Right now you are very far from realism. It's great to see that you're working from a low-res base mesh. Did you build this yourself by retopoing? It seems every sculpting beginner attempting a head and new to ZB starts with a high-res dynamesh and then wonders why their sculpt is so hard to control with terrible forms. Starting from a low-res base and utilising levels all the way through a sculpt is a tried and tested ZB method that has been used for years and I can't underestimate how useful it is. So points for that.
You need to go back to basics. At the moment the model looks like a 6 month old baby. You have a good start in that you have a decent base to build from. My main advice is to go to the lowest level, delete higher and then spend as much time as possible working on the fundamental forms/proportions/bony landmarks. Personally I will stay at a very low res(less than 10K points) for as long as it takes to find the primary forms, using 80% move brush. Sculpting starts with these basics and in order to progress you must study anatomy. Later on when you have built up the knowledge and sculpting skill you can work by eye but right now you should concentrate on a more mechanical approach, i.e: set up skull refs or a good proportion guide, in the viewport, to work from. There is no way around a deep study of anatomy if you want to capture realism.
I did musashi, within the zbrush topology for the first time too. thank you :pleased:
Word, she is a bit smooth and squishy so I feel far from realism atm. Last I was working on the detail around the eyes/nose, but I should probably have another look at the cheeks/cheek bones/ & jaw line. I've done a half skull in the past and used one as reference for the temple area, but I'm sure there's more to be gained from going back to bone and muscle.
While I have you, I realize she needs a lot of work over all, but from the referances are there any key area's that pop out to you as needing improvement or alterations?
The shape of the head is not there, you need to put your model side by side to the reference. You can clearly see that your head is too small, very primitive like. Second the realism is not there not even close. You have a decent low poly base all you need to do is reshape it. When you went high poly thats when everything on this model went down hill. The shape of her eyebrows are not correct, the lips are way too big, your ears need a lot of work. Take some time and really look at what you are making. dont get so happy deep into it to the point you're not paying attention to detail. Like I said the lowpoly base mesh is a good starting point, just reshape the head and parts of the face.
thanks for the reply nicko Rin does'nt really have a straight on reference unfortunately so it's not really easy to compaire. I actually used the side view img of the girl with the shaved head and a female skull for head size making slight alterations to feature placement using rins eyes as measurement.. Lips should be atleast close to on aswell though I used a seperate reference attached here for that.. ears and brow need adjusting for sure. I probably should have picked an easier study. But ty I'll have another look at the proportions as well, new img I used for her lips might help me with that.
There are nice ways to measure the basic elements of the head. for Example: - assume a head is 2 generic Units high, the eyes should be 1 from upper limit and from the chin. Lower 1 Head you can split to 3 (that's why the head is 2 high, because 0,5 would be hard to split by 3). You end up with a pretty equal spread of the tip of the nose and the mouth. If you did that, you would see, that you jaw is way too short. Your ears are too low. the top part of the connection of the ear to the skull should line up with the top boarder of the zygomatic and be on less of an angle. Also the whole surface construction that forms the cheeks is really off. Where is the Zygomatic visible forming the shape of the face, how does the surface change towards the mandible and eye socket. Check for the planes of the skull to help, where the face changes how. But mainly you need to get the general shape right.
Thank you very much Anchang principles I always forget to look into you've been very helpful. Thank you all for the replys, hopefully I can make some steps in the right direction today.
Lil update from todays work. Going off a 2 - (1 - 3/3) front/side proportions map. Adapted some masculine features in the process though. Feature mapping and softening next time I can get back to her, as well as the other issues you brought up anchang & skull structure touch ups. ( I'm working at the 1-3 subdiv lvl atm btw)
Soften the planes you made, especially at the temples. It's good that you've notice them, but they're usually not that sharp.
I'm still not seeing a likeness. Your eye silhouette needs to match the eye silhouette of hers. You have a decent front shot from your original reference photo from above. Use that.
Your bottom lip indents in the middle. She doesn't have that since she has a full bottom lip. Match it.
The inside corner of her eyes are vertically at the same position as the wings of her nose. Right now, her nose wings are wider than they are in the reference photos. The need to be brought in and line up with the eyes. Verify this is so from the reference photos you have.
I think you're hindering your ability to learn by trying a likeness study when you're clearly struggling with basic anatomy. If you don't concentrate on getting the proportions/measurements right then you will never achieve realism. As it is you are still very far from realism. There is certainly an improvement from your initial post but still a long way to go. The process of learning/applying anatomy is a long one. By glazing over the basics you are missing out on the very key to improving yourwork.
At this point it would seem you are better off starting from scratch again and aim to get the proportions right from the get go rather than continue to tweak a model with too many polygons to tweak.
For parts of Rin's head you are unsure about because of her hair covering ears etc don't be afraid to look at OTHER women for ear reference if you find Rin does not have such ref available.
Don't focus on eyebrows, makeup or anything like that yet. Its redundant at this stage. Besides eyebrows are usually penciled in anyway and don't necessarily follow the natural contours of the brow bone.
Brian forsure the temple area was something that stood out to me aswell. Features I'm sure almost all need tweeking, they were slightly altered to match proportion maps too. Thank you very much for going through key area's I'll look them over.
Thanks final I'll check that out.
Thanks Musashi I have been studying the planes of the face from asaro heads. Recently incorporated the 2 - 1 & 3/3 rule with this model. Also been drawing the underlying muscle and tissue of the female face in my spare time for tackling these features. Agreed there is alot to be learned still, so far I feel like it's a pretty precise process, there are a lot of little nuances that if even off a tiny bit make the whole face look wrong. I may move to other projects, some related some not, then come back to the realism. Going to watch some clay sculpting and some zbrush speedsculpts while at work to see if theres some things I can pick up. Are there some other good key basics I could learn from though?
ty for the reply cyborg. I was actually using the reference below to help with some area's around the eye and brow ect. I have another side view reference of a woman with a shaved head that I use for the ear reference. I haven't messed with the front view of the ear yet much though. As far as starting from scratch I still have my subdivition levels so I can still go back to the lowest poly level. What could be gained from starting all over?
Far as the texture it was just very basic 1 skin tone and red/glossy mat to highlight the lip's border. I can post the next update in greyscale though
Not to sound all artsy-fartsy, but if you can answer this question yourself then you are setting yourself up for success. If you truly believe that you are wasting your time starting from scratch then 3D is not for you.
This stuff takes years and years of dedication, passion, a constant need to learn and improve, and a willingness to be your own harshest critic with a willingness to know you can push things further..........and further. Laziness in this medium is rewarded with mediocrity.
It's great that you're willing to learn and are actively following the sound advice people have posted here, but being too precious with very basic sculpt, that needs a huge amount of work, at this stage in your learning path will stagnate you. I also advocate throwing the piece out and starting again....and again...and again. This is the nature of getting better. You'll have plenty of work in the future(if you continue) that you can cherish.
Also, some parting advice: you shouldn't need to be anywhere near the resolution that you are currently at for the forms you have. As I(and others) have mentioned above, you should be working at a MUCH lower res. Just because you see speedsculpts of artists starting from a high-res dynamesh blob and creating a head doesn't mean that you should emulate. The reason they do is because they have the anatomical knowledge and the sculpting experience. Until you gain some more of each you should stick to the basics. Also, if you are intent on having colour values on the sculpt I recommend greyscale tones. The lipstick/pink skin/cartoon eyes are sending this sculpt even further away from realism.
O.o I don't think you're getting me musashi. I don't work at this high of a level I just render it out at that level (Sublvl6). As I stated earlier I'm still working at the 1-3 subdivision level. I can move down to lvl 1 and make alterations needed to proportions and keep my clean flowing edge loops. I know that you can always learn more and get better starting over trust me I've been at this for atleast 5 years now I realize it's alot of work and alot of failure. But don't people make base meshes? Isn't there something to be gained from seeing a project to fruition rather then just scraping everything and going back to square one retopologizing and all over and over? Looking to learn anyway I can fast as I can with the limited time I have available to do so, maybe that should be doing dynameshes of the basic landmarks but scraping the project all together sounds like a waste.
Said I would post the next in grayscale, textures are very basic just something I set up quickly because I was interested in mat's and found it helpful.
Also, I get that you're only looking to help and I thank you for that but the judgment and critiques telling someone to start over but get better isn't very helpful. If you knowing that I have a base mesh to work from and I'm not working at the highest subdivision level really think that I just need to start over then again why is that better then going back to the base? What should I look out for next time? what needs to be improved on? what are some good tuts or some good references or rules of thumb I should learn from to get better at head anatomy? This info with the critique would be very helpful.
@ozaffer I think you can improve the project by finding some better references. Something like this:
Right now, Rin is not being helpful because it's mostly just glamour photography that will have incredibly varied FOVs, etc. She's beautiful but it's not a helpful reference for what you need.
The planar principles and other general anatomy techniques can still be applied here, just with a better reference if likeness is still a goal.
That being said, it's also not a bad goal to just end with a pleasing, attractive female face for this if you feel like it's taking a little too long to get this done. I've done that before, and it turned out good.
Thank you very much again Panda. I'll have time to work tomorrow and sense my features are still really rough I'll try out those references. Was having the same feeling that using Rin's shots might be making it harder on myself.
O.o I don't think you're getting me musashi. I don't work at this high of a level I just render it out at that level (Sublvl6). As I stated earlier I'm still working at the 1-3 subdivision level. I can move down to lvl 1 and make alterations needed to proportions and keep my clean flowing edge loops.
I think it might be the other way around. Of course I'm getting you. In my first post above I commended you for using a basemesh with edgeflow. What I'm trying to explain to you is that if you haven't captured the correct proportions/forms on a sub-10K mesh then it doesn't matter how many subdivs you add to render it out, it just will not look anatomically correct. This is especially true of a likeness study.
As for starting over, I didn't mean rebuilding/retopoing a perfectly good basemesh - as that would just be foolish - I meant going to your lowest level, smoothing the whole thing out, and starting the sculpt again. Speedsculpting is a very common form of practicing and I highly recommend it. You say you have limited time? Well then, why not just spend that time on throwaway speedsculpts instead of noodling away for weeks. You can always come back to this project when you are more confident with sculpting/anatomy. Of course we all want to have completed projects that we can be proud of, but again,(and I'm saying this from personal experience of my own wasted time over the years) building up skill/knowledge/confidence happens faster when you concentrate on less grandiose projects that you can turn around quickly and use as a perfect arena to practice until you're ready to tackle more complex projects. A likeness study is an extremely involved process that pushes even the most experienced sculptors to the limit.
I'm not trying to insult you here, I'm trying to help based on my own frustrating experience when first learning to sculpt anatomy. If you can't take this kind of critique and are offended by it then don't post your work. If you get a job in a studio or a freelancing gig then you should prepare for critique. We all need it to grow as artists.
Here are some excellent learning resources by some brilliant sculptors(digital artists) who've helped me on my own journey:
What would be great is to not argue or debate with everyone, it it was recommended that you start over you should honestly take the advice and do it, you will be very surprised at how differently the model comes out as from you first attempt. That is why we are saying start over and and over and over some more, until you begin to see the differences from the first model. If this is what you really want to do then just know even on the job at times you will have to start from scratch if a model is not coming out like the concept. I would take the advice and start over come back compare and see the differences. This is a common practice even in drawing. do it over and over until it starts to take form
Again, you're jumping the gun and getting insulted whilst not even understanding what I said. I was referring to the technique of painting greyscale tones on a sculpt to help evaluate the forms and explore the character. Not just posting the sculpt with a generic grey shader.
wasnt offended by any of it or arguing I just didnt understand the point of scrapping the basemesh. A miss comunication I'm glad we clarified, and I probably should have assumed off your first post. Also literally the only thing I questioned. Thank you again for the comments. It sounds like you're suggesting what I was planing on doing.
far as the grey scale again not insulted just alittle confused, I was thinking of the flat grey which I found hard to read. I'll try the greyscale suggestion out.
thank you again, I'll check out those tut's aswell. edit: or maybe not x) I've got no funds for a full course atm. Thanks for the links anyway.
Im going to be very honest with you here, It looks exactly like your previous model, I believe you're starting to have tunnel vision and all your head sculpts are looking very similar to each other. Im not sure why you sculpted the low poly for like that and then tried to smooth other it. Its a dead give away and you're kinda going about this in a wrong work flow. I think you need to sit and watch videos from start to finish on sculpting and apply it into your work flow. Here is a good example https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OQxBOzT-np4 and also like we keep telling you, this isnt going to happen just over night you need to practice and practice not on just one sculpt and say is this better. you need to do at least 20 sculpts put them all together and see how they differ and see what you need to work on. Right now your mind is sculpting on what it thinks and not what is correct thats why it looks the same as the last
it does? Felt like the forehead atleast was a obvious improvement far as proportion. I went with making an asaro head of the reference to get a feel for the planes of the face. Ahh well, I dont seem to be getting it at all. I'll the check the video out and give realism another shot later. Really frustrating to not get anywhere after so much work and so many attempts.
Really frustrating to not get anywhere after so much work and so many attempts.
This isnt something that happens over night, its going to take you hundreds of tries
word, I missed that last paragraph too. I'll try those exercises out from time to time until I come back to focusing on realism. thanks for the critique.
Replies
You need to go back to basics. At the moment the model looks like a 6 month old baby. You have a good start in that you have a decent base to build from. My main advice is to go to the lowest level, delete higher and then spend as much time as possible working on the fundamental forms/proportions/bony landmarks. Personally I will stay at a very low res(less than 10K points) for as long as it takes to find the primary forms, using 80% move brush. Sculpting starts with these basics and in order to progress you must study anatomy. Later on when you have built up the knowledge and sculpting skill you can work by eye but right now you should concentrate on a more mechanical approach, i.e: set up skull refs or a good proportion guide, in the viewport, to work from. There is no way around a deep study of anatomy if you want to capture realism.
Word, she is a bit smooth and squishy so I feel far from realism atm. Last I was working on the detail around the eyes/nose, but I should probably have another look at the cheeks/cheek bones/ & jaw line. I've done a half skull in the past and used one as reference for the temple area, but I'm sure there's more to be gained from going back to bone and muscle.
While I have you, I realize she needs a lot of work over all, but from the referances are there any key area's that pop out to you as needing improvement or alterations?
Rin does'nt really have a straight on reference unfortunately so it's not really easy to compaire. I actually used the side view img of the girl with the shaved head and a female skull for head size making slight alterations to feature placement using rins eyes as measurement.. Lips should be atleast close to on aswell though I used a seperate reference attached here for that.. ears and brow need adjusting for sure. I probably should have picked an easier study. But ty I'll have another look at the proportions as well, new img I used for her lips might help me with that.
- assume a head is 2 generic Units high, the eyes should be 1 from upper limit and from the chin. Lower 1 Head you can split to 3 (that's why the head is 2 high, because 0,5 would be hard to split by 3). You end up with a pretty equal spread of the tip of the nose and the mouth. If you did that, you would see, that you jaw is way too short. Your ears are too low. the top part of the connection of the ear to the skull should line up with the top boarder of the zygomatic and be on less of an angle.
Also the whole surface construction that forms the cheeks is really off. Where is the Zygomatic visible forming the shape of the face, how does the surface change towards the mandible and eye socket. Check for the planes of the skull to help, where the face changes how. But mainly you need to get the general shape right.
Also, don't make puffy cheeks unless you sculpt her smiling... Or it's looks fat on neutral face. Rin is pretty slim if you ask me.
Start with some basic shape of planes of face. Then smooth the crap out of it or something.
good tips pyr I was starting to notice that aswell musta been an odd angel or puffy day
little update from today
Remove the color. It's distracting.
Soften the planes you made, especially at the temples. It's good that you've notice them, but they're usually not that sharp.
I'm still not seeing a likeness.
Your eye silhouette needs to match the eye silhouette of hers. You have a decent front shot from your original reference photo from above. Use that.
Your bottom lip indents in the middle. She doesn't have that since she has a full bottom lip. Match it.
The inside corner of her eyes are vertically at the same position as the wings of her nose. Right now, her nose wings are wider than they are in the reference photos. The need to be brought in and line up with the eyes. Verify this is so from the reference photos you have.
For parts of Rin's head you are unsure about because of her hair covering ears etc don't be afraid to look at OTHER women for ear reference if you find Rin does not have such ref available.
Don't focus on eyebrows, makeup or anything like that yet. Its redundant at this stage. Besides eyebrows are usually penciled in anyway and don't necessarily follow the natural contours of the brow bone.
Brian forsure the temple area was something that stood out to me aswell. Features I'm sure almost all need tweeking, they were slightly altered to match proportion maps too. Thank you very much for going through key area's I'll look them over.
Thanks final I'll check that out.
Thanks Musashi I have been studying the planes of the face from asaro heads. Recently incorporated the 2 - 1 & 3/3 rule with this model. Also been drawing the underlying muscle and tissue of the female face in my spare time for tackling these features. Agreed there is alot to be learned still, so far I feel like it's a pretty precise process, there are a lot of little nuances that if even off a tiny bit make the whole face look wrong. I may move to other projects, some related some not, then come back to the realism. Going to watch some clay sculpting and some zbrush speedsculpts while at work to see if theres some things I can pick up. Are there some other good key basics I could learn from though?
ty for the reply cyborg. I was actually using the reference below to help with some area's around the eye and brow ect. I have another side view reference of a woman with a shaved head that I use for the ear reference. I haven't messed with the front view of the ear yet much though. As far as starting from scratch I still have my subdivition levels so I can still go back to the lowest poly level. What could be gained from starting all over?
Far as the texture it was just very basic 1 skin tone and red/glossy mat to highlight the lip's border. I can post the next update in greyscale though
Thanks again for the comments!
This stuff takes years and years of dedication, passion, a constant need to learn and improve, and a willingness to be your own harshest critic with a willingness to know you can push things further..........and further. Laziness in this medium is rewarded with mediocrity.
It's great that you're willing to learn and are actively following the sound advice people have posted here, but being too precious with very basic sculpt, that needs a huge amount of work, at this stage in your learning path will stagnate you. I also advocate throwing the piece out and starting again....and again...and again. This is the nature of getting better. You'll have plenty of work in the future(if you continue) that you can cherish.
Also, some parting advice: you shouldn't need to be anywhere near the resolution that you are currently at for the forms you have. As I(and others) have mentioned above, you should be working at a MUCH lower res. Just because you see speedsculpts of artists starting from a high-res dynamesh blob and creating a head doesn't mean that you should emulate. The reason they do is because they have the anatomical knowledge and the sculpting experience. Until you gain some more of each you should stick to the basics. Also, if you are intent on having colour values on the sculpt I recommend greyscale tones. The lipstick/pink skin/cartoon eyes are sending this sculpt even further away from realism.
Said I would post the next in grayscale, textures are very basic just something I set up quickly because I was interested in mat's and found it helpful.
Also, I get that you're only looking to help and I thank you for that but the judgment and critiques telling someone to start over but get better isn't very helpful. If you knowing that I have a base mesh to work from and I'm not working at the highest subdivision level really think that I just need to start over then again why is that better then going back to the base? What should I look out for next time? what needs to be improved on? what are some good tuts or some good references or rules of thumb I should learn from to get better at head anatomy? This info with the critique would be very helpful.
Right now, Rin is not being helpful because it's mostly just glamour photography that will have incredibly varied FOVs, etc. She's beautiful but it's not a helpful reference for what you need.
The planar principles and other general anatomy techniques can still be applied here, just with a better reference if likeness is still a goal.
That being said, it's also not a bad goal to just end with a pleasing, attractive female face for this if you feel like it's taking a little too long to get this done. I've done that before, and it turned out good.
As for starting over, I didn't mean rebuilding/retopoing a perfectly good basemesh - as that would just be foolish - I meant going to your lowest level, smoothing the whole thing out, and starting the sculpt again. Speedsculpting is a very common form of practicing and I highly recommend it. You say you have limited time? Well then, why not just spend that time on throwaway speedsculpts instead of noodling away for weeks. You can always come back to this project when you are more confident with sculpting/anatomy. Of course we all want to have completed projects that we can be proud of, but again,(and I'm saying this from personal experience of my own wasted time over the years) building up skill/knowledge/confidence happens faster when you concentrate on less grandiose projects that you can turn around quickly and use as a perfect arena to practice until you're ready to tackle more complex projects. A likeness study is an extremely involved process that pushes even the most experienced sculptors to the limit.
I'm not trying to insult you here, I'm trying to help based on my own frustrating experience when first learning to sculpt anatomy. If you can't take this kind of critique and are offended by it then don't post your work. If you get a job in a studio or a freelancing gig then you should prepare for critique. We all need it to grow as artists.
Here are some excellent learning resources by some brilliant sculptors(digital artists) who've helped me on my own journey:
Scott Eaton - http://www.scott-eaton.com/portraiture-facial-anatomy-online-course
Steve Lord - http://https//www.uartsy.com/course/female-face-sculpting-with-steve-lord
Raphael Grassetti - https://gumroad.com/grassetti#
Kris Costa - http://https//www.uartsy.com/course/character-creation-with-kris-costa
far as the grey scale again not insulted just alittle confused, I was thinking of the flat grey which I found hard to read. I'll try the greyscale suggestion out.
thank you again, I'll check out those tut's aswell.
edit: or maybe not x) I've got no funds for a full course atm. Thanks for the links anyway.
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-yu_JurM6vqY/UWWVwLkFsXI/AAAAAAAAAHc/pqXlcjzfYAc/s1600/Planes+of+the+Face+Blog.jpg
and here's a skull, these will help.
http://thumbs.dreamstime.com/z/real-skull-human-2181349.jpg