Troll Character

BendE

Hey guys, I'm pretty new here, so this is gonna be my first post.

Here is a character I've been working on over the past few days. Honestly I'm not too familiar with the "proper" practices one might use when making a hi-res character in zbrush, so what you see is just me kind of whinging it.

Generally, I'm fairly new to 3D, so I find myself trying to get around the "rules" and just trying to start creating something as fast as possible.

Please feel free to point out anything I may be doing wrong, or anything I could improve upon.

I guess I should say I plan on giving him some shoes and pants, and eventually some long hair. Ultimately He would also be a low poly model, so any advice there would be awesome.

Right now this is about subdivision 5 so i have a couple more levels of detail to throw on.

Illusive

the horns need twist and curve much more, at the moment they look like a weird hair style

Donavonyoung

You are going too high too fast. Work on lower subd to get the form and shape right. otherwise it will just end up lumpy.

Polygoblin

What Donovan said. I know you want to get to the detail part, but only subdivide when you need to. Trust me, it will help.

Also, it helps for someone new to 3D to try and do some more human characters to really study anatomy. I know it's boring, but will greatly improve every character you do afterwards. A solid anatomy foundation is crucial in every creature, even non-humans.

BendE

Thanks for the input guys. In regards to the subdivision levels, I tend to move back and forth from high to low and low to high a bit in the process. Is this not practical? I find that it can break up the tediousness of working in one single place for too long. At this point in time I believe the only place that SubD 5 was necessary was his face.

As for the anatomical study, I agree that it is important, and I have actually taken a few courses dedicated to this sort of thing (figure drawing etc.) I've noticed that many zbrush characters end up having exaggerated muscles and it can sometimes look like they are constantly flexing (deep crevices in the skin and whatnot). If I were to try and avoid this, is there a good way to define his muscles lightly without him becoming doe-ey and lumpy?

Donavonyoung

If you define the muscles at a low sub division you won't have that problem. The best thing to do is find some ref on the muscle definition you want then try to mimic that and post it here. That way we can help drive you in the right direction.

Moosey_G

I agree that you're jumping way to fast into higher subd levels, and I don't really see why the face needed a subd level of 5? I wouldn't worry too much about constantly flexing muscles, if you keep trying to avoiding something you aren't working on yet, you're only hurting your potential. Once you start defining pieces, and they come out lumpy and doe-ey on the latest subd level you can start going back/in to lower and lower levels to correct it. That's the point of working your way up on subd levels, focus.

BendE

Here is a small update just to see if I'm moving in the right direction. I popped his SubD level down to 2 and worked out the muscles using some reference.

I mainly just defined the main muscles in his arms, chest, and a bit in his legs. I also curved and tweaked his horns a bit. I'm leaving his feet alone for now since he will have shoes eventually, and I didn't really allocate geometry for toes.

Level 2

Level 3(just to see how things are smoothing out)

Moosey_G

Have you looked at using the dam standard brush to really define forms? I find myself it's much easier to over define forms and tone them down, than it is to try to shoot for a very specific level in one go.