Hominid Project

Samdant3D

Project I did based on the incredible work of Rafa Souza

kanga

Very super work! Well done.

Sempoo

Looks realistic! What specimen of hominid is this?

Eric Chadwick

This looks great. One thing that stands out to me is the teeth could use some SSS.

Samdant3D

Sempoo said:

Looks realistic! What specimen of hominid is this?

I took several references, there are literally dozens of species, it's scary to see that there are so many, there is a pair of brothers who dedicate themselves to making accurate artistic representations of hominids, they are called Kennis brothers, it's worth checking out!

Samdant3D

Eric Chadwick said:

This looks great. One thing that stands out to me is the teeth could use some SSS.

Wow! Good tip!

Eric Chadwick

Can you talk about your shader setup? Curious what types of texture inputs you're using for the skin, specular, SSS, etc.

Samdant3D

Eric Chadwick said:

Can you talk about your shader setup? Curious what types of texture inputs you're using for the skin, specular, SSS, etc.

Nothing special really, specular, normal, diffusion, roughness, native sss (in this case there was no map)

zetheros

sick work, are all of the fine details hand sculpted or did you use something like zwrap? Looking to get into this soon myself

Samdant3D

zetheros said:

sick work, are all of the fine details hand sculpted or did you use something like zwrap? Looking to get into this soon myself

I used zwrap and scan, believe it or not, using a ready-made scan and designing its details is extremely easy, and generates an incredible result, but of course knowing how to sculpt these details is also very important in some cases, but the scan will always be more authentic, because it is taken 100% from something real, in this case you can make a comparison with Marvelous, learning to use fold simulation programs is necessary, but knowing how to sculpt these folds by hand is even more important in my opinion, even if you are not going to sculpt several folds from scratch every day, knowing how to do this is a big differentiator, even to have more visual reference to know what is good and what is bad.

Celosia

These wrinkles are amazing, they look really good!

It's not clear from the original post, but are you up for critiques?

Samdant3D

Celosia said:

These wrinkles are amazing, they look really good!

It's not clear from the original post, but are you up for critiques?

Shure!

Celosia

Okay! First I want to compliment you again on how good it looks! I wouldn't be writing a critique this if your work wasn't this nice, and I'm looking forward your to next pieces.

I've got pretty much only anatomy pointers. I tried to color-code so they're easier to read but the text colors are changing once posted, haha.

▣ I looked up Souza's work and saw that you replicated your reference very well. The problem is that the reference has this implausible corner of the mouth that was also carried over to your piece. Several muscle groups meet at the corner of the mouth. Due their placement it's not pointy and it can't have the upper lip overlapping the lower lip. Sometimes the fat and skin folds create this impression, but if you look closely the lips always meet perfectly at the same place and they still curve inwards, with any folds following that curve added to gravity. Sometimes the inward curve is subtle, sometimes not, but it's always there.

▣ Noses suffer a lot in 3D, they tend to get too smoothed over. The transition from bone to cartilage can be very subtle, but it's noticeable as a change in geometry and color. I feel the ridges at the top of the nose bridge should be more to the sides, in line with with the division of the nasal bones x maxilla, and this ridge won't continue once you get to the cartilage. Sometimes the nasalis muscles stand out from the cheeks and the nose, but they aren't a continuation of the bone division.

▣ The alar cartilage curves inwards. Some people's nose wings stand out from the face, with the the alar tissue creating a bridge that loops back on the underside of the nose all way to the cartilage at the center. That bridge won't go over the cartilage though, it'll be flush or taper off as if going under it. You'll see the same in hominids reconstructions and even chimpanzees, the cartilage takes precedence.

▣ You could use a bit more fat on the highlighted areas. The entire eye socket feels uniformly sunk in, looking like someone severely ill or dead, not just with hollow eyes.

▣ This looks like a projection error. I used Wrap just once so far and had the exactly same thing happen when using the base head they provided. I'm not sure if the head is mapped wrongly, if it's something about the texture scans, or if it's the nose geometry because even after matching and re-matching points that still popped up around the wings.