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.
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.
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.
[attach=187326]nidobar-custom-pokemech.jpg[/attach]
[attach=187327]nipotle-custom-pokemech.jpg[/attach]
[attach=187325]Vidobar-custom-pokemech.jpg[/attach]
Cool little creatures.
ahaha…cooll work man! Great StyleSomething like Pokemon, but creat by Dr. Robotnik
Was just about to say metal pokemons 
Haha thanks guys
Still at subdiv 2 on the female figure, trying to get things pretty clearly defined before I move to subdiv 3.
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More work on the anatomy, reposed her. Still a long way to go. The back needs the most work along with the hands still.
Some more work over the last couple of days
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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.
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
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.)
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.
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.
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.
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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.
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
Amazing work Dude
fantastic!
Keep on this way! 
small_orange_diamondsmall_orange_diamondsmall_orange_diamondsmall_orange_diamond
hahahahaha
stefano is going straight to hell
that is the most politically incorrect critique i ever read.
Hehe, fun comments. No worries about criticism or anything like I said, all are welcome to speak their mind here.
Stefano, she’ll probably become “softer” in appearance in general as I take her up in divisions, starting out hard, softening up as her character develops over time. It’s still very early in the process, very liquid still.
Anyways spent this entire last couple of days just trying to come up with a method for sculpting hair and it’s been quite the learning process. I’m still not there yet in terms of having anything decent to show as far as the hair goes, but I took a break from that study and practice to just “sketch” something out for an hour or two to relieve the pressure.
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No rhyme or reason to it, just an old monkey head carved from stone with some kind of mineral deposit “tree” coming out of it’s head.
Hey Ortega, what’s up. Do you think my comment was politically incorrect because I touched tabu topics like transgenderism? the superidealization of a female is cannot drift in a that direction that kills the grace of the female form.
So how am I going to hell, explain?
Besides you are way further in that direction than what I am.
anyway I wasn’t talking about softness I was talking about the old school A.Loomis proportion chart, if a female is idealized the difference between the two genders doesn’t thin out but it gets exacerbated. That what would give her a goddess of war look. If you look to any female hero painted by either Frazetta or Bisley and you’ll get what I’m talking about here
most of the proportion changes can be dealt with a VERY careful use of move tool on the lowest subdee with then some tweaks on the skeletal structure.
I didnt meant to offend here just give a honest straight feedback
So after about 4 days…maybe 3 days I don’t know got kind of stuck in a time warp…I came up with a satisfactory way to sculpt hair.
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Not finished, just good enough for now. The entire hair piece probably took about two hours, however I’ve probably spent over 20 hours practicing, learning, failing, learning more, creating brushes, learning more etc…to actually come up with a good workflow for doing something like hair that isn’t attached to the head. Probably did about 9 total revisions from scratch before I hit upon this method, which isn’t the greatest but for someone of my skill level is like I said satisfactory at least. I know more about the brush palette settings and lazy mouse settings than I did at the outset that’s for certain.
Care to share your methods? Small tutorials are always a good thing - keep refining too! It looks pretty good!