Need help on my likeness sculpt...does my mesh look like the person at all?

theycallmedualian

hi. ive been working on this scuplt for like 7 hours and  my eyes are numb; cant tell anything apart anymore!

1) does my sculpture look like my person at all? maybe 20%? 40%?

2) are there any big anatomical mistakes on my sculpt?


I know i should retopolgize and clean up areas of the sculpt, and learn about the ears and lips in detail, but right now i wanna see if i can kinda reach likeness..any feedbacks are welcomed. many thanks!

does it at least somewhat look like him? 

hreazee

Hey Dualian
At the moment its really hard to tell. From the side profile, yeah i can kinda see it but overall it doesn't "feel" like him if you know what i mean?
The main issue would be judging from the screen pic of your sculpt is that you seem be sculpting on a super dense (or very high tris) base mesh.
What I would suggest is work on a low poly base mesh first. probably on the first and 2nd subdivision focus on larger facial forms like eyes, cheeks, mouth, nose and the general shape of the head. 3rd - 4rth subdivision you can focus on refining those areas and adding medium forms like eye lids, eye bags or the muscle groups around his mouth. 5th subdivision you continue refining those areas while adding smaller details like facial wrinkles and eventually to micro detail like pores, you get the gist. There are plenty of tutorials out there that can help you with sculpting likeness.
But i would really focus on the large and medium forms of the face. if you manage to make it 'feel' and look like him from a glance with just those forms alone then you are in the right track.

another tip that might help is that many artist i know uses the field of view of 30 or sometimes they turn off perspective mode when sculpting likeness.

Hope this helps

theycallmedualian

hreazee said:

Hey Dualian
At the moment its really hard to tell. From the side profile, yeah i can kinda see it but overall it doesn't "feel" like him if you know what i mean?
The main issue would be judging from the screen pic of your sculpt is that you seem be sculpting on a super dense (or very high tris) base mesh.
What I would suggest is work on a low poly base mesh first. probably on the first and 2nd subdivision focus on larger facial forms like eyes, cheeks, mouth, nose and the general shape of the head. 3rd - 4rth subdivision you can focus on refining those areas and adding medium forms like eye lids, eye bags or the muscle groups around his mouth. 5th subdivision you continue refining those areas while adding smaller details like facial wrinkles and eventually to micro detail like pores, you get the gist. There are plenty of tutorials out there that can help you with sculpting likeness.
But i would really focus on the large and medium forms of the face. if you manage to make it 'feel' and look like him from a glance with just those forms alone then you are in the right track.

another tip that might help is that many artist i know uses the field of view of 30 or sometimes they turn off perspective mode when sculpting likeness.

Hope this helps

hi! thanks for the lessons. my mesh is at 2nd subdi/800k polys, started with the 256k plane of head. so on the next one; i should vaguely construct the eyelids, browbones and cheeks etc first, zremesh it down to 50k before proceeding to sculpt? thanks!

hreazee

800k is definitely very high, check out 'DemoHeadFemale' in the project folder in zbrush. it has a good example of large and medium facial forms inside 13K polys.

if you find yourself struggle with folds and furrows, you can always go up a subdivision to sculpt it in and go down to tweak previous forms. so itmight be a good idea to keep all your subdivision levels so you can go up and down depending on what you want to tweak.

tysiu

Doesn't look much like him, if you compare closely the nose and lips, they have a lot of differences. The eyelids are too thin. A general clean up would be a good idea.

I would say, don't use base head, you will just learn how to add details. You might have problems with creating the basic shapes and finding their placement in the future. Try to sculpt the head on your own, from a sphere. There are good tutorials for that on youtube.
Like this www.youtube.com/watch?v=sx848Dl_P7o or this www.youtube.com/watch?v=OJMfhun_Z24. Start from the general shape, and when you feel you can't add more go up on the subdivision lvl. Don't rush things. Sculpting a likeness is pretty difficult, it takes a lot of patience, good references and a great eye for details.

slosh

I'm going to have to agree with tysiu that you should sculpt from a sphere to learn basic anatomy principles first.  I would even suggest not doing a likeness this early in your experience of sculpting heads/faces.  This is just my suggestion but you will end up focusing on achieving the likeness rather than core anatomical knowledge.  Once you have a greater understanding of anatomy, likeness will be far easier to grasp.  One thing to watch out for is camera FOV in the ref images you get.  This can largely distort someone's face and throw you off.  Also, actors faces change quite often as they age, gain/lose weight, or get plastic surgery.  If you can, get images from a movie where you can get multiple angles from the same period, that works well.  As someone mentioned, adjust your FOV in zbrush and try to drop your head into something like Marmoset to see it in proper lighting.  You can also set a good camera FOV in marmoset to give urself a better look at the head and if it looks accurate.  

kanga

Super advice here!

There seems to be alot of youtube tutorials where the artist goes straight for a hipoly mesh. Starting out it is very difficult to work that way. Its really much easier to start with a low poly form, nail that and then increase your subdivisions as the detail gets smaller. Slosh's advice to start with practice concentrating on structure rather than going straight for a likness is sound. Also what he says about film footage is a great tip.

Ive only done a likness attempt once, but used zB's transparent interface over video footage to help with multiple views. I started the mesh with zspheres  in the key areas. That is generally not necessary, except perhaps for the eyes. I made a zB sequence.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mSYH9NYFoes

theycallmedualian

thank you so much for the lessons guys! i should learn more anatomy first and sculpt features separately until they are nailed down. only then should start i with from low poly mesh or a sphere sculpting a generic face, then likeness, and to watch a show of the person to grab the most optimal references and to avoid caveats, then after some progress, throw my sculpt into a software with proper lightings check for further details. 

ive learned so much more already. this post can rest in peace now. TY folks!