Sketchbook Thread of Trascendental - 3D

#1

Hello everyone,

I’ve posted this as a 3d WIP thread but not got much attention. I’m making a 3d character model for a superhero project at university. The model has to have to get the higher marks, nearly perfect if not perfect edge flow, very well defined muscular groups and overall very good modelling throughout.

I’ve posted a few different versions there. Going to post the most recent with the basic wires here. I’ll post the hand later + a new wire later on today, but i’m having real trouble getting the palm to look right, the hand itself looks still pretty aweful.

Then my most recent before the hand:


Looking for critique on muscular groups and how i can improve their definition on the model. I apprecaite your help, thankyou.

If you want me to i can post my muscular reference sheet that i made. Though for now i’ll leave it out.

#2

TranscendentalLucidity,

Welcome, glad you put up your thread. :slight_smile:

One thing that would help is if you posted front, side / orthographic views - the main thing I’m noticing is the hands, don’t know what you’re planning to do but so far that’s the thing that sticks out the most as to what needs to be started - the lower legs seems weak / small for the torso, almost dainty. The key thing is always working from reference. If you could post your reference images here, that might help people to critique your work.

Hope some of the 3D folks can offer advice here. :slight_smile:

Cheers!

#3

Hi Rebeccak,

My reference, painted over from 3d.sk photographic reference. The muscles do not match and i’ve done this unpurpose, so i can match the brief required by the project. The reason i didn’t include this in the reference is that the photographic reference wasn’t that muscular and i wasn’t sure where they needed to be placed at the time.

Front and side + wires are below, though not unsmoothed.

I’ve done a closeup with two perspective views of the hand, in wireframe. Found the hand really difficult. After the first attempt i broke it down into sections and used three photographic references. The fingers arn’t too bad i think, but i’ll admit i wasn’t sure waht to do with the palm itself. I did have a look around for waht other people had done but it was harder to find good wires of the hands lol.

I know they don’t look right. Honestly not sure what to do with the palms at the moment. Though once i do i’ll be going back a version and redoing them for sure.

Thanks for your help so far, i’m going to look at the legs now and maybe the lower arm as well? Biceps seem too big in relation i think.

Thanks,

Transcendental
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#4

If you do not want to waste time, find a proper reference of orthographic front and side views, there are plenty on the net; and model according to that.

In 3d, there is no issue of cheating, as professional modelers also model according to 2d model sheets. No point banging away and eternally struggling with proportions.
You are a beginning modeler, concentrate on getting your first model correct anatomically by using good orthographic references; it will boost your confidence when you later model other characters as you would understand the workflow of model creation.

Also, your current pose will be a nightmare to bone later, due to the close proximity of the fingers for example. Model them spread apart.

Having seen your reference, you are just unsure of how to model higher mesh defination for the muscles, search the 3d forums there are plenty of wireframes.

E,g.:

http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?f=43&t=190477&highlight=torso+wireframe

#5

Cheers Vince. I’ll get some new ones and reposition things. The paint over was part of the brief, otherwise i would be using the photographic references.

I’ll try it with a photographic reference however.

#6

Hi Lucidity! welcome! Nice to see your thread, and its great to have another 3D guy here!:thumbsup: hmmm… as I see it, there are quite a lot of anatomical issues in your model, and I think it is quite pointless to attempt to correct them on a point-to-point basis without doing a better back-ground study or home-work. Photographs dont help unless you already have the information to analyze the photo-reference before you… It is my opinion that you should get a few good books on anatomy and proportion… and also start sketching human figures on a regular basis… you’ll find tons of reference in this forum… it is hard work, but extremely enjoyable… the modelers in the studio I work for have their heads and hands buried in their sketch-books every second of their spare time… and they go home much the happier for it! I would also suggest spending some time with clay/plasticine/wax.

Looking forward to your progress in this thread.
Cheers!:thumbsup:

#7

I got some new references put them together, painted over the muscle groups and restarted the model. Its prob taken me 4 hours i think. No detail though and the arms arn’t done. Thanks for the suggestions, if i didn’t have to get this done in five weeks, believe me i would spend alot longer playing around. But right now the deadlines tight and i have to do alot to get the better marks. Though i will consider it for the future! I’ve seen a guy who had a tutorial in clay, for his whole model, was amazing.

Still got a way to go, but heres how the new model looks so far. I did try moving verts in the old model but there was too much extra detail. Not sure i like the look of this one so far, even though i’ve not yet added proper detail. What do you think?

Heres my new reference:

#8

I feel your torso mesh is too dense for this early stage. This will result in much more time than necessary due to pushing vertices. The arm density is about right.

Also the split in the model centre, move the adjacent vertices from the split line and centre the split line vertices perfectly to zero coordinate and they will merge well without the odd crimping you now have.

Aren’t you using reference planes in your 3d programme to model? If you are, the deltoid muscles shouldn’t be so big as they are at the moment, ditto for the arms.

Much better progress though. If you want to meet your deadline, merge those excess vertices and get a more accurate outline before adding mesh resolution.

#9

I’ll change that abit, i forgot my flow at the start this time, which made things a little harder. I think the vertices are at 0 but i’ll check.

I am using references yes, i’ll check the deltoids and see if there wrong according to the reference. Thats nice to hear, i wasn’t sure if this model looked worse, even though i haven’t refined or added the detail yet.

Thanks for the comments, i’ll work on it more tommorow and put up another update.

#10

The mesh looks like it has buttons down the center. Your poly loops do not need to flow entirely around the whole model. I would also make sure that most of the visible polys in the center are quads except for at the top of the forehead. You can considilate points there very nice. Under the stomach works too.

#11

Yeah they are quads. Its the smoothing thats making them look strange. I’ll post a low polygon wire as well with the next one so its easier to see. Smoothed out the front though, i didn’t line up the Vertices properly.

Hm, i agree the chest probably has too many edge loops. Its more difficult now because the reference isn’t quite so muscular, its alot more subtle.

I’ll keep at it though, post another update tommorow.

#12

Another update. Havn’t touched the hands, feet or the head properly yet. I changed the topology of the mesh so it was a little better and lined up the vertices as i think you suggested. Also added a little detail into the arms and removed edge loops from the chest to make it simpler. Still not happy with the chest, going to look at my first model to see what i’ve done wrong there, as that one was fine i think. I can see how the legs were wrong in the first one now though :slight_smile:

As always appreciate any input you can give. I know i have a few tri’s where i’ve added detail like on the legs. Is this ok? I know you don’t use tris because of animation, but i mean, are the cuts ok or could i cut into it differently?

Thanks,

#13

Another little update. Muscles + Proportions + shader + lighting.

#14

Much easier to work out your proportions at that mesh density then with how heavy it was before.

When showing off your side view try to render it out from a pure orthographic view instead of a perspective camera from the side. I know that your ref is that way (as to eliminate most perspective in real photography a tremendous amount of distance and an extreme telephoto lens needs to be used), but an orthographic view makes it a little easier to see the straight sweep of the figure. It looks very close, but there is something about the weight that feels like he’d tip forward (the feet need to extend slightly forward for sure).

Don’t worry about tris to much at this stage, you can work them out later. Just be aware of it, and don’t take shortcuts that leave you with so many that it gets hard to pull them out.

Unless you’re planning to bring in a seperate mesh for the hands/feet/head start roughing those in. They’re critical to the character, and a fine place to peg your exageration. Superheros often have large hands and feet in a 8 head high frame, if you’re going that way you need to start looking at it early. If you’re sticking to reality it still helps a lot ot be looking at them from the beginning.

#15

Hi Kary,

Thanks for the comments. Just realised about the side view, could tell it wasn’t right but i thought it was straight. I’ll do that next time anyway.

Yeah the reference is abit strange, as he looks a little unrealistic. I’ll try that with the legs and see what happens.

#16

haha, just figured out the references havn’t been taken at quite the right angle. So even though i have a texture for my character. Modelling from its been somewhat pointless. Going to redo it with two images from an anatomy book. Which are alot better.

I’ll post an update when thats done.

#17

Heres my update:

(If it doesn’t show yet i think my hosts playing up again, apologies) Form seems alot better defined, even if hes a little “perfect” looking now. I’ll deafintly start putting in the hands and feet now, then do the head.

#18

To my (very imperfect) eye that is looking pretty darn good :). A bit dense (is that wire smoothed?) but thats fine if thats how you work.

One last thing that might be helpful when showing off your character is to get a different material onto the rendered version. It’s looking a touch waxy atm, and it’s making it a bit hard to read the muscles in the mid of the body. If you took it to a simple phong shader (say something setup for a simple clay like highlight) with a simple light setup (say a GI skylight for fill and a single point for a sharp keylight) it would be a bit easier for people to make you the finer detail. Side, front and three quarter views will do a lot to allow people who’ve studied a lot of anatomy, but not neccesarily 3d, help you out.

The bold strokes look fine to me, and my sympathizes if you’re hosted with dreamhost, what a wacky weekend this was.

#19

Hi Kary,

Dreamhost yeah, you know what i mean! Seems there up and down all the time atm. Annoying :slight_smile:

Thanks. I wasn’t sure actually, i preferred the first mesh i did but the proportions on this one do look better i guess.

Its smoothed so its abit dense. The mesh itself i’m not sure…I’ve started to add in a few little details. Do you think that was abit of a bad move at this stage? That has made the pectorals and chest quite alot denser.

Yeah thats a pre-finished SSS shader for the skin without maps. But i can create a new phong material and add that on. Side front and three quarter i can do :slight_smile: No problem.

I’m roughing out the hands at the moment and i think there looking OK for a change. Can’t believe it but i guess third time lucky. So i’ll post that in abit.

Thanks for the feedback Kary,

#20

An update. More to come, moving on to the head now. The lower legs not right, the pelvis still looks wrong and i’m not happy with the chest i prefer the topology of the first mesh for that so i may replicate that.