Sean's Sketches (Anatomical Nudity)

[Extra Dimensional]

Hey all Zbrush fanatics, So... I've been using this program for about 8years or so I guess. First took interest in it in early 2002, and made an account here in 2003, so yeah about 8 years. Anyways, I've been using it for so long but I've never really *done* anything with it other than used it as an aid for my 2d works and to actually help me with my "in the round" sculpture in wax/clay as I've always used it to help visualize elements of anatomy in particular.

Now, with the way this program has progressed and all the fun new tools I've really been sinking my teeth into trying to actually use Zbrush to create with. After playing around with it for so long at least I know the interface and functions of everything like the back of my hand. Now it's time to make stuff and use this thread to document it as I'm committed to finally making some of the stuff I've always wanted to realize but never bothered to sit down and actually "do" any of it.

So, first thing I thought I'd get stuck in sculpting a female figure to use as a base for other projects and whatnot and to challenge myself as it's a pretty complicated (for me) thing to undertake from scratch. The way that Zbrush has "found itself" with the new tools and workflow and everything has come together for me recently and I appreciate the direction they've taken it in, enough so as to really inspire to practice this more and get into it. Excited for the future of the app as well. Well enough background, it's just a thread on the internet after all I'll try to make the thread at least more interesting than the intro!

I started this on Monday night and I have a bunch of wip shots as I go along, alot to learn, I'm trying to document the progress since...if I forget I have this thread here to help with that.

A start:


Basically a zsphere zsketch. First go at trying my hand at the "new way" of binding the spheres to a zsketch armature. Just got some form laid in, then I worked on it some more.



Added some more zsketching to help me eyeball the musculature, not worried about being perfect here, just...sketching it out getting in to the fun of messing around with the bulge and smooth brushes. Although I did start looking at reference at this point since I decided it would help throughout.



Tried so many skinning options both adaptive and unified, spent about an hour messing around throwing all the switches. Finally settled on a good unified skin that I felt kept the overall form of the zsketch together. Unfortunately, no matter what setting I tried, I could not get those fingers to skin up. They were bound to the rig, reset binding was done properly and all that jazz. (to get that ghost effect, you render your image with the edit zsketch unactive showing the ghost outline over your zsphere. Then when you hit ctrl-n to start a new canvas, the ghost image remains, but the zsphere armature disappears leaving only the ghost!)



Started the actual sculpting, getting some doubts about how far the topology that unified mesh gave me is going to take me. Remember, I want to use this model as a base for other projects so I want to focus and getting something ...usable for that. Started thinking about how to deal with it as I sculpted, really loving the clay brush.



Got to SDiV 2 and got some more sculpting in, but at this point the topology is just...trashed already. So I took it as far as I could at this level but you see all the artifacting, even with smoothing, everywhere and I knew it would just be best to stop at this point if I was serious about this sculpt and retopo it. So this led me on the quest on trying to do it in zbrush which was maddeningly difficult to the point of frustrating, taking all the joy out of the process and leading me down that road of defeatist thinking. So I did what any sane person would do and threw money at the problem until it went away. Researched an afternoon to figure out what would be my best option and settled on Topogun. Learned it in about, 30 minutes and set out retopologizing the mesh. If I'm going to be serious about it, I need a better solution for this sort of thing since yes, it can be done in zbrush, but it's just easier in a dedicated application. I can't afford the big multi thousand dollar licenses so I use the low budget stuff and for the price, topogun is easy to use and satisfactory for my needs. Since I'm just an amateur hobbyist there's no need for anything really high end anyways. I use Hexagon for modelling basic stuff in as well and that's really cheap and does the trick :P I bought that awhile ago since I needed a basic modeller to supplement my messing around in zbrush. Great little application, love it actually for what it does.



Anyways there's the mesh retopologized, took all afternoon since I'm a beginner at thinking about modelling like this, plus I got hypnotized by the actual act of retopologizing something as complicated as the human form. Felt like either a spider spinning a web of vertices or a little old lady doing some kind of high tech weaving all day. Couldn't decide if it was fun or a chore...still up in the air on that.

The mesh topology isn't perfect but, it's suitable for bringing back in to zbrush and getting a fresh start on the flow and easing my mind that when I take it further I'll have better form to work with without all the artifacting. The little step of retopologizing before progressing seemed like a necessary evil but I'm glad I've done it. Now I had to learn about projecting from one mesh to the other since I've known about the feature all along, but never used it before! Like I said, I've been following and playing around with zbrush for a long time editing models and meshes and whatnot, but not seriously using the tools for their intended purposes.

Oh yeah, after topogun I took the mesh into Hexagon to relax the vert clustering with the smooth brush. I've used that smooth brush while experimenting with UV unwrapping in Hexagon awhile back and remembered it would work well for relaxing the topology I created in Topogun. Topogun has a relax feature but it's...not as nice, or I don't know enough to use it well, but I have Hexagon at least.



SO, now I read up a bit on Project All and how I need to set that up, which was dead simple really. Some small issue with my mesh not being the precise size but I can sort that out later with a scaling tool for .obj, no big deal. Surprised me actually with how nice the feature worked! Had to do some small smoothing due to some spikey geometry but nothing on my model broke and it took a couple seconds to clean up. Relatively painless, I expected a giant twisting mass of garbled polygons to be honest. Taking my time paid off at least in that regard as I got the results I sought out after with minimal pain. What more could you want really? Here's a shot of how that worked out.





So now I can get back to the fun part of sculpting again and not sit and stress about the technicalities. But, all about the learning really. Sit and absorb so much awesomeness all the time from this and other boards I finally felt motivated to put all the learning to use and try to come up with something that isn't just a tweak of some other mesh from poser, or some zdoodle, but something that is actually requiring some thought and technique. More to come of course. The motivation for this thread is actually having sort of a visual record of things as I do them, since my memory...I forgot what I was about to type...oh yeah, it's not so good all the time. Big Pictures with colorful words always help to remind me of how I went about doing something. SO if anybody gets anything out of this thread as it goes along then feel free to post here of course. I'm an artist by trade for the last decade and by hobby for most of my life so I'm no stranger to criticism or discussion regarding this sort of thing. Always encouraged but not actively sought after as they say heh.

[nimajneb]

Something I noticed looking at your unified mesh topology that I discovered in my first experiments with ZSketch is the border loops being added. They seem to get turned on by the polish setting, if I remember correctly. If you turn them to "0" then you don't get those funky loops around each polygroup and the mesh becomes much easier to sculpt. This can save you from having to retoplogize so soon.

[Extra Dimensional]

Yes indeed nimajneb, I put those loops there intentionally (by using the polish setting you mentioned) thinking it would actually help! Live and learn, next time for something like this I'll leave them out as I'm with ya, it seems to just compound the problem. At least until I understand them and come up with a need for them that is.

A couple images from last week (before I decided to buckle down and get serious with zbrush) as I played around with some of the hard edge modelling stuff. A couple of custom pokemon type of imaginary creatures, nothing special, just playing around. This kind of stuff is really easy now, and ridiculously fun to realize.

[undoz]

Cool little creatures.

[arthurduque]

ahaha...cooll work man! Great StyleSomething like Pokemon, but creat by Dr. Robotnik

[VictorCS]

ahaha...cooll work man! Great StyleSomething like Pokemon, but creat by Dr. Robotnik

Was just about to say metal pokemons

[Extra Dimensional]

Haha thanks guys

Still at subdiv 2 on the female figure, trying to get things pretty clearly defined before I move to subdiv 3.



Gave her some rudimentary fingers by taking the mesh into hexagon and extruding them from the geometry. haven't really started in on the hands yet so the look small and deformed as I'm still working on the head and figure of the body. Lots of work on the back and legs to do yet at this subdiv level before I divide her and get more room for detail. I rendered the image out to give me a good idea straight away tomorrow morning where I need to start working, probably going to work on shrinking those enormous shoulderblades asap them get some musculature on the back put in, twist the arms a bit to get that flexion showing, more work on the legs and glutes and feet and of course the hands, lot of work all around before subdividing. Probably shorten her nose as well, it's ok now but could be better as it's kind of sloped too much and a bit too equine.

Also remembered I did this image while practicing the hard-edge stuff and appending zsketches to a simple base model last week, it's some kind of future camera device. I pretty much just wanted to see if I could wrap my mind around getting zspheres to extrude around a subtool into a sort of "pipework" type of deal, just to figure out how it's done, and this is the result of that experiment. It's easy as pie, just append a zsphere to your cube or whatever then start extruding zspheres all around the device and then zsketch over that zsphere base and make a unified skin out of it and append that to your subtool and delete the zspheres. Then you can start sculpting on those pipes/tubes to wherever you want to take it.

[Extra Dimensional]

More work on the anatomy, reposed her. Still a long way to go. The back needs the most work along with the hands still.

[Extra Dimensional]

Some more work over the last couple of days





About to subdivide again to get to work on some details while I adjust and fix things I notice that are off, like her forearms being a bit popeye as well as her neck being off a bit. No toes on this figure as she'll be the base for many projects down the line, most of which will be wearing covered toe shoes. If I need toes I can simply sculpt them in and append them if thats the case. I can use the toeless foot as a base to create footwear from without worrying about the toes interfering.

She'll probably keep most of her appearance from this point out but will get more detail work done in the face, lips especially, skin details, nipples, belly button, calves, back and hands. Taking a break from all that though before I start and working on some hair via a subtool, to give me a break from anatomy. Need to rest my eyes from looking at that for a bit and focus on something else.

[Stefano Dubay]

just reproportioning her is gonna make it more feminine... right now she looks more like a man
overall looks good quite good maybe elongating the lumbar area a bit and hitting more of a 7.5/8 heads proportion would also help
keep it up
SD

[nimajneb]

Before you sub-d again, I'd say you need to have a close look at the pit of the throat, the clavicles, trapezious, the whole shoulder girdle, basically. I see a few things that I'll mention, but some female reference material would do you a world of good here. First, a lot of the musculature seems over developed. I'm specifically thinking of the deltoids and the traps, but somewhat in the arms as well. It's not that women don't have muscles, even muscles on this scale. There are gender cues though that I think are getting lost. The width of the shoulders for one, narrower I think. The round bulge of the delts, I would lean that out. Maybe show the bony process there the clavicle/scapula end and that little holllow at the top of the middle of the delt muscle sections (delts have three sections, one that wraps about the front, one about the back and one in the middle, not just one mass.)

Taking a look at your three quarter view, the base of the throat, that little area known as the cupid's bow where the clavicles come together and the sternocliedomastoid inserts, seems much to far forward. Also the clavicles have separated here. Put you finger to the place on your your own body and you will see that the distance between the heads of those two bones is quite small. In addition, the lines of the SCM muscle have separated from the trunk of the throat making your neck into this trapezoidal shape in profile. The SCM's wrap around the column of the neck, they don't really leave it's line until right at the base where they spread out to insert into the clavicles. Check the lines of the clavicles as well. They're very pronounced and very straight. Clavicles are curved, S' shaped. The reason they call it cupid's bow is because the shape of the clavicles from the top makes a "bow" shape from shoulder to shoulder.

Your three quarter also shows something kind of strange about the placement of your shoulder joints/masses themselves. You've thrown this character's shoulders back, whether intentionally or not I'm not sure, but it's most apparent in the three quarter. The away from us shoulder disappears totally, and this could only happen if that shoulder was thrown back to such a degree as to allow the chest to occlude it. That seems unlikely to me and I would bring that forward.

Proportion wise, check your height to head ratio. If my quick eyeball of it reads true, you're looking currently at eight heads tall. That's pretty extreme, so maybe increase the head size a bit. Watch the length of the feet to the height of the body. They're starting to look a little short. Watch the width of the knees front to back, creeping wide as you try to define tendons, similar to what happened with your throat.

Simplify and watch your muscle masses and insertions. The biceps insert at the top of the arm in the armpit under the pectorals, yours looks like it's connecting at the top of the arm under the delt. The biceps femoralis (hamstrings) run up the back of the leg in a straight line more or less to tuck under the glutes. Yours is showing an odd curve. Look at the hip bulge where you've placed your great trochanter. It seems low to me and the raise seems pinched. In the side view it makes a "C" shape, almost like you pinched the are between thumb and forefinger.

So, yeah, that was a lot of crit. Not something I would generally do for a stranger, but I've noticed this thread a couple of times and struggling with female form is something that interests me. You've got a nice start on your face, especially from the front it's showing appeal. I like the gesture of the legs and the form of the buttocks. The insertions of the glutes to the hips seem about right. Calves are looking pretty good as well. Nice definition on the Achilles tendon. Nice cant to the ankle bone masses. Also the front of the knees seems pretty believable. There's a nice sense of piling of masses there. To wrap up though, don't divide again. Stop, go back and work these things out in this or a lower sub-d so that your detailing doesn't get build on an incorrect foundation. Good work. Keep it up, I'll be watching this thread for your progress.

[Wildsketch]

Sean, in my opinion you and I seem to be at a similar level of understanding female anatomy. This is something I work on as well. I just posted a thread,
http://www.zbrushcentral.com/showthread.php?t=84683
And I wonder if you would have a look at some of my approaches.

I guess there are at least two ways of starting with ZSphere2 sketching. You can either use it to build up mass, disregarding the finer points of anatomy and structure in the beginning, leaving that for later sculpting steps, or you can try to build up the anatomy, at least the surface landmarks of the skeletons and major muscle groups, trying to build up as much structure as you can before moving on to the kinds of things you can only sculpt on the mesh. My preference is for doing the structure of bones and muscles while zsketching. My reasoning is that it is a great tool for nailing down the underlying anatomy, and that anatomy is of central importance.

To critique your work, nimajneb seems to have it right about your shoulders. Notice that the surface of your back between the arms also appears too narrow.

The bone of the upper arm, the humerus, has a ball that fits mostly into a part of the shoulder blade that juts out, and it is capped by the end of the collar bone. The collar bone and a spine of the shoulder blade meet at an angle here. <0> The deltoid can almost look like one piece with the pectoral mucles, but there is a gap at the inward curve of the collar bone, and from that gap it juts forward, along with the collar bone, while the spine of the shoulder blade moves out from a point about halfway between the shoulder joint and the spine. Depending on the position of the arm.

Your character's forehead seems a bit narrow to me as well.

I would appreciate comments from you or nimajneb on my thread as well.

[Extra Dimensional]

Thanks for the replies fellas, I'll go through your checklist nimajneb when I get back to work on the anatomy, indeed there's alot of adjustment and tweaking to be done yet thanks for scrutinizing that will aid me greatly when it comes time to tweak her more before subdividing. Very much obliged that will give me a nice point by point case for adjustments.

Quick note about her overdeveloped muscularity, the first project I'll work on using her as a base is as a model for a Sister of Battle from the Warhammer 40k universe, which is a genetically engineered female supersoldier from far in the future and the reference I'm using to sculpt her is an extremely muscular female model I've actually toned her down a great deal from the reference! (3dsk Kristyna) so that may explain the focus on her lack of feminine classical softness, she's not really supposed to have any heh, the SoB are hard as proverbial nails hardened after centuries of warfare across alien worlds. I guess I should have mentioned that somewhere as it's completely dominated the direction I'm taking this model as I always have that in mind, how her muscles have developed after carrying around all that heavy armor and weaponry.



That's a good idea of the amount of wargear she totes around during a campaign. Here's a shot of a concept maquette I worked up awhile ago in wax before deciding to come and learn zbrush intensively to help me get ideas realized.



On that note I'm going to use her first as the "upper end" of the muscular scale I would take a female model, refining her softer features as I need them to be used for more traditional female sculpts. Starting with the muscle-bound version gives me alot of notes for muscle placement for the other more feminine-less masculine version. Thanks for the comment Stefano, hopefully that describes a bit about why she's so masculine in appearance, mostly intentionally.

And Wildsketch I'll go over to your thread today, thank you for commenting, I'm thinking of tweaking her pose to be more relaxed in the shoulders which I think will give me a bit more room between her shoulderblades there for a better appearance, since right now they're pretty clenched up as they're drawn back and I've noticed that about her forehead as well, it's kind of pointy. It shows decent "draft" but It's a bit too shark-fin.

[Stefano Dubay]

i see that you are making a SoB that's pretty cool.
Anyway my point stands, if you are looking for a positive feedback on a female character she still gotta be Fu*****le (sorry for my french but that's to emphatize...) she won't have the appeal you are shooting for with using male muscular structures.
think instead of an idealized female figure, it doesn't need to bee all jacked up bioengineering can make muscles denser I guess.
anyway if she is not graceful she'll look like an ermaphrodite, here you want an ideal superhero woman so super thin waist and stil STILL 1.5 / 2 head hip thickness. looking at the head size in the male space troopers you might want to increase your head ratio to 8 if not 9 since she is not human but supehuman.
besides some jack ports in her flesh for the exoskeletal armor would be nice.
her face is quite masculine too I would shoot for much more for a hearth shape and generally reference a real femanle beauty. right now she looks a bit off.
I really like the cat avatarish face on your wax maybe you want to go not totally human on her since it's bioengineered.
most of these are stylistical things so they are to be considered as aesthetic feedbacks but again you really dont want her to look like a transvestite
cheers and keep it up!

SD

[Ardox]

Amazing work Dude
fantastic!
Keep on this way!