HMC #25 - The Oceans - Atlantic Sailfish

[aovesen]

A sailfish, hurray :) As a avid fisherman myself I can only say this is a great modeling subject. I look forward to see what you come up with. If you have any questions about any specifics about this fish, let me know and I will try to help you out. Regards Anders

[MightyReg]

aovesen: Hey thanks! Yeah I agree it's a wonderful subject, I can't imagine how it is to hold this majestic fish in your hands after fishing it.
Lots of people seems to be going for exotic fishes or really strange fish, so I decided to pick something different but still very interesting.

So tonight I started doing some reference picture research, now got ton of references for this subject, most of them being fishers catch so it's great since I got a lot of clear pictures outside the water, which help me grasp the forms better. Anyway here are some of my reference picture:

P.S. If anyone knows if there is a way to upload images on this site without having to put them on external site like imageshack and then linking them, please tell me.

http://img231.imageshack.us/img231/4719/01reference.jpg

[RageOfAges]

It looks like you managed to do it in your first post. Unfortunately it only shows the thumbnail that you have to click on. I personally prefer linked images, as you don't need to jump back and forth in the browser, but the choice is yours.

I also recommend photobucket. I find it much more user friendly than imageshack, but again that is personal opinion.

Good luck.

-rage

[MightyReg]

Hey thanks Rage for the quick answer. It's just too bad we can't upload images the same way as ZbrushCentral, without having thumbnails that you have to click on.

Never tried photobukcet but I guess I'll stay with imageshack since I have no problem.

Started a base mesh yesterday evening, will try to finish it when I get back from job tonight.

[MightyReg]

Hi everyone,
Well here's the base mesh I am going to take into Zbrush tonight. Right now I preoccupied myself more on the shapes than the topology since I am probably going to retopo anyway (I find it faster to do it that way). Eyes will be added as subtools.

http://img714.imageshack.us/img714/2126/02basemesh.jpg

[TheRazorsEdge]

That looks like a solid start!:thumbsup:

Love your choice, btw and am looking forward to your ZBrush progress.

Cheers!

[MightyReg]

TheRazorsEdge: Thanks!

A bit of sculpting tonight, not a lot of things, just blocking out some things, worked a bit on the fins (which are a real pain right now to work on, especially the dorsal one), opened his mouth a bit to be able to work the inside of the mouth. I will try to get all the major shapes done by the end of the week, so I can retopologize and go on the details and refining phase.

http://img202.imageshack.us/img202/9600/03roughsculpt.jpg

[Luke046]

Marlin! Great choice, amazing fish. Looking good so far.

[aovesen]

Actually, without sounding too scientific, it is a sailfish and not a marlin. You can tell from the big elegant dorsal sail. Sailfish and marlin are both billfish and relatet, but there are differences :) I wanted to post you a ref, so just wanted to give a bit of input on these marvelous creatures.

In this picture you can see the fins a bit more from the the front, might help you a little.
http://akira.ruc.dk/~aovesen/images/sailfish.jpg

[MightyReg]

@Luke046: Just like aovesen pointed out, there is a difference between these two fishes. But I finnaly choosed the Sailfish because it's dorsal fin was making him a more interesting subject.

@aovesen: Hey thanks for the critic aovesen, going to keep it in mind! I see well on your image the sail form starting high from the front.
I actually did my base mesh with an image plane that showed the sail going straight and then becoming higher in the middle. (You can see that image plane attached in my first post)

One thing I saw with all my reference is that no sailfishes have exaclty the same shapes for their dorsail fins. But I will try to give the interesting curve at the start that you showed, which is less flat then my current one.

Yesterday I did about 30 min of sculpting (that I lost since it crashed when I tried to save my tool :( I will try to redo it tonight with your change.

[aovesen]

Oh boy, sorry to hear about the lost work :( but I am sure you can redo it again, its never truely lost, you have it fresh in your mind and you'll know just what to do again. As you correctly pointed out there are many different variations, I havent really noticed until you just pointed it out, so the ref was just to show you what it might look like from the front :) But I am gonna follow your progress closely, such a wonderful creature and your doing a great job making it come to life. And remember, save save save :)

[TiMrozek]

Sorry to hear about the loss. Are you using 3.5r3? Seems to crash less during save. However, not sure if you are using ctrl+s but you shouldn't. For some reason it seems Zbrush has a serious bug that has just never been addressed where it crashes during save often when using the hotkey for save. I now always just click the save as button and haven't had a crash since. Sometimes going to the lowest subdivision level helps a bit too.

Well, good luck getting back to it. I think we've all been there, especially with zbrush but usually you can redo what you already did in a much smaller amount of time, and oftentimes a little bit better.

[MightyReg]

@TiMrozek: Yup, I am using 3.5r3. I never use the hotkey shortcut, I always save from the tool menu on the right, so it might just be Zbrush who hates me :D I will try saving at a lower level, normally I always save at the highest one, might give me better chances of saving succesfully.

[MightyReg]

Ok time for another update!

Started bringing out the major shapes, like on the face and the dorsal fin.
MAN it's hard as hell to sculpt a fin that is paper-thin in Zbrush, but I finally was able to do something with it (altough the fin is really rough at the moment). Now I just have to work on the tail and other fins and I might have a good enough base for retopo.

BTW TiMrozek, used the trick you gave me for saving with a lower resolution, didn't had a crash since then so it seems to work, thanks!

http://img171.imageshack.us/img171/5536/04roughsculpt.jpg

[TimForbes]

yeah looking good man. i reckon i'm gonna have that same issue with thin fins in zbrush;-) any idea how you're gonna pose him.
heres an image from world wildlife photographer of the year - pretty awesome.

[MightyReg]

@TimForbes: Hey thanks for the image, a really nice photo, really interesting how the light hits the fish. And the redish color of this one is kinda interesting too, right now most of my references shows blues sailfish.

As for the pose, I will be going for a leaping sailfish, if you look at the collection of reference images I posted before, the one in the upper left corner would probably be the pose I will do, or something similar.

[chichiri]

Good work so far, good luck for the details.

[MightyReg]

@chichiri: Hey thanks!

So I continued a bit the sculpt this weekend, and since I a strugling a bit right now because of the topology, I started to plan my topology for the retopo. It's not 100% finished (still have the lateral fins to do). I also have some triangles on the head I am trying to get rid of (in red on the head) but I am unable without continuing the edge loop at the tip of the nose.
Might add another horizontal edge loop on the dorsal fin also.

Anyway if you see things in my topo that could be better, don't hesitate while it's still just a paint.

http://img535.imageshack.us/img535/7326/05topologydraft.jpg

[Piflik]

Continue it down the nose...you'll get rid of that 6-point star that will give you ugly deformations on SubD otherwise at he same time...

[MightyReg]

Continue it down the nose...you'll get rid of that 6-point star that will give you ugly deformations on SubD otherwise at he same time...

Thanks, but this is exactly what I am trying to evade, since I don't want the nose of my sailfish to have to much faces when it clearly don't need a lot...but yeah I guess if I don't find a way to get rid of these triangles I will be forced to do that. Anyway thanks

[MightyReg]

Well I think it's the end of the road for me. Tried to do some retopo in Zbrush, this particular model is hard like HELL to retopo. Crashed 4 times (which never happened on any of my other models before) and the 5fth time I was able tu pull it off but when I reproject the details nothing works.
Well anyway I will be still hanging around to see what you guys come up with.

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