Making a Basemesh for Sculpting
polycounter lvl 11
Hey guys, I was curious: when making a basemesh for sculpting, is it better to have a face that actually has the eyes, nose, and mouth modeled out, just a smoothed box for a head, or does it even matter? Also, I noticed that in basemeshes with face detail, they have the eyes closed and mouth closed. Would it be better to have the mouth open?
Replies
I too have searched for the answer to these questions and I've asked a lot of people. I'm only a student myself so I may be off here, but anyone that knows what they are doing will usually respond with "Well, it depends".
It seems like that is an answer that you will get anytime anyone asks anything about the # of poly's for x item, # edgeloops for a face, #poly's for x character, ect. ect.
So in keeping with tradition. I'll go with "it depends." Is the character going to talk? Is is for a game? An animation? A cell phone? Will it be animated or just a concept still?
These kind of questions seem to dictate more of an exact response than "how many for a character?" I built a base mesh not too recently and I did model the face, mouth open, eyes open. I went into enough detail and edgelooping to follow the generic muscles of the body and make it easy for facial and body animation. I did not model in fingernails or finer details because the general idea with a base mesh is that you will ultimately bring it into zbrush and change it anyway. Subdiving a fingernail into 1M poly's isn't going to help anyone.
So I hope this helps you with your quest at least in a generic aspect, but I've found more than once there is no way to answer this question without first asking what is the purpose of the base mesh?
Then again, i'm just a senior at school, and just when I think i'm catching up in knowledge, I realize how far behind I really am
I personally think modeling in the lips before sculpting is a good idea. Far too many base meshes are blank slates and people paint deform/"excrude" the lips, making them look like a mini duck bill. When the muscles of the face don't actually work that way.
If you have a firm foundation in anatomy, it really won't matter as long as you have an object that subdivides well. So really it becomes once again more important to be a good artist then it does to have the secret base mesh of the pros.
As for the eyes (teeth and possibly a skull) I think its important to include them as separate objects and not subdivide them. They should be included so you can accurately sculpt around them, and get a good sense of the person.
i was the exact same oppinion, doing most stuff in max, but the more i sculpt the simpler the basemeshes get, some basic topology for ears, nose, eyes and mouth ok, but that's just an extra loop nothing too fancy, i personally like the baseman from mudbox 2 a lot, i begin with that and all clothes are retopologized parts, ok stiff/hardedged stuff like boots are still modelled but everything organic is just a quick retopo/projection of the basemesh and then sculpted in forms.
To me the whole retopo stuff is a revolution in 3d which can only be topped by topology free approaches like claytools or 3dcoat can handle
just one example
very wip but just to show my workflow, i really like it as it's very fast and keeps me away from that whole technical thingie modelling always was
rjhalvorson: yeah, i know it's a bit vague as the purpose of the mesh. I want a basemesh that is fully versatile, which thinking about it now, is probably almost impossible due to what could be needed.
Vig: I couldn't agree more about a solid foundation in anatomy being the driving force with character modeling. So that's a yes on lips and eyes, okay. This character that I'm thinking of will have teeth, so I will be modeling those. Should the mouth be open in that case, or just keep it closed and add the teeth as a subtool?
Neox: Thanks for the image of your workflow. So the base from MB2 has very basic shapes modeled out for the lips, eye sockets, ears, and nose, good to know. And for the clothes, you just re-topoed a jacket, belt, and pants?
So it's kinda a balance. The more details you model in, chances are the more poles, elongated faces, or vastly different sizes to your polygons.
The more poles (as well as ngons and tris, I guess) you have, the harder time sculpting apps can have with some brushes. The smooth brush in Zbrush smooths by spacing apart vertices - if you have several vertices connecting up to one vertex, you'll end up getting slightly weird smoothing. This doesn't matter, most of the time, but when you have a lot of poles - as you likely would from a detailed mesh - it could possibly cause a problem.
Elongated faces, obviously mean that the subdivided faces will be really long as well - meaning basically you'll have more detail on the X axis than on the Y axis, and maybe that's not what you want.
The sizes of polygons are important for the same reason. You'll get extra 'resolution' at places where polygons are smaller. You can use this to your advantage though. If you have a character that has a really meticulously detailed skull-plate or something you'll put slightly smaller polygons in the head than you would on his smooth undetailed boots.
Also, probably more important is that the more you detail in the basemesh, the more constrained you are by the natural proportions and topology of the sculpt. Basically what's so nice about really generic basemeshes is that you're free to do whatever you want and you don't have to worry about following the topology or anything. In the case of lips, maybe you want to give this particular character a huge open jaw without a cheek? if you don't have lips - or if you have very basic lips - on the basemesh, that won't be a problem. (Although it is usually nice to have a real mouth that you can open for baking purposes, imo
http://fabriciotorres.files.wordpress.com/2008/06/hulk_35.jpg
Basemeshes seem to have become the new anatomical studies from a few years' back hehe
Some good points here though
leipzig isn't that far away from belgium, but as i'm informed you've been in london these days, might be mixing that up though...
i like the mesh and use it in both programs, i don't totally agree with every loop descision but it's very flexible and clean and that is what counts i have my own but it got bored of it and from time to time i like to play with other meshes and this one is the most fun in years
i saw this recently
http://zbrushcentral.com/zbc/showthread.php?t=063165
first post has an awesome base, i usually like to model the fingers out though.
but something that simple can be used to sculpt almost anything bipedal. i see 3d packages like max or maya almost as training wheels before you really learn to sculpt, i only use them for hard surface stuff these days, its so much faster and its easier to achieve lifelike organic forms in sculpting applications. the more edges you add to base, the more you are going to lock yourself into a box creatively, and the harder it is to make large scale changes.
I would recommend anyone who's just starting out - to use a simple basemesh, and then work your way up the more you sculpt - as you'll see which forms you reuse.
Simple bases mean more flexibility on one hand - but also more polygons wasted and work on your final model. (if you have a strong computer, you can get away with the wasted polys)
There's a sculpting competition in 3d total, and it's amazing to see how far people push really simple bases.
There was one stage people used a cube for their base, and came up with really amazing results.