ZBrushCentral

Sculpting faces for Games

Hey Zbrushers!

I was wondering how do you go about sculpting faces for games, how do you sculpt the mouth/eyes in a way for it to be animated later on? I understand that the eye is added using a sphere subtool, and teeth/tongue follow nearly the same mouth, but when sculpting the actual mouth, do I leave it open for the T-Posed character I’m sculpting?

I appreciate any help at all :slight_smile: Thank you!

*bump

well i don’t know much about animating but just to offer you something.
it seems to me the mouth should be open. if it’s not how can it move to show teeth?

it you want to get some insight in to making some game meshes, look into opensim/secondlife.

download their default avatar meshes and look how they are put together. not that they are great examples, but they can serve to give you insight.

Alright, thanks for the info, and I’m not really sure whether it should be open or closed, which is why I’m asking :confused:

BUMP Can anyone please give us some insight on this?

Who will be coding the game and how? Will it be object(3d) or picture data(2d) displayed? Sort of makes a difference…if you have a mouth and it’s in the open state, you can close it by several methods :wink:

Beside technical aspects. Each project should have some especific requierements. Just as an exampe i found this video, from Naughty Dog´s The Last of Us, a really good material to understand some important points when modelling for animation

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=myZcUvU8YWc

Enjoy! :smiley:

We’re using the Unreal Engine 4 engine, and it will be a 3D Object, using the FBX pipeline.

I watched the vid, the only thing I got out of it when talking about faces is the fact that they left the mouth and eyes half-open, but will that be efficient when sculpting it in zbrush? I just want to know whether I should sculpt the face with the mouth open, add the teeth and tongue, or do I sculpt it closed and then later on open it up.
I’m really confused now :confused:

You’ll need open and closed positions at the minimum for it to interpolate. Normally there is a rest pose of sorts.

If you are going to animate your eyelids you will probably find easyer to sculpt them half opened. Same as for the mouth. It will help for rigging. Any case i´d suggest to use layers to create some kind of blend shapes so at any point you can choose to open or close your mouth and eyes before exporting.