I think you should fix the proportions first ( that nose is too low and too long) , get rid of those holes and add few more polygons on the back of the mandible to make them all square.
Looking a bit better, but the nasal cavity needs to be a bit wider, as well as the zygomatic arch. Raise up the top of the skull a bit and just make sure the the brow indentation next in the temple area really follows the silhouette of the skull and subtly fade it back.
Pretty good work so far. Some good improvements too, keep it up
Looks to me like the eye sockets are a bit big, and the cheek bones are kind of tiny.
The point where the jaw hinges is normally a bit of a ball joint and the main part of the skull has some indication of a receiver socket. If you removed the jaw you would know where about it connected, not so on your model. If you're going to model little pits then this level of detail should be preserved also.
The forehead/brow area looks like it's sticking out to far. The back of the jaw area looks too deep.
I'm horrible with remembering anatomy so I always try to have tons of reference printed out and on my 2nd monitor of what I'm currently modeling. You should also try and find some orthos that you could throw into zbrush and just kinda trace model over. Right now the skull looks a bit deformed
Hey man the skull is looking pretty good, nice work on the detailing. I do have some suggestions for the general shape of it though. There is not enough shape around the mouth to suggest that it is curved, and the teeth seem like they could go back a bit further. The skull also needs some more volume at its base. Here is a quick paint over that also has a few more little things pointed out. http://img691.imageshack.us/img691/4971/skulledit.jpg
And then when you take screencaps of the 3/4 view do you have perspective mode turned on? If not try pressing P and see if it look better or worse. Keep up the good work man.
looks nice, the protrusion between the Nasal and frontal bone looks totally out of place though. I've never seen anyone with a bony lump between their brows like that... well except a few of the locals in dublin
Can you post the reference that you used for this sebas? I know you've pretty much finished the model but it still has some wonky proportions. You can get some really good reference by actually searching for purchasable human skulls, such as from a place like www.skullsunlimited.com
@ r_fletch_r: I better changed that, this skull is not based on some local in Dublin lol
@ SouthpawSid & divi: Thanks! That was exactly what I was looking for.
@ wake: Thanks for the link. You can see I've used a lot of references suggested posts ago, here's the sculpting so far in ortho views and from perspective:
Honestly about proportions, as much references as I find, as much as I realise that every skull is unique. But also, for this skull, I want the overall proportions not too off.
this definitely improved from the earlier versions, I would only suggest looking at the overall roundness of the skull (someone already mentioned) cuz it maybe too rounded. Also looking at it from the front view the jaw appears narrow. also from the side view it looks a bit squished.
The silhouette on the low poly could use to be a little rounder, but in all it looks okay. I don't really see too much detail coming through from the normal map though...
The nose is down too low and the eye sockets need to be a wider shape. The holes tend to mess up the model's topology. You need more reference. Try youtube and anatomy books
I still get the feeling that your green channel is inverted.
Regardless, I think your bone texture is too uniform. Also, it seems too dirty. Almost as if it was covered with a sticky residue and dropped in some mud. Bones aren't sticky, and the skin rotting away isn't sticky either. Skin dries up.
Notice how the teeth have the same bone texture as everything else. Look at yourself in the mirror and check your teeth. They aren't bone. They are nice and smooth and ivory-ish.
Same thing should apply to your model.
It may just be me, but it looks like you used Crazybump's occlusion texture and slapped it on. This is a good method only if used wisely. You should get more detail out of that occlusion bake. Right now it just makes everything look blurry as if you are using a 512 texture or something. The details should be crisp since you are using a 2048, on a symmetried model.
You're on the right track though! Keep it up! I would suggest trying to get it to look right in max with Xoliul's shader before getting it setup in unreal. Will save you some time and it's easier to flip maps and such.
definitely something wrong with the channels on that normal map, the lighting looks a bit inside out if you know what I mean. just try some options, eg flip red or green or both. would be a pity to loose the shape in the lowpoly as the highpoly came out quite well!
The images look pretty much the same which is more of an indication that there's something wrong. May be your lighting setup though, where is your light coming from, if you have any?
You have too much information painted into the diffuse for the normal map to do its job properly. Chuck some of those weird dark lines and spots on places like the bridge of the nose; they look weird and they're doing work that the normal map should.
To see the real issues with your normal maps, just take off the diffuse while you try to figure something out. It will definitely help out a bit. Where are you rendering this? Is it in unreal? Max? Maya? Where? I would suggest using Xoliul's shader if you are using max.
I think that image doesn't do much to clarify whether or not you need to flip any channels, but it certainly suggests that you should just rebake your normalmap, as all four of those have smoothing problems. Bake it from scratch and post that, then we can tell if the bake's any good. Then, you can move onto adding detail in Photoshop, although personally I would never go as far as you went with the noisy detail on this.
Also, this might be a good time to take a look at your uv layout. You could get close to the same texture density with a non-mirrored layout, with less stretching to boot!
Make a few cuts in the skull (side of the upper teeth, under the cheekbone), relax the uv-shell and see what that gives you. The goal is to get close to the cartoon representation of a skull than the circular shape you have right now.
Then put the front of the lower jaw underneath that in the uv-space, unmirrored, and scale down the back of the lower jaw (won't see it often, if ever). You can keep that mirrored to save space as well.
Then, fit the rest (teeth, eyesockets...) into the remaining space.
Hmmm, man, maybe that's what's causing it. I don't trust Zbrush for normal maps at all, are you at least using Zmapper? Try getting both meshes on 3dsmax or xNormal and see if you have different results there.
I don't know it still look weird, like the details from the high poly aren't translating well to the low poly and I think that might be the Zbrush bake so I'd make it in another program just to be sure.
I think the eyes/nose area still needs some work, check out some ref. Your eyes seem too far set back and there's too much definition between the eyes and nose, tis ok if you are going for stylized...
Replies
http://images.google.com/images?um=1&hl=en&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&tbs=&q=3/4+view+skull&revid=944161551&ei=C0yMS5iJCJm6M8rsmW4&sa=X&oi=revisions_inline&resnum=0&ct=broad-revision&cd=1&start=0
Go Z?
Looks to me like the eye sockets are a bit big, and the cheek bones are kind of tiny.
The point where the jaw hinges is normally a bit of a ball joint and the main part of the skull has some indication of a receiver socket. If you removed the jaw you would know where about it connected, not so on your model. If you're going to model little pits then this level of detail should be preserved also.
Some good front and lateral skull ref:
http://www.anatomyatlases.org/atlasofanatomy/plate01/index.shtml
(The quicktimeVR option allows you to zoom on a high res scan)
I'm horrible with remembering anatomy so I always try to have tons of reference printed out and on my 2nd monitor of what I'm currently modeling. You should also try and find some orthos that you could throw into zbrush and just kinda trace model over. Right now the skull looks a bit deformed
http://img691.imageshack.us/img691/4971/skulledit.jpg
I don't know what you are using in the way of reference but this one is pretty good.
http://en.wikivisual.com/index.php/Human_skull
And then when you take screencaps of the 3/4 view do you have perspective mode turned on? If not try pressing P and see if it look better or worse. Keep up the good work man.
How can I delete some loops and weld some verts without loosing my UVs? I want to keep my PolyPainting.
Also, LOL @ r_fletch_r's comment! hahaha
or you delete them and bake the polypaint from one skull to the other after the new one has been UVed properly.
@ SouthpawSid & divi: Thanks! That was exactly what I was looking for.
@ wake: Thanks for the link. You can see I've used a lot of references suggested posts ago, here's the sculpting so far in ortho views and from perspective:
Honestly about proportions, as much references as I find, as much as I realise that every skull is unique. But also, for this skull, I want the overall proportions not too off.
this definitely improved from the earlier versions, I would only suggest looking at the overall roundness of the skull (someone already mentioned) cuz it maybe too rounded. Also looking at it from the front view the jaw appears narrow. also from the side view it looks a bit squished.
overall, man, great progress keep going.
The jaw looks too thin. It looks like it used to be alright, but recently it's gotten thinner, too thin in my opinion.
Not that it's not theoretically very possible for someone to have a jaw that thin, we come in all shapes and sizes.
But if you're going for standard "accuracy", you should probably widen up his jawbones.
Little paintover/liquify (that unintentionally squished a couple front teeth, ignore that.):
Eventually I used Blender to fix those edges...
Regardless, I think your bone texture is too uniform. Also, it seems too dirty. Almost as if it was covered with a sticky residue and dropped in some mud. Bones aren't sticky, and the skin rotting away isn't sticky either. Skin dries up.
Notice how the teeth have the same bone texture as everything else. Look at yourself in the mirror and check your teeth. They aren't bone. They are nice and smooth and ivory-ish.
Same thing should apply to your model.
It may just be me, but it looks like you used Crazybump's occlusion texture and slapped it on. This is a good method only if used wisely. You should get more detail out of that occlusion bake. Right now it just makes everything look blurry as if you are using a 512 texture or something. The details should be crisp since you are using a 2048, on a symmetried model.
You're on the right track though! Keep it up! I would suggest trying to get it to look right in max with Xoliul's shader before getting it setup in unreal. Will save you some time and it's easier to flip maps and such.
I think your low poly could do with a bit more geometry aswell, the top of the head especially.
First off, I want the channels in the right way. So, here's a comparision in their current state, inverting green (iG) or red (iR) or both (iGR):
Who's the win then?
So, do I have to invert any channel? which one?
Hope it helps this way.
Make a few cuts in the skull (side of the upper teeth, under the cheekbone), relax the uv-shell and see what that gives you. The goal is to get close to the cartoon representation of a skull than the circular shape you have right now.
Then put the front of the lower jaw underneath that in the uv-space, unmirrored, and scale down the back of the lower jaw (won't see it often, if ever). You can keep that mirrored to save space as well.
Then, fit the rest (teeth, eyesockets...) into the remaining space.