Question about spiking?

[celloco]

Hi, all! New to the forums and new to 3D art. I have an issue with one of my models that Id like to color/maybe animate some day. When making a model of a personal character, I didn’t like how symmetry used to make the torso overlapped. So, I tried to just stretch from the neck and I got the spikes lol. How would I go about fixing this or modifying the model so that it doesn’t have as many errors? This is only my second model, so I’m afraid I’m quite inexperienced.

Heres the character I’m trying to make, for reference

And the model issue

Attachments

[SporkFuMaster]

I can’t tell exactly what’s going on there, so I’ll try to guess a bit.

It looks kind of like you are using another sphere to create the lower half and then blend it into the upper part of the body. If that’s the case, it could be grabbing from the upper half geometry and pulling it weirdly through the new sphere. You can just smooth it out in order to get rid of the spikes. You could also mask that area underneath or just deselect the upper body when working on the lower half. It would probably be better to use just a single sphere for the head, body, and legs though.

Not sure what kind of overlap you were having while using symmetry. Do you have an example?

[celloco]

Thanks for the reply! I hadn’t realized I could pull the sphere that much to make the rest of the whole body + arms and such. I don’t have my screenshot of it anymore, but I had originally tried to use a new sphere with symmetry off to make a body. When I turned symmetry on again, it had an overlap with the sphere I created since it mirrors what you have. I’m still stuck on getting rid of these spikes though hmm. I deleted the other sphere that I was making the legs with, but the smoothing and flatten options don’t seem to be doing anything to them past a certain point. I took a small gif of what ive been trying: https://gyazo.com/61dd7b352e3bed1968b52b52606ed990

EDIT: I’ve tested trying to make something completely new on a new file and its still making the spikes when I do the inflate option

[SporkFuMaster]

You can pretty much make it about as big, or as complex, as you want, based on what your computer can do anyway.

I think I understand what you mean with the symmetry and how it would have changed the model once it was turned back on. Usually, I’ve found that working with symmetry on first is the best way to start a model. Get all symmetrical details on first and then work on asymmetry and posing afterwards. With Sculptris, there really isn’t a way to go back to doing symmetry after you’ve worked asymmetrically.

I saw the gif. A couple of suggestions in what may be going on. First, your detail slider seems to be all the way down. For the most part, I tend to keep mine most of the way down, roughly under the “t” in detail (this puts just enough triangles in without going overboard so I can add in more detail later to the areas that really need it). Trying to use the inflate, or grab, with no detail being added will just push out single vertices (or what’s within the circle). Second. it looked like the smooth was working, but the strength might need to go up a ways as well.

[celloco]

Yep, you were right! It was the detail slider. Thank you so much for helping me. I definitely understand what you mean about the symmetry thing, so I should probably leave the tail for last. Im not actually sure if the program/my computer can handle the sculpt though, as every time I try to squish the body back to restart it, sculptris either freezes or quits hmm. Back to the drawing board, I suppose

[SporkFuMaster]

Glad it helped.

As for the tail, it looks like it would be able to be sculpted with the symmetry on, but the posing of it wrapping around the front can wait until the sculpting of the full head, body, and appendages are done. This is kind of why you see sculpting usually being done with the concept art at specific angles for the character (front, side, etc) rather than a more dynamic pose like what you’re using (granted, I’m not really one to talk, I just use Sculptris as a fun sketching tool…lol). It can help in ensuring that the sculptor really sees everything that is supposed to go in the piece, as well as where it fits into the whole concept. It might be a good idea to redraw your character from the side completely stretched out (can be just a sketch rather than the full rendering).

I’m not sure what you meant here though:

Im not actually sure if the program/my computer can handle the sculpt though, as every time I try to squish the body back to restart it, sculptris either freezes or quits hmm.

What do you mean by squishing the body back to restart it?

[celloco]

I’ve seen some of the stuff you’ve done in your thread, its definitely more than just sketching As for the squishing thing, I had been trying to get rid of the neck I carved because there was just wayyyy too many faces in this mesh; it was crashing my computers. After a bit of reducing, its still not quite fixed hmm. I’d rather not scrap the whole thing, but I have a problem where a lot of the faces are overlapping in the neck area:

Thanks for the tip for the tail also! I created the species that this character is from and I really want to try my best with this model so Ill probably take your advice with the sketch pose

Attachments

[SporkFuMaster]

Those are just sketching. I’ve just been using this program for way too long…lol.

Looking in the lower left hand corner, you haven’t reduced the faces. You may have smoothed the rest of the body into the neck, but you didn’t reduce the actual number of polygons that the computer is still keeping track of. It’s going to take a little while, but you need to use the “REDUCE BRUSH” on that massive conglomeration of triangles at the base of the neck. There’s so many triangles there that it just looks white on the wireframe. Keep going over that area with the reduce brush until the mesh more resembles the rest of the head. Then start on the rest of the modeling.

[celloco]

I’ve been going at it for quite a few hours (I think I’m going on 4 hours) now lol and I’ve created a few holes in the neck base now from trying to smooth/reduce/mix-repeat the mass of triangles:
https://gyazo.com/73d5b580345702be292ef3023d804d03 (a big image so it’s on a link right now)

I might try and see if I can either get rid of some more or pull back some pieces and smooth them together

[SporkFuMaster]

Honestly, I’ve never seen Sculptris create holes in the mesh before. Nor should it have taken hours to bring down the triangle count in those dense areas.

With the reduce brush, the best way that I’ve found to get it to work is to go from an area of less density, then click and drag to an area of higher density. I looked and the strength of my reduce brush is still set in the middle.

For the holes, I’d check inside the mesh (using “9”) to see if maybe it’s just twisted a bit and it’s just showing the opposite side.

Either way, with that long to get it back down, it might have been quicker to just remake the head from a sphere.