My Comicon

DrunkShaman

Hello guys;

So, I saw someone posting his Comicon entry here to get crits and to show his work in progress.

Here is mine.

Concept: Medieval Storm







CnC is welcome and appreciated

DrunkShaman

Wow guys, seriously?

Azkur

well its looking pretty good so far i just think the chest is popping out to much like she was starving for weeks and you should sculpt the skirt in such a way the weight is perceptible i hope this helps

octokitty

i agree, the ribs are too visible. I think you have good proportion, the hands and face are looking good and the skirt is good so far too. I think you still need to work on the anatomy. It looks like you're working too hard on the details rather than the overall form. The arms are a little blocky, you should look at some anatomy and look at where the muscles overlap and the shapes they make, then see how you can fix yours. Do the same with the rest of your model too. I think concentrating on the larger muscle forms will help a lot. You have a good start so far!

DrunkShaman

Hello there;

So, the rib cage shouldn't be as visible as it is in this model you mean?

Does "The arms are little blocky" means straight? I tried to find a happy medium between the comic anatomy and the real anatomy of the female but I'll see if I can figure this out today in the morning.

I deleted the skirt and had to remake it because I saw people making the finer mesh for the belt and the stripes and all. Second layer of clothing that hooks with the left ring of her belt (her left) is yet to be made. I had to re-create the topology of that.

I concentrated on the hands, ribcage and the face because last time I found it to be hard for me to follow the face that I've made in the concept.

Coming back to the arms; the arms are straight (I think thats what you meant by blocky) because later on it makes it easier to re-topo and rig them. The shoulders do not have cuts in real life female's anatomy but in the comic female proportions, there are, so I just tried to leave the impression of the shoulder muscle, but I'll review the real life anatomy again and see what went wrong.

Same goes for the rib cage. In the comic female proportions the rib cage is too visible, and in real female proportions it is not so visible, so I tried to find a medium between those. I guess not having the rib cage but the impression of the ending of the rib cage might work. The abdominal muscles are yet to be sculpted out, but I thought of leaving it like this because it looks ok, some comic females have the upper and lower abdominal muscle visible, some dont, besides its going to be covered with the shirt so I am not sure if this is going to be visible.

Actually I think the problem is, that I am trying to follow two reference of the two difference proportions for this model. =\

Thanks for your crits, I'll see if I can fix them before the next update.

Jessica Dinh

Wow, I think you have improved a lot since the last time you posted a thread. Proportions are not too bad. Your anatomy still can use more work though. For example, the ribcage could be just a little wider toward the top, and the leg muscles look funny, especially above the knees, as if she were missing muscles on the outward side of her thighs.

For the arms, I think they look a little wide from a side view, and flat from a front view, as if they were squashed. I agree what others are saying about the cloth too - it looks like its defying gravity, like its floating outwards of its own free will.

Study some more from reference, not just two references, to see how the muscles should look from all angles, on all different types of people

Finally, I just have to say - if you are not getting replies after your first or second post (or even your 10th!) it's not cuz people want to ignore you haha. Not everyone is always gonna get a reply on their thread right away - so just keep working, posting progress, and eventually you will get the crits

Keep it up!

octokitty

haha, yea 2 different references would make it more difficult. But I think your thoughts here are right. You don't want the actual rib cage showing, but some impressions of it (like the ends as you said). Also, here's an image I found for what I'm talking about with the arms. It's the best I could find
She's flexing, but you can still see how her arm has more "flow". You don't have to change the position of your arms, they can be straight, but just look over the form again. Some parts are thinner or thicker than your model. I hope that makes sense!

Xaltar

You really need to look at the face, it looks like you are sculpting what you think looks feminine not what reference is telling you to sculpt. Take a good look at how the face is constructed, what muscles connect where and how the skull effects the outline etc. Here's a quick and dirty paintover to get you off in a better direction, get some good face reff and try to understand the forms before you sculpt them.



Keep it up you are off to a good start.

DrunkShaman

This is what I got so far:





The jawline isnt that visible or sticking out as you suggested but I have worked out on softening the jawline accordingly, the chest was little expanded, the rib cage was soften up and few pieces were remade...

I am working on getting the right shirt, for now I just thought of a design that could go on the shirt when I poly paint so I just created a place holder for it.

CnC is again welcome

octokitty

Hey! The arms look better from the front and back, but in the side view they are still too wide. You know what, I'm gonna try a paintover for once, haha.



Hope that helps. Also the hands I just noticed need more work. The inside looks a little strange, and I think the tendons on the outside are too noticeable. Maybe tone it down a little? I also like what Xaltar pointed out, softer features usually work better for women. It looks like you already made some changes, but you might wanna work more on the face to make it softer.

Jessica Dinh

You made a lot of good changes! The cloth falls more naturally now, and the ribcage area looks better. I also second what octokitty says above.

DrunkShaman

octokitty wrote: »

Hey! The arms look better from the front and back, but in the side view they are still too wide. You know what, I'm gonna try a paintover for once, haha.



Hope that helps. Also the hands I just noticed need more work. The inside looks a little strange, and I think the tendons on the outside are too noticeable. Maybe tone it down a little? I also like what Xaltar pointed out, softer features usually work better for women. It looks like you already made some changes, but you might wanna work more on the face to make it softer.

Yes, indeed hands do need alot of work. I am still working on the arms but I posted anyways because I fixed the proportions previously criticized and show you guys to see if this was what you guys meant to explain and that I have followed the crits accordingly. The arms also need alot of work. I also fixed the chin. It is not as bony as it was suggested if you look at comic females and real life females, but it is defined. I will try to improve the jaw line a bit more today in the morning tho.

Thanks for the crits guys. really appreciated. =]

Xaltar

The jaw is just personal preference really, the only important change there was that your jaw was too wide at the bottom near the chin and the thickest part was too low down. The female jaw is more V shaped, the width is variable. You have improved the look of the face but you still have something wrong with the cheeks. For one, in your 3/4 view your cheekbones are to low down. Your cheeks are too sharp and defined wrong. Another thing you should look at is the shape of your eyes and height of the forehead. When it comes to sculpting a female face you really do want your definition soft or even only hinted at. I have tried to keep my paintovers in line with your concept drawing. Did you draw that yourself? The reason I ask is because you seem to have a good grasp of the female face in your concept that somehow has been lost in your sculpt. It really helps to look at your sculpt like a drawing. Another paintover to show what I mean with the cheeks, forehead and softer features.



You are off to a great start and most of my crits on the face could easily be done in a matter of minutes so don't get discouraged and keep pushing yourself

DrunkShaman

Oh I am not discouraged, thanks for your crit as well sir. I have drawn that concept, and it is easier to draw the female face in the 2d concept sketch than in 3d. Usually people draw one concept from 2-4 different sides but I am trying to follow just one side. You are right, it should be more softer and the cheek bone is a bit low.

So the Face, forehead, arms, hands and shirt is going to be my work for today. =]

Thanks again.

DrunkShaman

Update:



This is what I have so far, I need to take a break so I am posting this to see if the arm proportions are off still.



I tried to fix the face as per crits. (thanks to Xaltar )


The hands are going to be hidden under the gauntlet, but I worked on them anyways.

Still WIP but CnC is appreciated.

EDIT: Blast!! Skirt needs more sculpting.

Impala88

looking good so far, i'd sggest fattening the fingers on the sides they look a bit too thin from the side angle especially the tips, front looks good though. also, move the fingers along towards the back of the hand so they fill the endtire wdth, at the moment you seem to have a bit of "flabby" skin bulging out at the back. Keep up the good work

DrunkShaman

Update:









This model is officially sitting on 15 mil polies. >.<
Ofcourse I am going to break it down to few thousand polies. Anyways.

CnC is appreciated.

Xaltar

Looking better but still needs work on the face. Also 12m pollys is pretty high for the lvl of detail you have so far. Another paintover to show what is wrong with the face. I can't stress enough how important it is to look at some reff, particularly the areas I have highlighted.



Definately getting there, a little more attention to detail on the face in particular and you are well on your way to being ready for the low poly stage.

Neox

you#ve got some nice progress going on, the later changes are definitely an improvement, right now the thing that stands out to me the most, is that she doesn't look black - besides her skintone, the facial features scream just "white person with makeup"

DrunkShaman

Thanks, As I said before I am trying to follow both, the real life female proportions and the comic female character proportions for this Comicon character, I will tweek the face and soften the nose (yes I just realized that her house was a little up. Thanks for pointing that out.) I am going work on this some more tonight.

Thanks guys.:)

octokitty

Can we see the references you're using?? I just realized it would make a lot of sense to see those. Also, on the hand, you might want to look at changing the position of the thumb. The thumb doesn't actually come out of the side of the hand, it comes out at an angle. Here's a ref picture



The skin color seems a little off, but I won't say anything about that until I see your reference, maybe it'll make more sense! I like the shirt you chose by the way, it really fits with what you're doing!

DrunkShaman

octokitty wrote: »

Can we see the references you're using?? I just realized it would make a lot of sense to see those. Also, on the hand, you might want to look at changing the position of the thumb. The thumb doesn't actually come out of the side of the hand, it comes out at an angle. Here's a ref picture



The skin color seems a little off, but I won't say anything about that until I see your reference, maybe it'll make more sense! I like the shirt you chose by the way, it really fits with what you're doing!

Human anatomy and proportions:

Reference? Ok. "Classic Human Anatomy, The Artist's Guide to form, function and movement." By: Valerie L. Winslow.

Orthographic female nude image found on google, I cant post that because I'll get banned. <.<

Comic female proportions:







Sum it up to the rough concept sketch:

BIGSOG

since when do you get banned for posting nudes?

DrunkShaman

BIGSOG wrote: »

since when do you get banned for posting nudes?

There was this guy name Tyler hood, he got banned from posting nude pictures (related to porn) so I figured. =\

DrunkShaman

Update as per crits (Face only):





I had to fix the chin because it was off according to the proportions. It was sticking out. I worked a little bit on the cheek muscles so that they would leave an impression that they are there.



CnC is always needed and welcome.

Thanks.

Xaltar

It looks like you are defining large forms at high subdiv, try going down a few and smoothing things out before going back up. When you define larger forms at high sub lvls you end up with unsightly smoothing errors. Getting better tho just keep looking at ref and refining. I would suggest looking at some pics of people like Naomi Campbell and Halle Berry to try and nail down that more african look whilst retaining a more western face shape. Black people vary greatly in appearence depending on what part of Africa they originate from, a medieval Storm would probably be of East African descent where the features are more refined and sharp as apposed to southern africa where the idea of beauty is well, large women. Hope this helps.

DrunkShaman

Her mouth muscles are too visible and the part behind the eyes is flat.



Hers are very visible. Also, the parts behind the eyes ( the one you pointed out) are not too visible.

This would work if I was going for the realism but since I have to keep in mind that Storm is the imaginary character from the comics I have to follow both.

I'll work on the cuts under the cheeks and the forehead tho. I just dont understand what exactly is wrong there. =\

This is what I got so far on the face.



EDIT: Unless you were trying to tell me that I am missing a dent right beside the eyes. and a small dent right beside the end of eye brows. Not sure if you can understand me telling you what I understood from the crits you have given me. =\

EDIT2: Is this what you mean?

Xaltar

Its difficult to explain in text but I will give it a shot. Maybe its a good idea to start with crits on the larger forms and work toward the smaller detail. For a start the eyes are too large, far appart and oddly shaped, not really fitting a commic or realistic styling. Narrow the whole head a fraction then make the eyes smaller and better shaped. Also raise your hairline some more it is still too low, if you look at both the ref images you showed you will see that they both have pretty high hairlines, this will be a crucial element trying to sell your face as a black woman. Smooth out all your creases and detail at a low subdive (only the face)and just hint at forms, once you have the proportions and shape the way you want it post up your progress here and we can crit it before you move on to medium details. I am commenting a lot on your head because I made a lot of the same mistakes early on so I have some understanding of where you are going wrong, now if only I could convey that in words hehe.

On another note, never use reff of smiling faces, try to find neutral expressions, what happens is, you start adding detail that would only be present in a face with that expression yet your model is not smiling/frowning etc. The lines comming out from the nose and down toward the jaw that you added are a perfect example of this. Nail down your basic forms at a lower subdiv and post back and I will be happy to walk you through step by step.

DrunkShaman

The face is only thing that needs fixing xD. I am glad that I almost got this modeling thing or else the female proportions used to be way off when I used to draw or model a female character. I am still working on it tho, I am posting this for further guidance.

I am going to work on the face, and slightly on the hands (although they are going to be hidden). I am not going to touch the rest of the model.

Should there be a need to compare: here is the old one:



This is as narrower as I can get. As per the ref.



Waiting on crits.

EDIT: Update

octokitty

i think the lip color is throwing it off a bit. if you look at those 2 pictures above (Naomi Campbell and Halle Berry), you'll see that their lips are darker around the edges and get lighter towards the inside. I know your color is probably not final at this point, but it might help now because the bright color you have now is making it look strange. Also, I think the jaw is forward a bit too much, almost like an under bite (almost). Maybe move it back a little? That's all for now, you're making good progress!

Xaltar

Much better, the shapes are reading well and looking femanine. Now all you need to do is put some work into the lips, look at a lot of reff and get them right. Octokitty is right, the color you have on them is throwing it off too. The shape of the lips is off, the corners of the mouth need work and you should try to get the lips as close to touching eachother as you can.

Very nice update.

DrunkShaman

Small Update:





Oh dear. This is way too small size.

octokitty

the lip color helps so much! they look a lot better, and i think the face is looking great! it looks more natural now. And I was going to do a paintover... actually i did one then i did something stupid at the end and deleted it... but what i was thinking you could do is for the white parts, have them fade to a blueish color at the bottom. So like with the hair, have it turn to a desaturated blue as it gets to the end. I think that will help the white look more natural with the rest of the model, and it will make the model more dynamic. also, i would put in highlights and shadows manually rather then just relying on the lighting in zbrush/maya.

Xaltar

Much better dude, loving the new mouth. All you have to do now is widen it so that the corners are roughly in line with where the pupils should be and you are golden. If needs be you could scale up the mouth vertically a little too if the mouth looks too thin once you widen it. You have made some solid progress here and you will find it usefull in every project you do from here on out, good work.

DrunkShaman

Xaltar wrote: »

Much better dude, loving the new mouth. All you have to do now is widen it so that the corners are roughly in line with where the pupils should be and you are golden. If needs be you could scale up the mouth vertically a little too if the mouth looks too thin once you widen it. You have made some solid progress here and you will find it usefull in every project you do from here on out, good work.

All I did was, Sobered up the eyes which looked like she was in a shock, adjusted the eye lids and reduced the size of it, narrowed up the forehead and made the side bones of it, repainted the lips and adjusted them so they would look more legit. Widened the mouth area so it would not look off. Only for the female to look more African......x.x

Here is the final update on this character before working on the low poly mesh:





Thanks for help guys.

EDIT: Question to you guys; do you worry about the polycount while decimating the mesh. Do you delete the hidden polies behind the cloth or do you just re-topo it as it is. =\

DrunkShaman

Small Update:





Here are the maps that I used:

Unwrapped UVs

Normal

Ambient Occlusion

Base Texture + Ambient Occlusion

I am still working on it, but since I havent posted anything in a while, here is what've been trying to work on.

octokitty

hmm, your uvs are looking a little strange... what did you use to unwrap them? You should check out 3d Coat's uv mapping system. i just tried it and it was awesome; easy to use and fast! All you need is the trial and you can import and export your model. Anyway, I would fix the uvs you have, they stretched in some places and hard to work with for your texture and I don't think your giving everything the texture space it needs. It also looks like you lost a lot of detail on your normal map... i dont know if that's from the uvs not having enough space, or something else.

Electro

Looks like just peltmapping, and arranged randomly.

Need to really take care with arranging your uv's to get the most out of resolution. If there isn't any of your uv's on it, it's completely dead and useless space you're still paying the costs for (memory, texture lookups bla bla bla).

Xaltar

Those UVs are terribad, pelt mapping alone is not good enough. You need to apply some relax modifier to those and arrange them so as to use your texture space as efficiently as possible. Apply a checker pattern to your model, set the tiling to an appropriate number where the checker pattern is clearly showing where your UVs are distorting and get to tweaking untill the checker looks uniform and as little stretched as possible. This is a fairly oldschool method but I do find it works the best of all the methods I have tried. I also suggest that you allow slightly more texture space to the prominant features of your model, IE face and any other feature that requires detail to stand out. A lot of people starting out in 3d make the mistake of reguarding the unwrapping phase of a model as unimportant, don't fall into that trap.

DrunkShaman

Small update:









Had to remake the entire mesh from scratch currently standing on 10k tries. And the maximum you can use is 14k tries I believe?

I am working on the spheres and gauntlet at the moment.

Its due in 12 hours so please criticize.

Tenchi

My first impression was that your UV spacing could be tighter, a lot of spaces in between. The folds could have been pushed a bit more to break up the silhouette. Other than that, a solid job ^^

octokitty

that looks a lot better!! but i agree, the space could be tighter.

DrunkShaman

Ya it could've been tighter but its due in 6 hours so I had to rush things.

DrunkShaman

DONE!!











This model is made of 11931 tris and 6026 quads

Finally!! my first model ever finished :poly142:

I am going to make a pedestal for it and try to pose it. Just basic mesh nothing too fancy since I am new to this stuff still. =\

Sukotto

This looks nice for a first model! Congrats on finishing it. If you have time I would definitely go over the textures again. Add some wear to the medallions or whatever they are. Definitely give the skin some more love, it looks like you just did a solid color and AO. Skin has a lot of color variation due to sun light and stuff. And last but not least add a specular map, it will help distinguish materials because right now everything looks like the same material

octokitty

awesome! well i think it came out really good for your first finished model! congrats

DrunkShaman

Sukotto wrote: »

This looks nice for a first model! Congrats on finishing it. If you have time I would definitely go over the textures again. Add some wear to the medallions or whatever they are. Definitely give the skin some more love, it looks like you just did a solid color and AO. Skin has a lot of color variation due to sun light and stuff. And last but not least add a specular map, it will help distinguish materials because right now everything looks like the same material

I am learning blender so if you apply a texture to the model you have to have one material on it and it must be merged. I dont know how to evenly ungroup them and all. But I will do that in the next project .

I know the Golden Seal was suppose to shine and the skin tone could use a bit of a noise and a little shine. I just rushed this one up because I wanted to get this done. I deleted the low poly few times until I got it right. Now that I know how to do this part, I can finally move on and learn how to use different materials on certain parts of the model to make it look more live.

Got many plans ahead of myself

Thanks for the tip tho. I didnt realize it was this obvious that I used OCC over a base textured map. <.<