Modelling my wife in threedee!

sevenfingers

Hey, long time no see. I'm busier than ever being unemployed...

Anyways, since I have some time to kill, I'm finishing up some personal projects and starting some new ones.

My most challenging project so far has to be this...

Human faces has always scared the living bejebus out of me, but I figured it was time to grab the bull by the horn and do something other than monsters and mechanical objects.

Hence, I decided to model my wife.

The plan is to make an all quad low detail basemesh (just about finished with that, so far all quads) and take it in to zbrush for detailing and texturing.

Still haven't decided how to go about pesky things like hair.. This is just a placeholder so I won't have to display her in all her bald glory

Anyways, comments and crits greatly appreciated, but shaders, textures and the hair is just placeholders.
Let me know if there's any interest in more wireshots.

Unfortunately she won't allow me to display the reference pictures, and since I want to keep her a happy little girl, I'll comply.

EarthQuake

loops look good for the most part, give her some eyes!

sevenfingers

Hehe, Planning the eyes next. I like the eerie eyeless look though ;P

Care to expand on the bad loops? Exactly the kind of crits I need before I Zbrush her.

ElysiumGX

give her some eyelids!

sevenfingers

Aye sire, Next task on my list.. along with the eyeballs (I think I'll resuse the Krang ones... how flattering, huh?)

EarthQuake

Your loops arent bad for zbrush, if you can you should get rid of the loops that contribute to long non-square polys, trying to keep a consistant sqaurish shape on your quads is very important to zbrushing.... The ears are very nicely modeled but extremely excessive for a model you plan on zbrushing, but your wont really need to touch them at all in zbrush because they look finished already. The difference in density between the ears and the rest of the model(and thus how its connected) will give you some smoothing problems in zbrush if you want to sculpt around that area at all. You will want to have as few polys(3 or 5 edge verts) as posible in areas that you need a lot of detail, as they tend to cause pinching. But its inevitable, you cant ever get rid of poles completely.

Daz

Definitely looking forward to seeing what awesome lighting and material treatment you are bound to give her sevenfingers!

Kinda hard to crit the model without seeing her pics!

sevenfingers

Thanks for the C&C fellas

Got approval to show a photograph of her,

Things done since last post:
Added eyelids, worked on equalising the topology (thanks EQ)
Reworked the nose somewhat after an extensive crit from Poop, it looks sharper now. I'm having issues with the density and flow aroudn the nose though, not managing getting the subtle variations in sharpness that her nose presents.

Still not worth uploading a picture though, I'll try to have an update by the endof today though.

I'm contemplating reworking the edgeflow (or lack thereof) on the neck. It's kind of a bitch though, so I might do a test to see if I get acceptable results in Zbrush with the mesh as it is now.

Here's the pic that I was allowed to show:

JKMakowka

Not a bad start... but seriously, try to cancel that project somehow! There is no way you will come out of this unbruised

sevenfingers

hehe.

Anyways, here's the update for today. Don't know if I'll have the time to do anything more today; haven't equalised the wire, and decided not to rewire the neck topology, just move it to something that resembled the neck musculature in a more appropriate way.

Wire hasn't changed much, so I'm only attaching a clay.

bearkub

OK, I am really liking where this is going, but I am going to offer some nit-picky type comments. This is all judging from the photo you posted which isn't in the best lighting, so my comments may be way off base.

her nose looks a bit narrow up towards the bridge area and down the slope. It also seems that the nose points up a tad more than hers actually does.

The hairline on the model seems to be a bit lower down on the forhead than is shown in the picture. It is also making the size of her forhead look off.

She also has a very featured, full of character lips and mouth area that it doesn't seem like you have really brought out in the model. nothing really specific I can point out. Sorry about that.

This is looking really good, keep working! =D

notman

I think a lot of what bearkub pointed out are spot on... other than the lips. One other thing I noticed was the center of the ear. I think the 't' shaped area comes out too far. It's almost non-existant in the reference you posted (I know some of that is because of the angle).

Wahlgren

Hey seven, Saw you on animate.se too. Im not a biggie there so you dont know who i am though (Wahlgren)

Anyway. Go go, work your ass off. Its a fight for your life now

Thegodzero

For one very nice start.

Here are the things i see.


The ear lobe is diffrent on the model, her ear is thiker and has a shrper edge on the bottom where it come in. Also the slope going to the ear is more subtile.

The eye crease and fold needs some good lovin too as she has very soft skin details.

The cheaks need some work to give her that volume that she has but again its a very soft detail.

The tip of the nose is a little off in its shape, it has a very more angles to it. The lips and the dimple need to have a harder edge.

The dimple at the end of her mouth is a bit bigger and has a longer fade to it. With that the slight push out of her cheak.

Lastly would be her chin is not wide enough. the way you have it now kills the flow of her jaw line.

Hope you didnt mind my crit.

one last thing, the brow of her nose is a bit thin and her tear ducts need to come back in a good ways too.

sevenfingers

Hehe, It sure is Wahlgren

Thegodzero: I don't mind a single bit. That's a sexcellent crit. Makes it so much easier to follow. I can't thank you enough!

Daz

Yeah there's some good crits there. She's pretty, sevenfingers. Classical features. You sure are one brave man trying to pull this off I think the biggest thing I see is that your chin is too sharp (as already pointed out). I also think the distance between mouth and bottom of chin in your geo is too short, and the bridge of her nose probably needs to be wider.

hawken

owch easily touchy subject, I'll try to keep my crits as simple as possible:

eyes - too small
upper lip - no crease where skin texture changes to lip, also middle of lip dips down to much at the top, on the photo the top of the lip is very horizontal.

might be better to post the model in the same angle as the photo for better crits. I can see some difference in the innner ear and the top of the ear where it meets the head, although it's hard to tell from this angle.

sevenfingers

Wifey says thanks for the compliments.

Here's the latest update; lots of crits to keep track of, haven't implemented them all (still quite a bit to go).



The smirk she has in the photo changes the shape of her lips somewhat, I've since photographed a bunch of perspective references, and worked solely from them (the ortho ones made the mesh distorted), it's progressing quite well I think.

Stuff left to do:

Whole ear region, smoothen the artifact at the top lip (the corner), sharpen the dimple at the middle of the top-lip (dunno the name of that), some proportion changes,probably lots more.

I tried doing a quick zbrush pass on her, but she came out looking like michael jackson. The lack of perspective when working is really killing that software for me

shotgun

you changed the jaw and i i think it's too high now, the lips start too close to the nose. look at how you can see the jaw drop down where the ear-lobe meets it in the photo, but in yours the jaw just shoots off, there is no drop down.

Thegodzero

here is my quick paint over


note the ear, jaw, and chin.

sevenfingers

Thanks for the paintover.
I didn't use it directly, but matching the jawline to a photo turned out to match your paintover almost exactly. Nicely done

Still need to smoothen the transition of the ear, and I bet a million other things.

I'm at revision 95 now though, I put a limit to 100 revisions. After that it's just gonna have to be enough.

thanks fellas

Emil Mujanovic

Massive improvement from the original post!
Great stuff man!

-caseyjones

sevenfingers

Thanks

Here's a test with some rushed shaders (no detail in the colormap, no bump, and the SSS needs tweaking for sure).
Just couldn't stand watching the clay anymore...

It needs something better than a plain cylinder UV also

ElysiumGX

Your wife is beautiful, and I thought the model was hopeless in comparison, but it's coming out great. There's a classical attraction to her, and I think you nailed it (so to speak). I think there should be more subtle volume to her chin and forehead. Unless she doesn't want there to be. I know how that is. Good skin tone.

Steakhouse

I hope your wife is reading these posts. I know nothing lifts my spirits like having the internet agree that I'm hot stuff

Btw she is pretty.

Ryno

Nice stuff. That'll look sweet with color, spec maps, etc.

Other than that, I'm still thinking the bridge of the nose might need to be a bit wider. Something about the relation of the size of the bridge to the tip seems different in the photo. Maybe model's tip should be smaller, or bridge wider?

sevenfingers

Thanks Elysium, I always make the mistake of showing early WIPs ;P

Wifey says thanks once again for the compliments. She's very flattered.

I've got quite a few of small adjustments left on the overall model, but my eyes needed some rest form that, so I decided to do boring stuff like modelling eyelashes.

I'mrelatively satisfied with the eyes now, some work left on the lower eyelashes, and the makeup is just... meh.

Anyways:

odium

Wow those eyes are nice...

MackXX

Very nice!

MartinKDahl

looks really great! i remember you sevenfingers from pixelation, think i was called lokust or something back then cool seeing you again. Great work!

sevenfingers

Thanks

hey Lokust!
I've been looking for you high and low. I think we share a mutual buddy, Chopsticks... know him?

Would be nice to chat over MSN or something, send me a PM if it sounds interesting.

MartinKDahl

Yeah Platt is an old friend, sure ill add you to msn. Its been a long time

Archanex

looking very nice sevenfingers, what technique did you use to create the eyelashes?

You should post a render of your wife model with your Kraing material haha I bet she'd love it

sevenfingers

Heheh. I bet she would

I've had an idea to use Zbrush for what it's really meant for... bumpy monsters. I kind of liked the design of the vampires in Buffy, so I figured I'd make her one of those.

As for the technique:

First make a spline copy placed correctly on the eyelids (you can convert a set of edges to a spline).

Then copy this with an offset, creating a nice bend.

Then subdivide this line countless times with snap to midpoint.

Make splines running in the direction of the eyelashes now, snapping to the vertices of the guidesplines.

Change the mid vertice of the eyelash splines to smooth,
jumble the positions, convert to e-poly, collapse the end of each spline (so you get a cone), move them around even more,
put a gradient ramp in the opacity slot...

That's pretty much it.

It's very tedious.

sevenfingers

Starting working a little on the face texture.
I need to finish it like tomorrow... going jobhunting far from home

shape

nice work on this one. A little more fleshyness in the skin tones and some more imperfections and she'll be great.