
I didn't get much done on the body today. worked on:
4. Clavicle
5. S and C profile shape
I spent today working on the fixing the horrible place holder head. It think it was ruining the overall look of the sculpt. It was really starting to bug me looking at it. I had to do something about it.
So, I had a go at making a 'generic' head to give it a better look. It's still needs plenty of work, but it fits the body better and is much more pleasant to look at.
Gonna try attach it to the body into a complete mesh tomorrow to work on the neck and focus back on the body next, work more on the head later... need to scale it up though, it's pretty small right now.
Gonna work on your pointers some more tomorrow~~~
Here's the torso I've been using as ref:
Unfortunately the ref isn't full body, I really should have found a full body ref to use.... but I really liked this body physique and wanted to try and emulate it as best possible for my sculpt...
Thanks again!
Don't know how to make eyebrows yet, so stuck a couple of messy extracts for now...
Perhaps your sculpt is correct, but it looks a little alien to me.
I think it's because the reference is from fantasy movie character, he's wearing prosthetic makeup and stuff I guess.. I got carried away and should have just used a normal head reference, just I thought the character looked so cool....I'll post it up with refs I used when I post on next head work progress.
For now it's back to the never-ending work of trying to get a decent body sculpt. So went back lo-res and starting carving out the shapes again...
I matched up all the areas correctly...i think? I can't work it out, He looks pretty good to me when viewed at any angle other than flat front ortho view. Just seem to not look right when viewed front on in ortho but I can't work out why...it's really bugging me.
The only thing I can think of is it maybe the arms? length or position? should I firstly model them in the ref photo position then position them differently later?
I should probably clarify the goal of making the body sculpt:
I want to have a really good body base I can use to make into characters, add clothes, different heads, experiment with different proportions.
That's why I was trying to make his pose in this way, I tried to copy from other base models I have seen that I think look really good in terms of pose for character designing.
Thanks~~~~
I screengrabbed your paintover and worked the sculpt more. It feels better for sure. I'm gonna start tidying up the sculpt now, work on defining the muscles you highlighted too.
adjusted the head to fit the photo ref better and will model it to from the original photo ref from now.
I will work on the fantasy character head sculpt I got sidetracked with as a separate project at a later time, better to focus on one thing at a time...
Also remeshed into a single mesh, so can sculpt the neck better from now.
Not too concerned with sculpting the face to perfectly match the ref at this time, just enough to help get the body done, then will maybe work on matching the face more closely later...
Added pants to help get more feel of proportions. Will give the face another pass later.
Think the calf muscles need adjusting lower?