ZBrushCentral

Fourty's WIPs & works

So, I finally decided to create my first thread about my work I’ve been working on recently. I still think this isn’t worth for public eyes, since it’s heavily wip, but I just thought that, maybe I should put up at least something that I’m working with… even though it’s absolutely horrible at this point.

My original plan was to show this after tweaking all the stuff that bothers me so much that it almost kills me. But here it is anyway (and I’m bothered about all the problems I see when I watch this. It hurts my eyes to see problem areas and mistakes only… and some still missing anatomical features, such as tendons of the feet!!!, and that was just one of the dozens problem areas, duh). This is going to be a fan art of Alice from the Alice: Madness Returns game, but I’m still tweaking the anatomy like an OCD patient:

EDIT: For example, the acromion process and the lateral end of the clavicle is too sketchy, so it needs to be smoothed out… somehow nicely… aaaand the posterior deltoid is quite odd… maybe needs to be more flat or something… the furrow between the elbow [the elbow itself is sketchy too, just a temporary bony landmark waiting to be finished] (olecranon process) and flexors from the medial epicondyle is too deep… see, these kind of things just makes my head to explode, and there is a lot more. I could list these things forever, but you’d just get bored. :smiley:

EDIT2: no 7th cervical vertrebrae, no subtle forms of coracobrachialis, biceps, triceps, ears are WIP, the whole head is totally WIP, lots of problems, haha, etc. etc… Okay, I’ll stop and continue later…

Attachments

alice_renders.jpg

Hey, great start and keep on going. Art is a process, just keep pushing yourself.

I am no expert by any means (yet!) and I do not have any of my personal wip or completions up here (yet), but here are some advices that I remind myself of constantly. Believe me, we have all been where you feel.

  • “The valley…” or the “the forest…” as some call it, happens to everyone (and I am not saying this is bad or anything! You make 10x better legs then I do by far!). It happens to me when I am looking for volume. Just traverse it and have heart that you can resolve stuff. The key for practice and learning is, get to a point where you are happy in the now.

  • Fresh eyes: sometimes, you gotta take a break (varies from artist to artist) from your project or a segment of your project so you do not get locked in on problems or locked in on potential changes you can make. Sometimes it can be a 15 min coffee brew, sometimes it can be a week off while working on something else. Sometimes I suspect some models with tons of details and accessories are due to some artist working on segments of their pieces so they can return to the project as a entirety with fresh eyes that can see how the tweaks must be made.

  • Hands, ears and sometimes feet: I learned from looking at Will Harbottle’s works (and other amazing artist) that these parts can never truly be over detailed. I might be totally wrong on this, but I have been applying it to some recent WIPs and a good ear, fingers, hands always accent a piece in all the correct ways. I used to stop my hands when I thought they were looking elderly (if on a younger character) and what I learned is you can always scale back but its harder to scale forward. Also when you zoom out and look at the focal points of your character, those details tend to fade from attention, but when attention is placed the viewer only becomes more impressed.

  • Zbrush is versatile and you can/are too. Lots of tools (especially now heh) that can help you reform, remodel, reboot, or salvage models. If you are frustrated but handing the model, you are lucky, because you are learning something new.

  • When I get frustrated or lost in anatomy I do one of two things: 1) Start speed sculpting poses I find randomly on the internet with a focus on time, not accuracy (usually aim for about 4 - 6 hour session; give yourself time for the face) or 2) do a focus study on the part giving me troubles (like the infamous forearms)

Hope this helps, keep on sculpting, I want to see what your rendition looks like!

The anatomy is very accurate, I wouldn’t change much but maybe the proportions
like you could make her a bit taller, her arms a bit shorter and her head a little less round.

Hope this helps

Very nice WIP indeed. And since you have already mentioned all the problematic areas there is pretty much nothing to add.
But there are still few suggestions though:

  • There might be a reason for it and this is just a personal preference, but IMHO when the arms are raised like this it adds unnecessary tension to model. The character just doesn’t look relaxed.
  • Also, I always recommend people to add at least some sort of eyebrows because without them any face looks strange and kinda surprised. I often just paint it or use extruded cube to block out the basic form of it.
  • I think that brow ridges are a bit too massive, making her face a bit masculine.
  • For this pose the tendons of Ext Digitorum communis are probably too pronounced. But this might be made intentionally because when I sculpt hands and already know how they will look in the final pose I exaggerate some specific parts in rest pose to do less resculpting after the posing

Waiting for future updates. Keep it up :+1:

@Vir Norin

The reasons I chose this a little bit wider t-pose, were

  • Better anatomy under the armpit
  • Smaller polygonal angle for the low poly area in the armpit when baking tangent space normals, and other maps such as AO and curvature maps as well

But I totally agree that it’s not relaxed, and you have to compromise with the humeroscapular rhythm, muscular tension and relaxation having an influence around that movement (quite many muscles actually; pecs, deltoids, teres major, latissimus dorsi… and a bit around trapezius, rhomboids and serratus anterior too). Pectoralis major creates anterior axillary fold, and latissimus dorsi together with teres major creates posterior axillary fold, so those two has to be taken into consideration when deciding the t-pose. AND it’s harder to measure proportions (length and size) of the arms and hands properly with the t-pose being that wide. But 45 degrees is somewhat optimal for game characters. Overall - LOL - it’s never easy. :smiley:

Oh, and thanks for the critics, I’ll be fixing them, since they aren’t such big troubles. :wink:

It’s been a long time since the last update. The Alice project is stalled temporarily, but this was something I wanted to finish before that, so this sculpt it done. Right now working on the game resolution mesh, UVs and texturing it.

Attachments

lara_final_sculpt_02.jpg

Alright, time to put up some of my new works. My graduation work, Clementine from The Walking Dead. At the moment, I’m sculpting clothes for her.

(WIP)

I finished her a couple of days ago, so here’s the final polypainted sculpt of my version of Clementine:

It’s been a long time, but now I feel I could post some of my current anatomy works. This girl is Zarah, and she’s briefly just a post-apocalyptic zombie survivor. I’ll be writing some sort of bigger background story for her later on whenever I’ll get past this anatomy phase which has been going on ridiculously long…

Anyway, here’s some quick’n dirty renders of her head and body. She’s still on pretty low sub-d level (4) because I want to nail the anatomy properly before moving on to the last 2-3 sub-d levels for finalizing it.


And then some explaining what to fix:

HEAD:

  • Completely WIP, most likely big changes coming in the next sub-d level 5. Even though the overall look is what I like, it needs lots of anatomy fixes in near future.

BODY:

  • Legs are more or less done at the moment, maybe some minor polising in next sub-d levels
  • Arms are pretty much WIP, like the elbow area needs work and the medial side of the upper arm is completely unfinished, I DON’T like the overall look of the arms at the moment
  • Torso from the anterior view needs some work all over, definition of ribs/serratus anterior is missing, the fading away blending between the rectus abdominis and ribcage needs to be done
  • Torso from the upper back needs work, but I’m so afraid of adding any muscular definition other than just scapulas and bit of a trapezius and the origin of the serratus anterior. It’s so hard area to sculpt

Anyway, I’m moderately satisfied with the progress, because I even decided to post WIP shots here, hehe. I’m open for any kind of suggestions, even though I’d assume that I might already be aware of possible suggestions for improvements. Surprise me though!

Hi! I really like what you got here. And overall I like how your models have very clean, almost stylized shapes. Though because of it sometimes it is hard to make suggestion since I’m not sure whether it was intentionally stylized/simplified or not. Plus many things are purely the matter of taste. Hence I will not comment stuff like face, breasts, body type. Well, maybe briefly…
Speaking about the head, the only thing that looks odd to me is the bottom part of the Frontal bone where it goes into the upper margin of the orbit. For me it appears too straight across. And along with very prominent fat-pads above the lateral eye-corners it overhangs the eyes too much, giving her frowned, grumpy look. And overall this type of eyebrows is more masculine feature. The jaw is also slightly too wide but again that’s a matter of taste.

Some words about proportions and posture. How tall she is? I did some measurements and she is only 7 heads tall which means that she is very petite girl. Is that intentional? Doesn’t really matter, but because of reduced distance from chin to nipplles and due to very diagonal clavicles she looks slightly scared. You know… like when you expect something to fall from above so you automatically retract the head down. Though that might be only my imagination.

The breast is awesome. Usually I’m more into big ones with some individual features (asymmetry, perky or conical/puffy areolas, slight sagging etc), but her’s are small and very accurate - pleasing to watch. I even had desire to touch them :).

Don’t be afraid to sculpt scapula’s muscles. When done properly - they are always wonderful looking. Honestly, I think that moderately relief female back is equally beautiful and important as breasts or bum. There is something magical in this columns of spine erectors, how medial portion flows into the lateral and how it then dives under prominent Rhomboids/Trapezius, popping out between reliefs of vertebral borders of scapulas - that’s a real fetish for me. IMHO in your sculpt the lateral form of Iliocostalis can be more defined. I remember Goldfinger describing the back profile as a triple curve: the bottom curve is glutes, the upper is lateral portion of spinal erector and middle curve or line is Multifidus and Medial erectors. It is not that prominent in females since fat pads blend the bottom two curves into the solid one, but the upper contour is still described by Lateral Erectors.
Right now the scapular region look good but stylized. If you want more realistic look then sculpting at least slight Teres major, Rhomboids and Trapezius is crucial. But yeah, it is very hard to do. Especially in transitions where bony scapula goes from ridge to receding groove between muscles.

Yet another thing based completely on personal preference, but I think that bum is a bit flat and might be rounder. It looks like she is tightly pressing her glutes. And in side view they pretty much don’t affect the profile, blending with hammstrings. The last critique would be about feet. I think in regular standing position she wouldn’t have such pronounced tendons of Extensord Digitorum Longus and Tibialis Anterior. I might be wrong but it appears like you where sculpting her feet while looking at your own below the table. I did this myself too. But the nuance is that bearing weight feet look completely different - more flat, squashed and kinda boring actually.

I like the pubic fat pad. Looks really cute. Too sad the genitals are just one_brushstroke_slit. BTW don’t forget to fill the navel. I see lots of finished models where navel is just a dimple without any evidence of knot. Other than that, really solid work here.

It is funny she is a zombie-apocalypse survivor. Because my characters from the main story also live in post-apocalyptic world. Though psycho-zombies are only the reason to acquaint two completely different persons so I can explore their psychology and relationship. So I wish you good luck with your project. As a person who also writes a story, I feel real sympathy to other artists who express themselves via original characters and stories.

PS If you want to ask me something particular (regarding characters, anatomy or etc) then better write me a private message. I’ve lost interest to this forum copletely and pretty much don’t visit it anymore. Right now I am helping another person here with character and when it is done I will disappear again. So to not miss something from you better notify me via PM.

Hi! I really like what you got here. And overall I like how your models have very clean, almost stylized shapes. Though because of it sometimes it is hard to make suggestion since I’m not sure whether it was intentionally stylized/simplified or not. Plus many things are purely the matter of taste. Hence I will not comment stuff like face, breasts, body type. Well, maybe briefly…
Speaking about the head, the only thing that looks odd to me is the bottom part of the Frontal bone where it goes into the upper margin of the orbit. For me it appears too straight across. And along with very prominent fat-pads above the lateral eye-corners it overhangs the eyes too much, giving her frowned, grumpy look. And overall this type of eyebrows is more masculine feature. The jaw is also slightly too wide but again that’s a matter of taste.

Ever since I’ve been interested creating 3D characters I’ve always tried to aim to a realism, which has usually ended up with more or less stylization. Maybe because tertiary forms (the last finalizing step BEFORE skin detailing/pores) have been challenging for me, and that’s why my sculpts are quite simplified at the end. I might have emphazied her superciliary arches a little bit too much, because I never had them on my previous model projects… because of the lack of understanding the head anatomy properly. But I’ll probably relax them a bit. And I’ve just started learning more about the head recently. And yeah, I agree that the overhang of the lateral eye-corners bulges too much. Needs softening for sure. Well, the jaw is something that might change in the near future as well. I’ve also tried to balance the jaw corner not to be to pushed out too much, compared to the level of the sternocleidomastoid. Pushing it back usually makes the front view of the face to look weird. About the “bottom part of the Frontal bone where it goes into the upper margin of the orbit” is not something I can visualize at the moment even with some research. Could you elaborate that with an overpaint or something? :wink:

Coming very briefly for her backgorund story, I partly like to keep her slightly “grumpy” and having some ever so slightly masculine facial features, because of her development around the world infested with zombies. She also uses lots of dirty profanity when stressed/angry and of course when amused she spits out dirty jokes… but still at the same time she has some feminine sides as well. As I said I haven’t finished her bio yet, so more of her story comes soon. ;D

Some words about proportions and posture. How tall she is? I did some measurements and she is only 7 heads tall which means that she is very petite girl. Is that intentional? Doesn’t really matter, but because of reduced distance from chin to nipplles and due to very diagonal clavicles she looks slightly scared. You know… like when you expect something to fall from above so you automatically retract the head down. Though that might be only my imagination.

Hah, the proportions are not intentional at all! I’m genuinely surprised that she’s 7 heads tall. Honesly, when it comes to proportions I’m just eyeballing things and when something looks good, it looks good. Well, I actually aimed for the realistic 7.5 heads, using the See-through function in Zbrush with some good proportion charts on the background, but only every once in a while if I got suspicious about my proportions and thought about checking them out. But coming back to the 7 heads, I think I’ll keep her like that (her being petite is a delicious addition for her look/personality). Better than disproportioned, right? Heh. This project is actually getting interesting with your input. Thank you, Vir Norin. (:

The breast is awesome. Usually I’m more into big ones with some individual features (asymmetry, perky or conical/puffy areolas, slight sagging etc), but her’s are small and very accurate - pleasing to watch. I even had desire to touch them :).

Oh thanks. They were looking worse for many days until I decided to fix them recently. I’m really glad that you like them. So, that means I’ll keep them as they are. Of course nipples get some more love in further subdivisions. I happen to like big, medium and small ones with all kinds of shapes. :wink: Not flat chested or too big and definitely not fake ones. Always natural is the way to go for me. If I remember right, you didn’t like fake ones either. Well, that makes two of us.

Don’t be afraid to sculpt scapula’s muscles. When done properly - they are always wonderful looking. Honestly, I think that moderately relief female back is equally beautiful and important as breasts or bum. There is something magical in this columns of spine erectors, how medial portion flows into the lateral and how it then dives under prominent Rhomboids/Trapezius, popping out between reliefs of vertebral borders of scapulas - that’s a real fetish for me. IMHO in your sculpt the lateral form of Iliocostalis can be more defined. I remember Goldfinger describing the back profile as a triple curve: the bottom curve is glutes, the upper is lateral portion of spinal erector and middle curve or line is Multifidus and Medial erectors. It is not that prominent in females since fat pads blend the bottom two curves into the solid one, but the upper contour is still described by Lateral Erectors.
Right now the scapular region look good but stylized. If you want more realistic look then sculpting at least slight Teres major, Rhomboids and Trapezius is crucial. But yeah, it is very hard to do. Especially in transitions where bony scapula goes from ridge to receding groove between muscles.

Yeah, about the erector spinae muscles. Since female’s latissimus dorsi is so thin on the lower back from what I’ve learnt and observed, the ribcage is pushing out more prominently, it’s kinda hard to put the lateral erector spinae muscle there without making it too masculine. But I agree not having it also makes it uncomplete. Then there is the triangular “empty space” between the external obliques and latissimus dorsi, which gets filled with the flank fat pad. So at the same time I’d like to keep the ribcage, flank fat pad and adding the lateral erector spinae muscle without making it too masculine, but forgetting the latissimus dorsi though… gah, gotta figure this out somehow. Also, I might be misguided with my thoughts here, so I apologize if I’m wrong. And then the scapular region… well, I tried adding the teres major once, but it didn’t work alone. It really needed more definition from the surrounding muscles you mentioned. Maybe it also needed a very slight depression of infraspinatus because it’s one of those muscles that doesn’t get developed so easily if not at all. And it’s usually below the level of surrounding muscles. I also can’t decide having posterior deltoid fat pad or not. The shoulder area is also quite hard for me because it affects in three ways (anterior, medial and posterior).

I think I have trapezius there (mostly defined on the upper part around the 7th cervical vertebrae), but I smoothed the tail area because it looked too masculine. Also, the overhang of the tendon of the trapezius slightly covering part of the infraspinatus/spine of the scapula makes it even harder to do. I prefer having more bony scapulas with thin surrounding muscle bodies than grooves of their shape with developed muscles around them. Of course having the 50-50 middle ground with bony and muscular shapes would be the most ideal look. Like you brilliantly said “bony scapula goes from ridge to receding groove between muscles”. So close but yet so far away to achieve that balance. And the rhomboids, jeez… well, maybe somehow they’ll fit in as well. :smiley: We need to discuss more about the upper back via PM more, because this is getting so extensive, heh. It’s frustrating and interesting area to learn at the same time.

Yet another thing based completely on personal preference, but I think that bum is a bit flat and might be rounder. It looks like she is tightly pressing her glutes. And in side view they pretty much don’t affect the profile, blending with hammstrings. The last critique would be about feet. I think in regular standing position she wouldn’t have such pronounced tendons of Extensord Digitorum Longus and Tibialis Anterior. I might be wrong but it appears like you where sculpting her feet while looking at your own below the table. I did this myself too. But the nuance is that bearing weight feet look completely different - more flat, squashed and kinda boring actually.

Yeah, the bum is moderately easy to fix, so updates for that is coming next.

I like the pubic fat pad. Looks really cute. Too sad the genitals are just one_brushstroke_slit. BTW don’t forget to fill the navel. I see lots of finished models where navel is just a dimple without any evidence of knot. Other than that, really solid work here.

Only if I had more polygons to pull out some more beefy and fleshy meat curtains, I’d definitely do that, haha. I guess I could emphasize at least the clitoral hood which eventually dives between the one brushstroke slit. ;D I could also use subtools for the specific parts, but nah. Would look more like “slapped on” to the body mesh. Sorry about that.

Anyway, Thank you for your valuable information, Vir Norin. I’d love to hear from you again, and also see your own progress with your wonderful artwork as well. I’ll keep posting to this thread though, but more detailed questions regarding to anatomy, I’ll ask from you via PM with WIP shots for sure.

Interesting. I am in quite opposite situation. I started with realistic characters but the more I work on them the less I feel satisfied with reality. So this days I’m not aiming for realism at all. Even current characters have slight exaggeration - and this is me only flirting with stylized proportions. In future I wanna try myself sculpting very stylized curvy girls with huge diversity of body forms while not being bounded by restrictions of real life (I’ve met too many great 2D artists and their artworks have influenced me a lot).

But let’s come back to topic. IMHO the jaw-line is pretty much the hardest part in entire head. At least for me. Cause things like eyes or lips have very clear forms/contours and relatively they are quite flat compare to mandible having distinct three-dimensional shape which makes the jaw very dependent on perspective and angle of view. Plus in many cases the jaw line doesn’t have well defined lines but rather softened. This means that while sculpting artist must rely on slight gradients (cheek-jawbone-hyoid plane-neck). As the result, I often sculpt the jaw but have a feeling that something is wrong and I cannot figure out where is the actual mistake. And the weirdest part that I realize the problem only when I introduce some changes and then compare to previous stage (like via switching the Morph Target). Usually my reaction is like “Damn! Why I didn’t notice that jaw was so heavy/narrow before”. Sometimes the difference before and after might be a couple millimeters but the entire look changes dramatically. Quite similar situation occurs when sculpting this transition from forehead to cheekbone in three-quarter view. Fortunately this is not so hard compare to jaw.
In my previous comment when saying about area of forehead and upper orbital margin I meant this (watch the image). I have a feeling that transverse curvature of the forehead and below is slightly shallow and close to straight. Though not saying this cannot be in real life.

Speaking about background story. OK, now I understand her as character better. Yeah, it is hard to stay calm and happy when your entire life was turned upside down and every day is nothing more than surviving. Though I use opposite approach in my story. Flora is naturally well-mannered girl and Nastya, while born in inferior world, did everything to break despotic doctrine and stand out from other citizens (the narcissism is one of the main sources of her energy). Plus my heroines have surrounded themselves with robots and modern weapons so often they don’t encounter bad situations. This is mainly because I don’t accept profanity and wanted to make characters as feminine as possible even in such extreme conditions like zombie-apocalypse.

Yep, fake breasts are complete weirdosity. Too sad so many people give this stupid balloons to their characters (usually not Zbrush artists but this guys using DAZ and similar junk). I bet they look at wrong references (inspired by different porn-actresses) instead of checking good ero-photography with natural girls. What a shame.

LOL, I actually very often overdo spine erectors. Even if it is a very petite girl I still give her very prominent columns. That’s a good example of violating realism for the sake of personal aesthetics. In terms of scapular muscles - this area is indeed very hard in thin persons. Sculpting rather muscular individuals is much easier. For me the inferior angle of scapula is the trickiest part - so much stuff is attached here: Teres major, Rhomboid, the overlap of Latissimus dorsi and of course the vertebral border of the actual shoulder blade. Plus this point often sticks out which means you should pay special attention to different planes of structures surrounding it. Cannot even say how many times it requires to properly sculpt Teres major. Sculpt, then soften, then again define, then soften. Very hard to find golden middle. As for trapezius and its tail - I always sculpt it but very-very faint so it is not visible with frontal view and lighting but just barely recognizable when looking at grazing angles and specifically placed lighting. Overall, due to the reasons I mentioned earlier (Zbrush materials and lighting) I think the best approach is to constantly export your decimated model to Blender or another package and render it with proper renderer like Cycles. Some areas that look odd in Zbrush may appear normal with SSS material and good area/HDR lighting.

Yes, the main two problems when sculpting genitals are that everything is so tightly compacted making brushes behave really odd, and problems with fitting detailed topology for inner labias and clitoris into relatively low-poly area of crotch. Meh, I tried to make female genitals with another subtool but it didn’t work. Maybe in some specific examples and poses this might be a way, but usually every structure here flows from another so you cannot simply detach it without breaking the look. BTW I always wonder why so many anatomy practices have no genitals at all. Especially in males where pen1s (lol, ZBC is so modest, not allowing me to write this word) is really noticeable, affects contours and directly affects the overall look. Whether so many artists are so modest (which is silly), whether due to the problems I mentioned couple sentences before (in this case I can understand them). I believe that if you study anatomy then you must learn it all, not selectively. Sculpting a torso without genitals is like making head without a nose.

You are welcome. Good luck with your project. Yeah, better write me via PM. Cause I’m rarely visiting forum this days. If not works from particular guys here I would abandon it completely.