Female Character WIP

Impala88

Hey guys! so, i'm still at odds which path to go down, i've dabbled in 3 areas: character creation, vehicle/mechanical creation and environments, all three outcomes i'm happy with but i've always come back to characters because it's what i really hope to get into.

However, it's the characters part that i'm the worst at when it comes to unwrapping/texturing which is why i've started this character to try and solve any issues i'm having during that fiddly process. Will continue to update this with how things go.

Onto the character itself:

I started the concept yesterday morning, and pumped out a body in Zbrush of how i want it to look like:

Concept sketch (forgive the rushed brush work)


Zbrush body:


I'm still yet to model the head till i get the body down.

Another part of character creation that i really want to explore is asymmetry within characters so i intend to have seperate parts on either side of her such as gun holsters, bags, a lopsided belt and possibly a shoulder pad as shown in the sketch above.

feedback very welcome.

Impala88

Oh, i've also done the high poly for her desert eagle pistol too, i actually made this first a couple days ago and decided it'd be good to have a character to go with it lol.

Impala88

another update here, added laces and the belt. Still to add the gun holster, and possibly some other parts, wristband etc. The hands arn't finished yet, and the right hand is a bit of mess, something screwed up with the symmetry, not sure why it was perfectly symmetrical on the max base mesh, but anyways will be copy pasting the arm any how.

almighty_gir

check your anatomy on the torso. simply giving her an hourglass curve in the front view does not make her womanly.

toxic_h2o

The boots and her pants are bothering me a bit they feel to big for her. I also agree with almighty_gir the torso does need a bit of work. Great start though keep it going.

JustinPunio

Great start. My suggestion would be look at the folds a bit more. They are going in the right direction but the general trouser shape, the way cloth folds and drops is wrong. Keep looking at the silhouette.

Impala88

Cheers, I think what was making the boots and pants look big was that her shin's were quite long, i've shortened them now and also slightly scaled down the boots to fit.

Fixed the torso, after going back to my references i've found i'd moved the diaphragm area inwards a bit too much so i've fattened that bit up some more and given abit more enphasis to the hip bones just above the belt.

Impala88

Yeah folds are always one of my biggest challanges, will try and improve on those a bit too

denkain

I think boots are too big even for a cartoon character

toxic_h2o

The boots still just seem a bit bulky I think they need to conform to the ankles a bit more. Could you upload some shots that aren't frontal?

Impala88

i see what you mean with the boots being too "square" shall we say. I've moved them in at the bottom and set them to follow the foot a bit more.



I don't really want them to be any more hugged to the foot than they are now as they're intended to be quite big anyway.

toxic_h2o

Boots look alot better, my friends and I were looking at the spine and we agreed that its to straight, needs more of an S shape. She looks unbalanced like she is going to fall backwards. butt needs to go back a bit and the chest forward.

Impala88

spine is adjusted, i've also moved the feet backwards as when someones standing upright, they tend to have their feet right below the bottom of their spine so i've changed that too.

toxic_h2o

looking allot better. check out this photo, I think the arms and shoulders could come forward a bit.

http://i443.photobucket.com/albums/qq151/toxich2o/misc/lols.jpg

Impala88

Yeah looking at that the arms could do with going forward and the feet a bit further back still. brb!

Impala88

I've moved the whole lower part of the body backwards a bit and lined the boots up to match, brough the arms slightly forward. Don't want to put the arms as far forward in the pic as they just look locked and not very relaxed, but the shoulders and hands line up. Neck might need moving forward aswell, although it wouldnt make much of a difference.

toxic_h2o

looking so much better, have nothing to really complain about at this point. Keep going!

Impala88

currently modelling a head in max, using Jessica Biel as a reference lol, i'm suprised it actually looks like her and i've not taken it into zbrush yet.

toxic_h2o

kewl cant wait to see it.

Impala88

ok basica mock-up with the head, quick bit of fitting inzbrush, no detailing yet.



The character is a fairly heroic woman so the proportions seem to be good, she's around 7.5 heads tall.

However, looking at the hands now, they're usually the same size as the face and these arn't so the hands need to be bigger.

Also talking about the folds earlier, the creases just below the knees look a real mess so i need to sort those out.

toxic_h2o

head is looking good, just be careful that you dont loose the eye socket shape, your cheek are a little high. check the image.

http://i443.photobucket.com/albums/qq151/toxich2o/misc/lols-1.jpg

Impala88

changed the head a bit now that its in zbrush, moved parts around etc and added some basic hair onto the scalp for some better definition and to get a better feel for the overall appearance.



Still need to sort the folds on the pants and add some detailing to the boots aswell as the skin.

Impala88

Ok, i've been looking at various ways of doing the crazy hair she has, and have come to three different directions:

1: Sculpt the hair in Zbrush using zsphere strands.
2: Sculpt in zbrush using high density model plus snakehook tool.
3: ignore hair in zbrush and go straight to photoshop with flat planes on the haid for opacity masks.

heres each one in a bit more detail:

1: tutorial/workflow here: http://www.pixologic.com/docs/index.php/SubTool_Hair_Sculpting_Tutorial

basically sculpt the flat hair around the scalp either onto the head or onto a seperate subtool ontop of the head, and then add zsphere chains for the raised sections that would be detailed using the pinch and standard brushes or any other that may work.

2: http://www.zbrushcentral.com/showthread.php?t=427 (second post)

create a zsphere and use snakehook after a noise brush to bring out strands of hair.

3: the Varga Hair Tutorial: http://www.paultosca.com/varga_hair.html

go straight to photoshop, using custom brushes and alot of alphas and seperate layers to create as many different hair strands as you like, then set up various planes on the low poly to take the hair sections.

(this is what i'd of ended up doing probably anyways, so this i think would be the best idea, it just means the final high poly in zbrush won't have the crazy hair).

feanix

Have you looked at how Squeenix did heir hair? I suspect you might end up with a better result by using alphas and poly planes. Have you looked at the hair tchniques page on the polycount wiki before?

Impala88

Thanks for the tip, totally forgot about the polycount wiki. I've done some tests here, i'm not sure now between using alphas etc for some crazy hair, or staying with the zbrush hair and having it slicked back while using a couple of alpha planes for some loose strands etc.

Been looking at alot of the FF hair and they've been done, looks like a hell of a lot of polys so theres more than enough to play with. The image below only uses 1500 tris for the hair so there still alot of wiggle room.

heres what i have so far:

Didnt put a light in the viewport >< so mass specular highlights at the moment.





Theres still a few errors in the zbrush hair, need to sort those out.

Impala88

Ok, so i've started the retop. I've only done the face so far, its 1.5k tri's currently. However, it is more focused on being a next-gen character and looking at the tri-count for characters such as Lightning from FF-13 or Drake from Uncharted-2, this seems well within the limits.



My problem at the moment is though, how should i do the hair to get the best result? to save time which i'm running out of, i'll be sticking with the scultped short hair i did in zbrush rather than any long fancy hair, so would i be better having all one mesh for face and hair, or should i add the hair as seperate planes on the top using the zbrush hair for the normals, there for saving UV space?

I'm probably going to go with this approach but was just wondering is this how short hair is done in the industry anyway?