I didn't have much time today, so I thought I'd just play a little bit and came out with this. It's still wheel-spinning; they all look basically the same. But I suppose if I can remember and reproduce the planes that make up a torso to that point on a similar quality each time, it means I'm remembering them properly, at least. I want to push that one a bit more and see just how much I can replicate the reference on that level. I think I'm still fucking something up; I think that's why I'm still fixated on this thing. I feel like there's something wrong, but I can't work out what, so I'm just spinning my wheels doing the same thing over and over again trying to work out what it is. Although, it has been said that's the definition of madness...
I think I'm still fucking something up; I think that's why I'm still fixated on this thing. I feel like there's something wrong, but I can't work out what
dunno if you want feedback, but I've noticed the shoulders are consistently on the smaller side, at least for the d00ds, you nailed them in earlier posts though
I think I'm still fucking something up; I think that's why I'm still fixated on this thing. I feel like there's something wrong, but I can't work out what
dunno if you want feedback, but I've noticed the shoulders are consistently on the smaller side, at least for the d00ds, you nailed them in earlier posts though
Oh, I absolutely appreciate feedback. And that's true, now that you mention it. Maybe I focused on women so much before that I'm not used to bulkier male forms, haha.
I'm really bad at arms. Especially the underside. So hard to get a good angle for those in reference images. So I did this planar one studying from a scan. It might've been a questionable choice; the man has unusually long, slightly disproportionate arms. Well, the anatomy will be the same. Anyway, it's not quite right, but better than I understood it before. I was referencing the muscles themselves too much to try to understand what I was looking at, though, so it's more ecorche-like than it ought to be. Honestly, the skin and fat makes a huge difference to a real arm, so I need to account for that.
I think these exercises have been helping, though. I'm finding it much....Clearer? I'm finding it easier to establish forms that look roughly like they're supposed to by thinking of the planes and the key contours that define them, rather than my previous hyperfixation on the anatomy as anatomy that undermined me with all its complexities. I reckon I'm slightly less dogshit than before. Just a little bit.
I think I'm going to do something else. Studying this way for a bit has been good practice for breaking my habit of thinking in terms of anatomy rather than form, but honestly at this point I'm just procrastinating with it because I'm a fucking idiot perfectionist. As per usual. I'm just putting off doing some proper sculpting because I know I'll only fuck it up. But I need to do some if I'm ever going to actually be halfway decent, so I'll try doing something that actually looks like the thing it's supposed to be again next.
Not a tonne of time to sculpt today. Going to try to push this one as far as I can over a few days' free time. Just getting this res as accurate as I can first. Already looks like shit.
Ahh, it's in a shite state. I upped the resolution so I could do the forms more accurately, but somewhere along the way I've fucked it up again. Especially the ribs and obliques. There's some stuff going on on the reference I don't entirely understand; mostly around the top pair of his six pack, and at the edges of the abs. He must've been dehydrated as fuck or something; you can even see creases between the sections of his obliques. Not as strongly as they are on my model, though; I'm finding it difficult to establish them where they need to be - and accurately - without overdoing it. The back is also dogshit and needs a lot of work. Only just started the arms, so of course they're bad, too.
I feel like as soon as I up-resed it, I lost control of the surface. Useless.
A bit of progress, perhaps? I realised I was getting ahead of myself, as per usual. Idiot. I don't need to be worrying about the eccentricities of this guy's deltoids or abs right now; I hadn't got the overall shape quite right. I was also misreading some of the shadows, so the forms weren't right in a few areas. I've made some adjustments. I also started on the arms, but they need a fair amount of work. I only had a few hours here and there for it, so not as much going as I'd like. I want to push the accuracy a little more on this level; next thing up if I can get that far will be worrying about the fine details. That'll be new. Doing details at a sensible time for once.
Ah, I just don't have the morale to keep looking at this thing. I'll do something else. It's not quite where I want it to be, but within, hmm....Seeing distance? I can see where I would need to do from here to make it what I'd actually want, rather than it being a thousand miles off. I did make some serious errors, though. The arms are so wrong, and thinking back, maybe I could've squeezed more detail and solidness out of the lower resolutions than I did. I'll just have to do better next time. Ahh, it's still all procrastination.
Something I'm tinkering with. Want to try making some kind of sketch of a VTM character of mine. She's a nosferatu, so she's going to end up considerably more twisted, but I need some decent anatomy as a basis. This isn't a proper project though, just an excuse to practice, really. Ahhh, I totally got ahead of myself again. I'm truly an idiot. There's a lot I need to revise on the torso.
Ah don't be to hard on yourself, i am enjoying your adventure into these and if you complete them to "approval-able spec" you'll more than likely never have to do the basics again.
Just a side note if you do, be sure to make them "adjustable", like these character creators do with being able to inflate the form from ultra skinny to super fat, then all you got to do is make armors/clothing accessories and deform the face bits here and there and boom, new characters every-time.
^Layers help with this and remember to store morph targets to erase, there is also scan data versions of "real people", that you can purchase to save you the time, think the search term is makehuman... I do not use any of this stuff, just looked at it once to see what the hub,bub was about.
Well, shit. It's been a while since I updated this. I've been deep in the perfectionism mines, as expected. These ones are basically just me trying to get myself to do something, so no real sculpting here. I did work out some problems I was having sculpting female torsos, though. Spinal erectors are the devil, by the way.
More aimless sketching that I can't turn into anything. I feel like I've lost whatever shreds of confidence I had to sculpt properly. I'm just procrastinating again.
Some more sculpting. Spent too long fucking about on that second set of legs, honestly. I should stop sculpting planar stuff. I always end up procrastinating by just seeing how sharp I can make the edges to put off actually sculpting properly. It's not useful at this point. I ended up being really busy after that, so didn't do any until that head today. Got a little new tablet to try to use for better posture, so I wanted to try it out.
I'm going to have another go at my character project. First I need my basemesh up and running, so I'm starting at about as low res as I can go. I'm finding the stuff I've practiced quite useful for blocking in here, though it's not correct yet. There's no enough gesture; that S-curve isn't quite there, and I need to fix the hips and flank before I proceed. It might have been better to start just a little higher, though; I don't quite have the resolution for all the shapes I want to block in to have the right contours here. That said, I can just do as close as I can at this res and fix them at the next level. That's the way, really.
Problems for now.....Not enough gesture. The boobs are wrong; too square, and on reflection, a little too high. Direction of the spinal erectors is at too much of an angle' needs to be more straight. The curve of the front of the ribcage isn't existent enough; it's a little too flat. Shoulderblades might be a little too close together, and I want to double check the shape of the collarbone from above, as well as the shoulder width. I think the neck is also too straight; it's more of a | than a / right now, and that's generally not the case. The crotch is just all wrong and wants a fix; at least what I can do at this resolution. I also think the arse is wrong; too flat at the edges. Doesn't really have the curve you've get from the gluteus...I want to say medialis? The bit at the side. Fix that, fix the landmark for the greater trochanter. Fix the shoulders. Then worry about the rest of the limbs.
If I think of it that way, like a list of tasks, it's actually a bit better mentally than just thinking of it as a list of flaws, come to think of it. Feels more like "this is stuff I'm going to do" and not "this is all the reasons this is irredeemable dogshit".
A little bit of progress. I fixed the gesture somewhat. As usual, I realised I'd got ahead of myself. I didn't establish the directions of the masses properly before I started thinking about anatomy, so I had to make a lot more corrections. There's still a lot more to go; since I took a break to post this, I've just realised the ribcage is too wide for the model. The back, I already know needs way more work.
I'm finding all the studies I did on the planes useful for helping me understand why it's not right, so there's some visible here. I'm not going to go as far as to make it planar; that's not useful here. But marking them a bit more roughly as I work at this level is helping.
Last post for today. It's.....Getting there, with the torso. It's still not right yet, but it's not as far off as it was. I did end up making it a bit planar, because I was getting stuck and thought it would help to think planes and contours and not anatomy. It helped a bit. I'm still not quite happy with the pelvis, and looking at it, the ribs need a fix too. The side view looks more correct though; not as chunky as it was earlier.
I'm sure it'll look like total dogshit again in the morning. I'll fix it again then, and then again after that.
I'm starting to get really frustrated here. It's just not quite there yet, but looking at it so long is making me too pissed off and too focused to put all my fingers on all the problems. I don't have enough resolution for everything I need here. Maybe I should've gone to at least 32 after all. The checked the proportions, and they seem about right, but they're quite correct. It feels too short. Also, the ribs aren't properly defined at the back, and I'm still decidedly unconfident about the back in general. It needs more work.
For now, though, I think I'll have a go at the limbs. Too much torso is pissing me off, and I'll probably feel better after a change of pace. I have to keep at it.
Okay, that was a lie. I couldn't relax and ended up going back and doing more torso. It's still not quite right, but less bad. Also I really need to fix the fucking arse.
Took a break for the weekend, then got back to it today. It's still at the same low res, but it's starting to get there, maybe. Did the upper half of the legs. I'm not quite satisfied with them yet, especially at the knees, so I'll have another crack at them and keep fixing it till it looks right. Then I'll do the lower legs, give it another check, then add the arms.
I went back again. I just can't get myself to like this torso. It's still off even now. I just can't get it quite right. Especially with the limitations of the current resolution; there's a few bits I just can't sculpt in at all. Like the annoyingly complex area between the shoulder blades where you have the all the overlapping bits of shapes, with the spinal erectors and the trapezius, and even a little bit of rhomboid. Hate it. Honestly, the more I look at it, and work at it, I think it's actually getting worse. And I really need to fix the shoulders! They're completely fucked. Way too narrow, and the arms aren't attached right. I need to take a little breather and try again.
I didn't get much time to sculpt today. But when I did, I just ended up going round in circles. It's not right, it's not right! I know it's not, but I can't put my finger exactly on why it's fucked. It's so frustrating. And I'm still getting annoyed with the resolution making it hard to sculpt certain things, like diagonal lines, with any clarity worth a damn.
After a few bad days, I did some more sculpting today and made a bit of progress. I'm still not happy with it! It feels like it's getting somewhere, but it's not there yet, that torso. Especially the hips and upper back. I'll have to recheck what I'm doing there with the anatomy, because it definitely doesn't seem quite right, even for its limited resolution. I'm still struggling to get the back quite right in general, too. I hate how few references there are that show you an angle up the back to double check stuff like the depth of groove of the spine, or the exact shape the ribcage has at the back when viewed from below. There's scan data, of course, but I wish I had a lot of photos on hand, too. They'd be really convenient.
imo the mesh resolution is holding you back, unless this is a dynamesh only challenge you're at a stage where you can make a lowpoly, create polygroups, subdivide and get that fine-tuned control you need. Your anatomy is excellent but dynamesh is really just a tool meant for quickly establishing a rough silhouette, it's like trying to do an oil painting with a pencil
imo the mesh resolution is holding you back, unless this is a dynamesh only challenge you're at a stage where you can make a lowpoly, create polygroups, subdivide and get that fine-tuned control you need. Your anatomy is excellent but dynamesh is really just a tool meant for quickly establishing a rough silhouette, it's like trying to do an oil painting with a pencil
Yeah, I think so too. I want to up it, but I hate having to do different parts as different subtools and then merge them in later; it always makes a mess that's annoying and inconvenient to clean. Well, I suppose it'll end up that way anyway since any resolution that's adequate for the body won't be shit for the hands and feet, so they'll need to be done separately and added anyway.
I'll do a little more, then worry about changing the mesh type.
Replies
I am so bad at shoulders.
This is stagnant. I'm just repeating myself without learning anything. Spinning my wheels again. Tch.
dunno if you want feedback, but I've noticed the shoulders are consistently on the smaller side, at least for the d00ds, you nailed them in earlier posts though
Oh, I absolutely appreciate feedback. And that's true, now that you mention it. Maybe I focused on women so much before that I'm not used to bulkier male forms, haha.