Anatomy Sculpt Studies, trying not to suck

BradMyers82

Hey all, as a wanna be, character artist I have put off studying anatomy long enough. I have seen others post similar threads on the zbrush forum:

(sculpting adventures: http://www.zbrushcentral.com/zbc/showthread.php?t=56822&highlight=adventure)

and other sites with a ton of success, so I decided I would give it a whirl.

I plan on doing a few of these a week, mainly on the weekend. I don't want to get too caught up in detail at the moment, but just really get a handle of how thing fit together and so fourth.

So here is my first attempt of an old man. I was inspired by the speed modeling thread here by killingpeople and I spent only about 2 or 3 hours on this (which is pretty fast for me).
I used the base mesh from Mudbox, and this tutorial for reference http://www.creationsofmind.net/abishai/Timelapse_OldManHead.html.

So please feel free to critque, after all that's why I am posting here.

Jaco

Not bad. I think you need to spend more time in the lower subdivisions though. At the moment it looks more like a dude with burn scars than an old guy. You need to focus on the underlying bones,fat and muscle that create the planes of the face.

You've missed some important landmarks on an old person's face, hopefully this helps:



Notice the nasolabial folds (red lines), sunken cheeks. Think about the skin stretching across the skull (blue).

BradMyers82

awsome Jaco, thanks! I will make another attempt from scratch soon, using your advice.

BradMyers82

Okay, hopefully I hit the areas Jaco pointed out in his post this time.

Here is my latest sculpt done in about 2-3 hours again, and with the base mesh from mudbox.





One thing that always bothers me is that the front view never really matches up with the side view to me in my sculpts. By this I mean, when I rotate the mesh from the front view to the side, how I expect the side view to look (based off looking at the front view) never quite meets my expectations.

I usually think the front view and side view independently are okay, however; they just don't seem to come together right.

If this makes any sense to anyone, please give suggestions as to how I can remedy this.

And of course, any critiques or comments at all are very welcome

Mezz

Huh... no, I think I understand what you're getting at, and what you mean...
To me, I think the front view looks like a slightly younger and tougher looking guy, whereas the profile is older and more sinewy and weaker looking... Now, I've stared at it for a good few minutes trying to figure out WHY, but I can't for the life of me figure it out. I partly think the neck looks thick and strong in the front view and opposite in the side, but that's really not the only thing doing it. Hmmmmm.
The only thing I can think of is to find a way to age and thin him more for the front view. If someone can figure out what I'm getting at and knows how to fix it, please help me out!

Kawe

iirc the neck only got one (or well.. two since there are two sides) of those huge badass muscles (the one going from the back of the ear down to the front of the neck) and you seem to have two more that are just as big. also all of them seem a little way too big for being a normal old person. get some more references

BradMyers82

Mezz, Kawe: I never properly thanked you guys for the crits here. Yeah, too many problems to mention I think ha ha.

I'm bringing this thread back from the dead. I never really got it running like I wanted to, but I DO want to study anatomy a lot more, so I'm going to start posting some work here again.

I'v been watching the eat 3d classical sculpting dvd and I'm inspired to work a lot harder on my anatomy knowledge.

I almost posted this in the speed thread, but I figured I would have a better chance at crits here, which is what I'm looking for really.

This one took about 1 hour mainly, but 2 more hours of tweaking and stuff, for a total of 3 hours.
I didn't use reference, and I just wanted to make something quick to test my knowledge of anatomy (without reference).

Hopefully I have improved over the last year +.

achillesian

from the base mesh isnt from scratch, try a sphere, or a low poly bust

Irreal

If you are just learning (which you are) then working from a base mesh is fine. A decent base mesh will give you a better topology than a sphere so you can sculpt away without having to worry about it. You'll eventually hit a wall with a sphere where you need to subdivide just to get a little extra detail that a decent base mesh would have given you anyway.

As for a critic I'd say that you are guessing at a lot of forms and laying down various lumps and bumps in the hope that it will look right. (I do the same now and again )

Treat each area of the face with equal importance. Don't just lay in some bumps over the forehead and call it done. You need to really observe how the muscles and skin lay over the bone structure. You are improving though. Also, it's not cheating to look at anatomy books if you are not sure of something. Some of the character guys at work have full anatomical models on their desks.

BradMyers82

achillesian: Who said anything about doing this from scratch? lol
I used the base mesh bust from mudbox so it's far from cheating imo.
I have made my own base meshes also, and I could always use those if its a concern, but I'm definitely going to use a base mesh because I think if anything it speeds up the learning process, not slow it down.

Irreal: I'm with you man, thanks for the crit!
I totally agree with the guessing point you made, and I plan on doing some stuff from reference now. I just wanted to get a quick one out of the way from memory first. Hopfully I will look back at this one some day soon, and think it sucks.
For now I'm pretty happy with it though, ha ha.
P.S. I just ordered this anatomy model earlier today: http://www.freedomofteach.com/products/figures/figure_male_3
Should be coming soon, I can't wait.

BradMyers82

Here is a skull study I worked on today and yesterday.
I took my time with this one, I really wanted to learn more about the skull.

Here are the results:


Here is the Base Mesh I made and used here for this:

aesir

Great job on the skull. Big improvement over your older stuff.

achillesian

now that skulls impressive

BradMyers82

aesir, achillesian: Thanks guys!

Well I'm still struggling with getting likeness and head sculpting in general. I have a better understanding of the major forms now, but I am still not realizing certain shapes from the reference I am using. There is a lot of back and fourth at this point, change this, change that, but it doesn't look correct to me still.

Here is the biggest problem I'm having though.
What's the best way to handle Lens distortion in references? (I already know Lens Correction trick in PS)

For example, I figure that the side view is the least distorted, so I usually go off that scale, but it still looks pretty crazy from the front, if I follow it exactly. Also, in mudbox I also have to account for the FOV perspective camera which makes matters even more confusing. I also realize I can change the camera to orthographic, but since people don't view the world orthographically, it makes things just look off working like this.

Hopefully my reference will make my problem clear.
The chin and forhead are lined up in the reference, but as you will see, the features are all mis-aligned due to common lens distortion. But Checkout how off he looks when I scale the front image to the side. (see second ref)

So again, what's the best way to handle this so I can get accurate likeness in my sculpts?

Please any advice would be greatly appreciated.
As a side note, I plan to fix up the proportions here, then break the symmetry and clean up a bunch of stuff. So I'm probably a little past the half way point now I figure.


Reference Unedited:


Reference Scaled to side view:


Sculpt Progress:

bounchfx

fantastic improvement!

Nizza_waaarg

cool to see you doin the anat sculpting thing man.
awsome improvments from the start of the thread, like how you're getting much more form going on


If you do wanna use backdrops or whatever (forces you to measure things out and think about the proportions more without, tho can be more accurate if you do use some i guess), you could always adjust the focal length/depth camera stuff until it starts looking a little closer to the ref.
Also heads are usually tilted different ways in most ref (even slightly can throw measurements off), so kinda tricky to get things 100% right.


Just keep measuring man, like the hight of the nose could indicate how far down the mouth and chin are, width of teh nose can tell you the total width of the head, etc... kinda time consuming/fiddly is all

killingpeople

Nice work man. I like the skull. That's a really useful thing to have in your file morgue. Only thing that bugs me is the chin is usually sharper, and the molars look a little inflated, focus on detailing the gum line, it should make it look more real.

BradMyers82

Nizza: Thanks for the tips, really helped me a lot in the latest wip!
killingpeople: Thanks for the kind words. Yeah I'll revisit the skull based on your crit. It wasn't supposed to be anything but a study but I'm thinking now that I'll clean it up and put it in my portfolio until I make a better one.

Here is my latest WIP, at a finished state I think. I'm setting the old Asian dude aside for now because I don't like much how he is turning out (need to learn more before revisting him).

This time I went for a much younger person, so I wouldn't get confused by details like wrinkles and stuff.

I also think I was able to somewhat solve my problems with working from photo reference. I'll be interested to hear what you guys think about this one.

Ref:


Mudbox Screen Grab:

John Warner

wow dude, you learn fast. looks great.

Mark Dygert

Awesome stuff, keep it up. The latest sculpt looks a lot like the ref, it also looks a bit like Zach Braff (JT from Scrubs) mostly in the 3/4 shot and not so much in the others.

killingpeople

Nice man!

teaandcigarettes

Awesome stuff Brad. You have proven that character modeling skills can be acquired much quicker than I though. Your fast progress really inspires me to get more into character art. Kudos to you

I particularly like that Asian dude; I'm getting that Bioshock-ish vibe from him.

Electro

awesome to see you improving so fast, keep going at this rate and you'll be unstoppable

Jeremy Wright

Kudos! That last likeness was very good.

BradMyers82

John Warner, KP, teaandcigarettes, Electro, 8FtSpider: Thanks for the kind words guys!
Vig: It does look sorta like that actor, me and my gf had a laugh about this after you pointed it out.


Well here's another one. This image is really early on in the sculpting process, so bear with me (only sub-d 3 from Mudbox default bust).
I'm wondering if anyone can guess who it is. If you can, it will tell me I'm on the right track so it would be great if you guys can tell.

MRico

It's Morgan Freeman! Awesome sculpt man!

SanderDL

Morgan Freeman?

Gallows

Good God you learn fast. Also I'm going with the Freeman.

chrisradsby

Great work mate, you're an inspiration to us all. You're getting really good at this.

Chunkey

I could tell it was Morgan Freeman straight away- even got the expression bang on too

Mark Dygert

Awesome, great likeness.

disanski

I love it too

Harito

Getting very good at capturing likeness, keep it up

BradMyers82

No it's a self portrait. Damn I thought I had it!

...Just kidding, its Morgan Freeman. I'm really happy you guys approve so far, I won't let you down with the final sculpt.
Thanks again!

Nistrum

was it bigbird??
lol
nice progression dude

nfrrtycmplx

That's the worst brad pitt model i've ever seen.

But seriously, you did a good job of capturing the character, still have some anatomy things to work out with the position of the ears, the size of the features and the structure of the face.



some of the lines are too deep in my opinion. But the overall sculpt is good, you improve very quickly and you should keep going going going... you'll be a character artist before you know it

Good job and keep working hard man!

cycloverid

I have no idea how you were before, but this stuff is great.

I'd like to see some love put into the hair on your next one, but maybe I'm asking too much!

BradMyers82

Nistrum: ha ha

nfrrtycmplx: Yeah, I agree with you, but it was on a relatively low sub-d level which is why it looked so blobby. Although the angle of that picture and the lighting makes his folds look less defined also. I appreciate the crit and kind words though.

cycloverid: Yeah, I tried to approach the hair differently this time based on your crit. It will only look so good since I am limited by polycounts. So I just try to get the basic shapes, high, medium and low frequency detail. Last time it was overly stylized looking on that kid though, so hopefully this looks better.


Well here is the final sculpt. Hope you guys like it. Next up, a famous actress!


Here are the orthos I made: (images from the movie "The Bucket List")


And the final scultpt:

OrganizedChaos

not bad! You did a great job at capturing his likeness

woogity

Nice one Brad! your sculpting is head and shoulders better than it was just this time last year! great stuff.

-Woog

throttlekitty

very nice!

Ruz

looks good man

Grok5620

Love the progression, I cant wait to see more.
-Cheers-

BradMyers82

Hey guys, thanks so much for the encouragement!

Here is another one. It's about half way done. Sculpted from the Mudbox base mesh, as usual.

I'm wondering if anyone can identify her at this point.

MRico

I'm going to go with....

Jessica Alba?

pestibug

Can't say I can see a resemblance right now (but it could be someone i don't know). Keeping an eye on the progress tho', You've come leaps and bounds brad. Specially mr. Freeman is amazingly well done!

BradMyers82

AutopsySoldier: No, but I can definitely see why you think that. Thanks for the guess, it tells me I need to do a lot more work on her before I move up in sub-d.

pestibug: Thanks a lot man!

Well here is some more work on her. Possibly now she is recognizable?
If nothing else at least she is starting to look human. lol




[edit] 1 second after I post her, I see a bunch of flaws. Eyes too small for one. Oh well, I'll do some more work on her tommorrow.

BradMyers82

Okay, so there is still plenty of work to do on this sculpt but I'm giving an update simply as an excuse to share this brief article I wrote on my methods here when doing these sculpts.
I am posting this briefing on my methods below as I'm sure many of you don't want to read it, (its pretty long).

Here is the latest still very WIP sculpt (again I haven't had a lot of time for this):


Brief Article:
Reason: I have been getting a lot of emails lately asking for advice on how to do likeness sculpts but I am currently too busy (lots of freelance work... hurray!) to write a proper tutorial on the subject. I will write a proper tutorial in the near future, but anyways here is a email response I gave someone earlier today:

Email:

Hi, I saw your mesh of Morgan Freeman and that was pretty incredible. I'm just starting out with ImageModeler, just messing around to be honest to see if it can do what I want it to. I was hoping you could help me out and showing me where I can find a good tutorial to figure out how I can model human bodies. Seeing that you did this Morgan Freeman bust, with as much detail as you have, I almost feel like you must be able to model a human body, which you can then use to measure the model (like the arm length, the chest girth, etc.). If you don't mind, can you tell me how you learned to do this, I can't find a good tutorial to teach me how to model a human geometry with photos. Your help would be greatly appreciated

Response:

You ask a really good question, and doing realistic high poly sculpts like this is something I struggled with greatly myself. And you are correct there are indeed a huge lack of information on the subject. However, there are two good tutorials that I can direct you to:

Free human bust tutorial: Part 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U4VyMLV7jGM

Part 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cr9sS48lVrE


Paid Classical sculpture tutorial:http://eat3d.com/classical-sculpting



Both are by the same instructor who is excellent at explaining human anatomy sculpting.

Sadly, very little technicality goes into doing sculpts like these. This means its more of an artistic form, and you can't simply measure things and end up with a correct looking sculpt. Basically it just takes a lot of practice, patients, focus, and effort to get your understanding of the forms down, and then learn how to actually apply that to your sculpt. The more you work at it, the more you will understand about generalities in humans, and how far things can be pushed before the sculpt looks unrealistic.

But here are some basic technical guidelines you can follow that will certainly help, and I use every times.

- Always move up 1 subdivision at a time, and push that subdivisions detail as far as you can. Now this doesn't mean, throw things way out of proportion so you can start getting eye lid detail at low subdivision, rather, your mesh should always look like its intended person you are sculpting. It's easy to get in the frame of thought that,
"well I'm on a low subdivision level and things will look better when I subdivide and add more detail". This is true to a degree, but really you can get a really strong likeness at a low subdivision level, and if you are not getting that, you need to work on it more until you have it. One thing you can try is squint until the screen is blurry. If you can see any likeness at this time, you need to put more work into the various proportions until you nail it.

-This brings me to the next trick. Getting a likeness is all about proportions. The best thing you can do, even if you are just making a person out of thin air, is get a lot of reference. 3d sk is a good place for this, although it is a site you have to pay for. I believe there are some sites or places where you can find free images, but I don't know them off hand. You could also always use yourself or a friend as a reference and take your own pictures.
So what you want to do is set up orthographic images. Any time you have a photo you will have lens distortion. This is the sort of fish eye effect you get from cameras lens. To correct this, open photoshop and go to Filters>Distort>Lens Correction. I'm not going to go over the specifics of that filter, but play around with it and you will get it. It's quite simple really. Although I should mention, this filter was added to later versions of photoshop. I believe if you don't at least have CS1 then you might not have access to this Filter.

Okay, so you attempted to make the persons pictures as flat as possible, no distortion. Human eyes are used to compensating for distortion, so a true orthographic image with no distortion might seem unrealistic to you, but you need to really attempt to see past this. Use your best judgment, because ultimately that's all you can do for this part. Also note, really take your time setting up these orthographics as they will be the foundation for your sculpt later on.

So now that your photos are undistorted you need to get them to all line up with each other. I prefer to use 3 pictures, 1 straight forward, 1 from 3 quarters view, and 1 from the side. Just know that what ever is closest to the camera will have distortion that you can't remove with the Lens Correction filter. So from the front, the nose will be slightly off, since its close to the camera, and from the side the ear will appear too high or low since it is too close to the camera. So use the ruler in photoshop (cntrl R, and drag and drop off the rulers edge) so you can see if things are lining up. Start with the top of the head and the bottom of the chin. Get all 3 pictures to line up at these two points. Do this by using a simple transform in photoshop. Once you have that down, you will need to adjust the eye level, the nose level, the lips level, the mid chin level, the forehead level, the brow level and the ears level. There is no perfect way to do this other than brute force, but I try to use mainly the warp tool in free transform. I also occasionally use liquify for certain areas, smudge brush turned up to 100 percent, cut and paste sections, then clean up with the patch tool and clone brush, or simply various functions of the transform tool.

-Once you have good orthographic images setup, you can then set them up in mudbox so that you can follow them as a guideline.
Just be warned that these will not work 100 percent, you will eventually have to use your own judgment and artistic skill for various parts, but these images Will give you a really good start, and take a lot of the guess work out.

You will need a base mesh, you can either create your own, or use a standard base mesh provided by your sculpting program. I simply use the mudbox base bust. Now that you have that, in Mudbox go to the "Object list" tab. And click on the plus sign next to the "Front" camera. This shows you two options, we are interested in "ImagePlane". But before we move to it, first right click on the front camera and select "Look Through". This will set your camera to the front view camera. Be carful not to move this camera at all in the viewport for now. Go to the bottom of the screen to the "Camera Bookmarks" tab. By clicking the little arrow you can save the exact camera angle you are using. This is really important because we are going to setup the orthographic images with a specific camera position so that we can check the proportions of things. You will need to setup a camera bookmark for both the side camera view and the front camera view.

So go back up to the Front camera's Image Plane. In the Properties panel you will have various options. First, import your orthographic images you created by clicking the import button. Now you will see your orthographic images, and the scale will likely be all off. Click on the "Advanced" tab and set the visibility to .4. You can now see your base mesh and the orthographic image. Click on the Transformation tab and you will see various transformations you can make to your orthographic image. Before you make any changes: PAN your viewport camera so that your base mesh is in the center and in a place you want it to be for the front view sculpting. You can either set up a camera book mark now, or do a little playing around with the camera and scaling of the orthographic image and moving, but basically you just want to get everything lined up in general. Ideally, you will have your base mesh's chin and forehead lined up with the chin and forhead of your orthographic images. Make sure you have your camera book mark at this point setup also. At this point, you will have your camera all setup in an orthographic view (very important) with your orthographic images, and your camera book mark so you can always get back to this exact spot, when you are looking through your Front camera. You can now test this out, by right clicking on the camera and going to properties and uncheck "Lock rotate" and "Lock Zoom". This will alow you to move the camera freely and you can alway click on your camera book mark to get back to the true front view.

Repeat this process for the Side camera as well, this time making it match your side orthographic image. Take special note of the "Scale" number you used in the Front Image Plane Transformation dialogue as you want to have the same scale for both views.

Once you have everything setup you can switch to the different cameras with "Look through" and play with the visibility of the Orthographic image so that you can get the actual mesh to match the orthographic image you setup. What I prefer to do is have the image plane at 1.0 visibility and and click the eye next to the camera to turn it on and off. It's much faster than going into the advanced dialogue and playing with the slider every time.

-The last thing technically speaking to deal with is simply the brushes. I regularly use these brushes: Sculpt, Smooth, Grab, Pinch, Flatten, and Bulge. And Occasionally use Foamy, Scrape, Wax, Contrast, Freeze, Erase, and Mask. And very rarely use, Spray, Fill, Repeat, Imprint, Knife, Smear, and Select and move Transformation tools. I'm talking Mudbox 2010 as you might have guessed, but all the tools do have there purpose, and I have my own unique hotkeys assigned to each one so I can quickly switch between them all.

The main thing you will be trying to do is get the surface or polygons to match the shapes you are going for. While this may seem rather obvious, it sometimes becomes a factor that is highly overlooked because you are working with Smooth Shade on and don't actually see the Polygons individually. But I am always thinking about the underlying geometry as I work. I often pinch things that I don't really want pinched, simply because I will later smooth it out, and the end result is, I get polygons moved into the exact place I want. When you have areas of geometry that are too dense, and areas that are not dense enough, this is really key. When working with the mudbox base mesh for example, you have to be very carful how you plan things out when working with a character that you plan to model a interior mouth on. There is a serious lack of geometry for this, so if you do not plan carfully and get your polygons where you need them at a low subdivision level, sculpting areas like this from the mudbox base mesh can be impossible. But like I said, careful planning it is very doable, in fact I do it all the time myself.

Just as a side note, when things are matching up orthographically from the side, and front, and things still don't look correct to you, remember there is a lot of roundness to the human form and you might not have the model correct in 3 quarters view, or the depth of certain things might not be correct in areas of the side view you cannot really see. Anyways, there are millions of things that can go wrong when sculpting a likness and only one way that is really correct. No matter how much you practice, your sculpt will never be perfect, the only thing you can do is strive to make it more perfect than your last attempt. Having a ton of photos beyond the orthographic images is also important, and its vital that you check the sillohette of you reference from every angle imaginable, and see if it matches one of your many references. There will be plenty of times where you put a lot of work into a likness, and it actually looks worse also. So work on various layers as often as possible, and play with the sliders and try to get an idea if you are headed in the correct direction.

Lastly, take breaks from the sculpt every now and then and re-evaluate your work. Like I said, it will never be perfect, which is why observation and understanding what is wrong is key. This is one of those things that can only be mastered with time. So practice as much as you can. Basically the more you do the better you will get. At some point you may think you have a really good handle on things, but then you do another sculpt and realize you learned a lot there. Simply put, you will never stop learning so just understand that it will take time, but with time and practice you will get really good. Oh yeah, and definetly post up your sculpt for critiques on a 3d art forum. Just about anyone can tell you if something looks wrong, but only really good artists can tell you why. I like these forums: Polycount, Game Artisans, CG society, Game artists, and the Area to name a few.

I hope this helps, I have been meaning to write a proper tutorial on my site complete with images and examples, but I will just leave you with this quick and dirty explanation for now. These are all my own personal methods and in no way are the only way or right way to do things. I literally made up this work-flow myself and I am constantly refining it (there truly are too many things I do to even mention) so take it with a grain of salt.

Please don't hesitate to email me if you have any questions, and definitely send me some images of your work when you can. Good luck!

-Brad

Snader

Jessica Simpson? Eyes have a bit different shape and the chin seems rounder though..

BradMyers82

Nah, its supposed to be Shannon Elizabeth. The likness isn't quite there yet, and she doesn't have nearly as unique a face as say a Morgan Freeman. So I can understand why it is difficult to guess.

But I'll get it looking more like her soon.

Mark Dygert

hummm American Pie... yea she isn't instantly recognizable by even her photo, and not that well known either I can see where people would have trouble. The sculpt is coming along still some work left to go though. Keep it up these are coming out great.