ZBrushCentral

Ear Fetishists .. 1-2-1 Please

Been working away, trying to find a reliable way of creating ears from scratch, just in ZB, for the next Newbie Challenge. This started with just a 3x3 grid of polys in the middle of a plane (hence the flat head!). Anyway … am I close to a reasonable ear? I’m not too bothered about the tex, which I just threw together, but is the shape right? Too many bobbly bits around the antitragus?

On a related note, has anyone had problems with polys disappearing or joining unrelated polygroups when hiding parts of the mesh? Sometimes, hiding one set of polys will result in a handful of polys on the other side of the head disappearing (I’m not going anywhere near them with the selection tool). When I show the whole mesh, the wayward polys join another poly group. I’ve tried exporting the obj into UV Mapper to see if the polys have become separated but, although UV Mapper reports issues with degenerate facets, none show up when I select them. Any clues? Cheers.
ears_flesh.jpg

Ears looks great to me…saw this post and grabbed my son to use as a model for ya…I am not the greatest photographer but I was trying to get some different angles and lightings to show up the details…(sent my son upstairs to grab a Qtip and clean the compost out of his ears after looking at the photos…) but hope this helps…

Dunno about the problem you speak of…sorry…I am not that technical about z yet… :frowning:

One way I have modeled ears, is to use a torus/doughnut tool and inflat it and model on it and smack it seperate onto my models…then use the blur brush to smooth out the seams…and I have also taken and multimarked and polymeshed that tool to my earless heads when I am too lazy to model ears out of the head…

tip knowing the ears arent always perfectly vertical…I will open the Preview window…then manuver(sp?) the ear tool and apply gravity to it…that will help give some more natural shape to it…

and

also when I put it to the head before I go out of edit mode, I will divide it one more time to help smooth it out some more…

Stick it in place, just like putting an eyeball in a socket…hit the snapshot…go to deformations and mirror it and move it to the other side of the head and viola…

I know you probably know most of that if not all…seemed like a good place to repost the info…

Love your ear though…very superior modeling…

take care,
Ron

catfishmn@aol.com

Attachments

EarsCompReference1.jpg

Hi Moochie, Hi Ron!

Recently I’ve also experienced the wayward disappearing polys you’re speaking of…
In my case it seems to happen after alot of edge-loop splitting on a model.
No polygroups assigned, single faces just start disappearing when ctrl-shift selecting other areas.
Using zbrush to model from scratch is fairly new for me, so I thought I was doing something backwards.
Interesting to see you’re having similar problems with this.
Are you splitting alot of edge-loops?
Maybe others could shed some light.

Nice ear pix Ron, saved 'em, Thanks.

Glad you will do the Ear Challenge Moochie.
In modeling a hierarchy of forms which make up the head, it seems ears can be way down on the list sometimes.
Focusing just on that form is a great idea.
The one you’ve posted looks a bit aged, as if for an older person.
All the major forms are there and you understand them, but you might want to have someone model their ear for you while you sculpt this.
Just a suggestion…You’ll see it clearer man, yes you will.

If that’s not possible, Ron’s images are great and wrap around nicely.

hey moochie

the ear looks good…since everyones ears are a bit different you always have a bit of leeway in modelling them.

I haven’t had any disappearing polys but I always turn on doublesided before I start doing any select hiding so that I can be absolutely sure I am not selecting polys by accident that I don’t want. It makes it easier to see what you are doing that way. Maybe that will help ya?

[QUOTE=Ron Harris]…saw this post and grabbed my son to use as a model for ya…/QUOTE]

Hahaha, I can hear the poor boy peeping ‘No dad, noooooh!’
Moochie, I never had that problem with disapearing polygons (only inverted)
I think the open suface (it’s not a solid) causes the problem. The shape of the ear looks good but the backside needs more sculpting, special the border where the ear meets the head (feel it with your finger).

On some models (with no edge loops on them, no polygroups) some polys go bye bye when I select some other polys…dunno why…but it does happen.

Thanks guys.

Ron: Great tips and excellent photo references. Thanks so much. And thank your son, too, for sitting still for our benefit.

joe_seig: oh, a real model would be sweet! I was aiming for a ‘generalised’ ear, and used a beautiful illustration in an art book as my reference (mainly cos it has all the ear parts labelled). Having seen Ron’s photos, I know I’ve got to look more closely at all the photo references sitting on my h/d. The good news is that I was prolly over-complicating things, so the study I do for the challenge should be easier.

Yes … polys start disappearing after a few edgeloops. Even if I collect the wayward ones together and give them their own polygroup, they still split away independently and change colour when hiding other unrelated parts of the mesh. I get a similar issue in Silo too, sometimes, where seemingly contiguous mesh has overlapping but unconnected verts. I assumed it was a problem with my technique. But you can’t really mend broken seams in ZB. Doesn’t worry me … I always think it’s a sign that one is really getting to understand a program when you start uncovering little hidden glitches.

aminuts: sterling advice, as always. Thanks. Yes … I always turn on ‘Double’. Actually it’s one of my few little niggles with ZB that it turns Double off, of its own accord, from time to time.

Bas: thanks. I was getting the problem pretty consistantly when I was modelling ears on two sides of the default cube (turned into polymesh first, of course). I haven’t had the problem when modelling an ear on the 3D plane. Yet. You’re right about the back of the ear … I need to stand behind a few people today and get the shapes in my head.

Giantsun : are these imported models? Sometimes there are issues with re-ordered verts from certain modelling apps, which can result in verts appearing all over the place (esp after sub-dividing in ZB). I’ve never had the problem with a native ZB model, unless I’ve been using the edgeloop tool.

what?..:stuck_out_tongue:

Hi Moochie. Happened on imported meshes from silo. That must be it then. On another note…been having real bad problems with silo selecting…

Mochie great ’ Ear’ work:+1: Cheers

Eh? Schpeak up, shonny; my old earsh ain’t good na more. War wound. It allllllll shtarted in the schpring of 43 … zzzzzzzzzzz

btw … I managed to pin down that disappearing polygon thing, and can recreate it consistantly. I’ve posted an avi of it happening and a more detailed description here http://www.zbrushcentral.com/zbc/showthread.php?t=29656