Thanks Brandon. I appreciate the advice and the time you took to do the write up. I am going to abandon that project at this point, since I think tha I made a mistake not doing the pose from reference, and just making things up as I went. I will try to find a photo to start from this time.
I have been looking to find something modern that isn't too sexual, I don't want the girls pose to be "look at me" but more "I'm doing something". I thought of a woman chrling her hair or putting makeup on etc but haven't found anything decent that I want to devote time to at this point. I have some freelance projects wrapping up so I might wait it out until after than to really get started.
In the meantime, if anyone has any suggestions are where to find some nice poses etc that would be great. Right now I am trolling through ffffound, but haven't found anything yet, ironically.
Night sculpt for fun. 2 hours, added the polypaint in the eyes from a photo at the end.
Wow - thank you both, those are great resources, I'm going through pose-space right and it's got a lot of variety to it, I'll try the other one later, do people do gesture practice in zbrush? I suppose there's no reason not to practice my drawing skills.
What do people think about a pose like this, it's modern enough and not distasteful, and the girl is actually doing something instead of striking a pose.
I'm going to be getting onto some myself following that example.
Basemesh is looking great by the way. She seems to be pulling her shoulders up though? I would go for a more relaxed pose.
Hey man again fantastic work here! Crazy how much you have improved since you started this thread a year ago or so.
You definitely have a good handle on creating photo realistic humans imo. I'm wondering what have been your main sources of reference or tutorials to help you achieve this level of quality. I'm especially interested in the skin painting and rendering, and if you could point us to any references/tutorials on this.
Really looking forward to part 2 of your tutorial btw!
Thanks Fomori, that's actually kinda cool.
Brad, I really don't have a handle on it, but I'm getting better. One great tutorial for learning the workflow for using zbrush and maya to do realistic stuff is this one from eat3d. http://eat3d.com/maya_portraits
Super great information there. Also Marksalesman on the forums here has a great mini tutorial on skin and stubble. Hopefully I can finish part 2 soon.
_____
Here is some work getting gesture etc. for the anatomy study.
Thanks for the crit, and I suppose it depends on how much I like the sculpt. If like to do a decent render including the corner of the room, but I probably won't decide on if I will try for photorealistic, or if I'll just do a really nice white clay render until I'm close to finished with the sculpt - see how much I like or hate it. Photoreal, from what I learned doing the girl project recently, adds another month to a project, and its super tedious - well for me at least.
Just a quick render test and to show where I'm at with the model. I think I might rotate the girls head to face a bit more towards the camera, and orient her wrists to give the impression that she's really squeezing, but other than that mostly it will be just doing basic anatomy stuff from here.
i think her stomach is way more flat than that in the reference, like... super flat, whereas yours has the classical approach that you see in a lot of sculptures.
so while your sculpt is, for sure, anatomically correct. it's not correct to the reference.
a fantastic example of how real people don't have "real anatomy" haha.
Thanks for articulating that gir. As I was modeling to the reference I kept trying to match the image, but no matter how thin I made her I kept coming up short -- well, actually, too thick.
I google imaged my reference and found the girl/photoshoot it's from, to discover that this girl is seriously stick-thin. From behind, you can make out the entire outline of her pelvis, and her underwear are baggy where normal people would put on even small amounts of fat. I got kinda stuck for awhile.
I'm going to take her pose, but compromise on the build a bit. She'll be thin, but I'd like the practice of modeling a bit of fat along with a bit of muscle.
just noticed as well, her back is much straighter in the ref, she's hunching over from the breast line, not from the stomach. that might be another thing throwing the stomach off for you.
This looks good Yuri, though I do have one crit regarding the gesture in profile view. Right now she looks like she's falling over unless it's her leaning against a wall which would actually be correct.
But since she isn't, I would most likely adjust the figure like shown here:
If you're using a specific reference and that's how she really is standing then disregard this. Just my 2 cents though.
Thanks Gir, I can see you're right. Getting the hunch right has been difficult.
Kot - Finally I asked my wife to do this pose so I could see the muscles etc. From what I can tell from how she did it, you have to slide your feet closer to underneath you to keep balance when your center of balance is pushed forward. I think in your example the woman would fall forwards, since her head/shoulders are far in front of her feet/fulcrum.
Basically what I'm guessing is that her center of gravity would be somewhere about her hunch or just behind her shoulders, so to offset that weight she'd had to extend her butt backwards, past her fulcrum (her feet), like one weight offsetting another. Part of why I'm thinking her Center of Gravity is closer to her shoulders is because shes working with her hands, and that movement will also modify the center of G.
looking awesome love the render!!! remember shes leaning against a wall in the ref aswell, if shes standing up I would expect her somewhat between the examples Kot put up. I like the belly pouch too (just to be annoying haha), in that position you would be tensing the upper abs and relaxing the lower a tad so would expect a bulge there like in the ref.
yeah i wasn't trying to say that he's wrong to have the pouch there. anatomically speaking it makes perfect sense.
i was just pointing out that this particular human being doesn't have it, due to her unique physiology.
so if you're doing a general anatomy study that's in the same pose... then fantastic.
if you're doing a study of this girl, in this pose, then you need to rework it a little.
Dang, that render looks really nice as is. I'm a fan of the pouch, but I really like your latest approach. I say try and stick with the likeness. Awesome work either way, though!
looks really cool so far. The scale of her head looks far off to me though. It looks very small and it makes the rest of her body look so much larger. Her arms look really big too. Also, is her skull distorted? Looking at the forhead to the back of the skull it doesn't appear to have enough volume.
Personally I would prefer to see you push this in the direction of the actual picture. The thing that I like about it most is the fact that she looks so frail and its such an unusual pose it becomes very interesting. Therefore, I would really try to push the pose she has where she is making that extreme bend inward towards her stomach.
Looking forward to seeing more.
Just popping in to say this is a fantastic thread man, definitely a lot of good info in here!!! This latest study is shaping up to be one of the best I've seen in a long time - well done dude.
P.S I would use the pose, and make her body type however you like it
Iciban, it's a super simple setup. I made a sealed off room (guess just a box), with one window (as seen behind the girl). I put an area light exactly in the window, and turned it up a bit high, so it's a strong backlight. Turned on Global Illumination, to get nice bounces from the light and make everything else look soft.
The material of the room is a standard Vray MTL, mid to light blue/purple with no specular. The light takes on this color, since it's pretty much the only thing the light has to bounce off of, so I tried to not oversaturate it. The girl is just white/gray with a bit of red SSS, and a light blue in the specular.
I've also considered another position where she is sitting on the edge of the bath, with her legs twisted to the outside, and her head leaning over the edge to squeeze the water. Not sure. Have to get my wife to show me if that looks natural or not.
Loving the renders. And a really nice sculpt!
Not sure if you know this already but her arm is way too thick where it bends (opposite side of the elbow). It's like her forearm is melting into the bicep.
Thanks Fomori, I was missing easy stuff like the arm, so thanks. I got so caught up over pose and everything I started loosing my art vision.
Anyways, after a couple days of staring at this I thought I'd do another part of the scene to change things up, so today I did a medium size part of the bathroom.
Everything created in zbrush and then imported and rendered in vray for maya. Learned a bunch of stuff. Tub legs need to go, I think I will do painted metal. Have a ton of other stuff to add (toilet, sink, garbage can, mirror, etc.)
the center of gravity is way off. just try doing the pose yourself and you will find it near impossible to have that angle of legs while bending over.
the paint over by Kot_Leopold is more accurate.
also, i feel like you have stopped practicing anatomy few pages back and getting distracted with fancy renders, etc.
these renders look great, but if you plan on improving anatomy, my recommendation would be to just sculpt body parts and poses and don't worry about rendering, stories, context etc.
just noticed that the upper arms are too long, also attaching a paint over to show the legs angle issue.
Thanks MM. I did try the pose before I started sculpting, but honestly now that I have tried it again, I think I may have been 'over-acting'. I think maybe if I had her hunched over farther than she is, the degree of the legs would work, but yours and Kots look closer to correct to me now.
As for the focus on rendering, I agree, somewhat. I really want to increase my rendering skills, and have been doing so. The focus of this project is going to be the anatomy, same as was the girls portrait a couple pages back, but I also like to use these as excuses to learn the tangential stuff - presentation, rendering, etc. There are a million great sculptors out there, and I'm not on that list. As I work my way up, I don't see a problem with getting better in other areas. I think eventually (to me personally), being successful is going to have to be a mixture of all sorts of skills - sculpting, along with the ability to present it.
Although, I do understand your point that I could learn anatomy ten times faster if I was focusing on nothing but anatomy. I admit that my wandering mind does sometimes get the best of me.
My wife came in the room and said, "That looks stupid. It looks good, but the pose is stupid. No girl takes a shower, then puts her underwear on, then wrings out her hair. She wrings out her hair in the shower, immediately after the shower."
So anyways, Still dinking around with this scene. Tried a different tact, sorta like it, and by that I mean, it has problems, but I can see myself solving them as I move forward.
I've loved following this thread and I really like that you have weaved in making beautiful renders as well as anatomy. Your skin textures are so good it honestly looks like pictures of a real person.
The arms look way better now that they have been shortened. The upper arm did get a little lengthy ha ha. The only part of this model that breaks the illusion for me is the shoulders seem a tad wide and there is something about the area around the wrist. I don't know if it is because the top of the hand is too straight of a plane, from the wrist to the fingers, or if there seems to be a lack of definition in the forearm. But that is some super nit-picky stuff, your work is stellar.
I forgot I was going to add this. This is my basemesh that I made for this project. I paint my textures on this one, since it's in standard position and I can use symmetry if I want it, but the posed mesh has the same UV's so I can use the maps.
Trying to get it to work under multiple lighting solutions. Right now it has too much SSS I believe.
really nice lighting tests, they all seem a little wierdly sampled though and it looks a bit like taking a picture and then finding its a bit out of focus
Really great work, one of the best female anatomy studies I've seen in a while. Like MM though I think the lower legs (particularly the knees and outer ankles) and hands still need some work.
i see several anatomy issues, mainly on the lower legs, knees, hands and feet and some on the hips.
however it is hard to give any proper feedback based on these beauty render washed out by texture\SSS.
Thanks MM, I will look at those areas. And to your last, here is a better image of the sculpt, if you feel like really getting into it, I could use the help.
This is really bonertastic (haha)
Very very great improvement since you started the thread, super impressive and interesting to watch.
Keep up the good work!!
Ah... Bonertastic... I mean... it's definitely not supposed to be sexual, other than being naked. I was split between woman or old guy, but I did the old guy one a bit back...
I know she's still a WIP, But i feel like she's falling into the uncanny valley a bit. I wouldn't even mention this if the hole model felt that way, But its only portions.
Isolating from the thumbs to the collar bones, it feels realistically rendered, Good form, Believable anatomy (for whatever that's worth coming from a hard surface artist), and looks pretty damn good!
Isolating the palms, mid and lower leg areas, and the feet(not including toes, But those factor into it as well), It starts to register strangely.
Same with the head/ears. Those bits make her feel like a mannequin and unnatural.
I wish i could be more help in pointing out what exactly i think is wrong. I think its look pretty freaking epic in some spots like the back of the hands (reminds me of david), Fore arms, Breast/rib cage area is awesome, And the belly and hips look fantastic. I think the other areas need some more love to be at that level.
Makes me feel good because those are areas I've put no work into yet. I have to work in small patches to keep up the detail so I can only do things one at a time. Those parts (the whole thing still actually) look UC be aide they have no proper spec or diffuse, or surface detail etc.
Replies
I have been looking to find something modern that isn't too sexual, I don't want the girls pose to be "look at me" but more "I'm doing something". I thought of a woman chrling her hair or putting makeup on etc but haven't found anything decent that I want to devote time to at this point. I have some freelance projects wrapping up so I might wait it out until after than to really get started.
In the meantime, if anyone has any suggestions are where to find some nice poses etc that would be great. Right now I am trolling through ffffound, but haven't found anything yet, ironically.
Night sculpt for fun. 2 hours, added the polypaint in the eyes from a photo at the end.
Reference from a photo I found.
Here's a site that's great for poses: http://www.posespace.com/
What do people think about a pose like this, it's modern enough and not distasteful, and the girl is actually doing something instead of striking a pose.
I just remembered this site as well, if you need a free resource:
http://www.characterdesigns.com/
Yes! Here's some great videos showing how:
http://www.zbrushcentral.com/showthread.php?179264-Gesture-Sculpting-from-life-tutorial-(nudity)&p=1031486&viewfull=1#post1031486
I'm going to be getting onto some myself following that example.
Basemesh is looking great by the way. She seems to be pulling her shoulders up though? I would go for a more relaxed pose.
You definitely have a good handle on creating photo realistic humans imo. I'm wondering what have been your main sources of reference or tutorials to help you achieve this level of quality. I'm especially interested in the skin painting and rendering, and if you could point us to any references/tutorials on this.
Really looking forward to part 2 of your tutorial btw!
Brad, I really don't have a handle on it, but I'm getting better. One great tutorial for learning the workflow for using zbrush and maya to do realistic stuff is this one from eat3d. http://eat3d.com/maya_portraits
Super great information there. Also Marksalesman on the forums here has a great mini tutorial on skin and stubble. Hopefully I can finish part 2 soon.
_____
Here is some work getting gesture etc. for the anatomy study.
so while your sculpt is, for sure, anatomically correct. it's not correct to the reference.
a fantastic example of how real people don't have "real anatomy" haha.
I google imaged my reference and found the girl/photoshoot it's from, to discover that this girl is seriously stick-thin. From behind, you can make out the entire outline of her pelvis, and her underwear are baggy where normal people would put on even small amounts of fat. I got kinda stuck for awhile.
I'm going to take her pose, but compromise on the build a bit. She'll be thin, but I'd like the practice of modeling a bit of fat along with a bit of muscle.
But since she isn't, I would most likely adjust the figure like shown here:
If you're using a specific reference and that's how she really is standing then disregard this. Just my 2 cents though.
Kot - Finally I asked my wife to do this pose so I could see the muscles etc. From what I can tell from how she did it, you have to slide your feet closer to underneath you to keep balance when your center of balance is pushed forward. I think in your example the woman would fall forwards, since her head/shoulders are far in front of her feet/fulcrum.
Here's a somewhat basic thing on Centers of Gravity: http://www.algarcia.org/AnimationPhysics/BalanceTutorial.pdf
Basically what I'm guessing is that her center of gravity would be somewhere about her hunch or just behind her shoulders, so to offset that weight she'd had to extend her butt backwards, past her fulcrum (her feet), like one weight offsetting another. Part of why I'm thinking her Center of Gravity is closer to her shoulders is because shes working with her hands, and that movement will also modify the center of G.
i was just pointing out that this particular human being doesn't have it, due to her unique physiology.
so if you're doing a general anatomy study that's in the same pose... then fantastic.
if you're doing a study of this girl, in this pose, then you need to rework it a little.
it's still awesome work though dude.
Here is what it might look like if I went more towards the girls actual pose, and just a bit closer to her body type.
Personally I would prefer to see you push this in the direction of the actual picture. The thing that I like about it most is the fact that she looks so frail and its such an unusual pose it becomes very interesting. Therefore, I would really try to push the pose she has where she is making that extreme bend inward towards her stomach.
Looking forward to seeing more.
P.S I would use the pose, and make her body type however you like it
Iciban, it's a super simple setup. I made a sealed off room (guess just a box), with one window (as seen behind the girl). I put an area light exactly in the window, and turned it up a bit high, so it's a strong backlight. Turned on Global Illumination, to get nice bounces from the light and make everything else look soft.
The material of the room is a standard Vray MTL, mid to light blue/purple with no specular. The light takes on this color, since it's pretty much the only thing the light has to bounce off of, so I tried to not oversaturate it. The girl is just white/gray with a bit of red SSS, and a light blue in the specular.
And it's rendered in Vray for maya.
Not sure if you know this already but her arm is way too thick where it bends (opposite side of the elbow). It's like her forearm is melting into the bicep.
Anyways, after a couple days of staring at this I thought I'd do another part of the scene to change things up, so today I did a medium size part of the bathroom.
Everything created in zbrush and then imported and rendered in vray for maya. Learned a bunch of stuff. Tub legs need to go, I think I will do painted metal. Have a ton of other stuff to add (toilet, sink, garbage can, mirror, etc.)
Crits on the environment appreciated.
maybe have her foot touching the floor... just enough to bend her toes slightly...?
To address that I dropped the old pose in, just to check scale etc.
the paint over by Kot_Leopold is more accurate.
also, i feel like you have stopped practicing anatomy few pages back and getting distracted with fancy renders, etc.
these renders look great, but if you plan on improving anatomy, my recommendation would be to just sculpt body parts and poses and don't worry about rendering, stories, context etc.
just noticed that the upper arms are too long, also attaching a paint over to show the legs angle issue.
As for the focus on rendering, I agree, somewhat. I really want to increase my rendering skills, and have been doing so. The focus of this project is going to be the anatomy, same as was the girls portrait a couple pages back, but I also like to use these as excuses to learn the tangential stuff - presentation, rendering, etc. There are a million great sculptors out there, and I'm not on that list. As I work my way up, I don't see a problem with getting better in other areas. I think eventually (to me personally), being successful is going to have to be a mixture of all sorts of skills - sculpting, along with the ability to present it.
Although, I do understand your point that I could learn anatomy ten times faster if I was focusing on nothing but anatomy. I admit that my wandering mind does sometimes get the best of me.
So anyways, Still dinking around with this scene. Tried a different tact, sorta like it, and by that I mean, it has problems, but I can see myself solving them as I move forward.
The arms look way better now that they have been shortened. The upper arm did get a little lengthy ha ha. The only part of this model that breaks the illusion for me is the shoulders seem a tad wide and there is something about the area around the wrist. I don't know if it is because the top of the hand is too straight of a plane, from the wrist to the fingers, or if there seems to be a lack of definition in the forearm. But that is some super nit-picky stuff, your work is stellar.
Trying to get it to work under multiple lighting solutions. Right now it has too much SSS I believe.
i see several anatomy issues, mainly on the lower legs, knees, hands and feet and some on the hips.
however it is hard to give any proper feedback based on these beauty render washed out by texture\SSS.
Thanks MM, I will look at those areas. And to your last, here is a better image of the sculpt, if you feel like really getting into it, I could use the help.
Very very great improvement since you started the thread, super impressive and interesting to watch.
Keep up the good work!!
By that I meant it was looking awesome
scratching away at the base model and the shader. Only had a couple hours waiting to hear about something.
maybe check out some don brown stuff for ref, hes AWESOME!!!!!
Some modeling and some shader work.
Isolating from the thumbs to the collar bones, it feels realistically rendered, Good form, Believable anatomy (for whatever that's worth coming from a hard surface artist), and looks pretty damn good!
Isolating the palms, mid and lower leg areas, and the feet(not including toes, But those factor into it as well), It starts to register strangely.
Same with the head/ears. Those bits make her feel like a mannequin and unnatural.
I wish i could be more help in pointing out what exactly i think is wrong. I think its look pretty freaking epic in some spots like the back of the hands (reminds me of david), Fore arms, Breast/rib cage area is awesome, And the belly and hips look fantastic. I think the other areas need some more love to be at that level.
Keep up the awesome work!