Aya - Female character

[Tony Nemo]

I tried playing with the head and now I like it less I'm afraid. I do have to soften under her eyes I can see that much

Now her features look more feminine than formerly.

[BeatKitano]

Blend a bit of that into your character

I'm curious to see your references, I fear you're trying to base your sculpt on a canon model which is the worst thing you can do behind bad anatomy (imho).

[philnolan3d]

Well obviously you saw the main reference already, at least I assume you did. There are a number of secondary photo references, the Freedom of Teach model is attached.

[michalis]

BeatKitano's suggestion was to imagine a sculpture in stone. My suggestions were similar. There is nothing negative in these suggestions. Anatomy wont help you at all. Its good for details only.

You're thinking too much Phil. There isn't any reason in art. Shapes only.

[BeatKitano]

Well obviously you saw the main reference already, at least I assume you did. There are a number of secondary photo references, the Freedom of Teach model is attached.

That's what i thought, pefect for learning anatomy, muscle placements, structure. But absolutely unhelpful for a character meant to move.

Let me ask you a question, how many times a day, do you see people simply walking by with theirs hands like that ? I see people in the streets, and they mostly walk with their palms facing their thigh. Hence the question: how can you make a character destined to animation (or at least posing for a render), with the muscles definition/shapes taht matches those pose, when you use a mannequin pose to sculpt them ?

The simple twist in the wirst is enough to change the whole shape of the fore arm. This might no seem a big deal, but when you wil animate/pose it, something will be weird, always. Cause unless you use a muscle system in your rig, the character will always have straight muscles when his arms is twisted.

Your academic reference is ok, for learning, not to make lively characters.

[philnolan3d]

Test of the new Turntable feature:

http://bit.ly/bbLZoA

[ManFriday]

Overall I think it looks pretty great.

From the front I see her hands look weird.

From the side it looks like her shins were broken and bent forward.

Better than I can do though.

[ekunzendorf]

Actually, I think you all should lay off the crits of the facing of the hands. It is an open question as to the way the artist makes the geo. Palms down (granted, the most common) puts the hands (forearms, actually) at their maximum rotation. Rotating the hands any farther down requires rotations of the upper arm bones from the shoulder. Similarly, it is very difficult to rotate the palms up. Weighting the forearm mesh properly is difficult for that motion.

Palms forward, on the other hand, represents the hands rotated half way from their maximum down and maximum up positions. There is less tension in the forearms and biceps. And while it is true that you don't see people walking with their hands facing forward, how many people raise their hands above their heads with their palms pointed outward?

I don't want to start a war about which is best, but you can't blithely dismiss palms forward as unusable, because it isn't.

Excelsior!

Eric Kunzendorf

[BeatKitano]

Actually, I think you all should lay off the crits of the facing of the hands. It is an open question as to the way the artist makes the geo. Palms down (granted, the most common) puts the hands (forearms, actually) at their maximum rotation. Rotating the hands any farther down requires rotations of the upper arm bones from the shoulder. Similarly, it is very difficult to rotate the palms up. Weighting the forearm mesh properly is difficult for that motion.

Palms forward, on the other hand, represents the hands rotated half way from their maximum down and maximum up positions. There is less tension in the forearms and biceps. And while it is true that you don't see people walking with their hands facing forward, how many people raise their hands above their heads with their palms pointed outward?

I don't want to start a war about which is best, but you can't blithely dismiss palms forward as unusable, because it isn't.

Excelsior!

Eric Kunzendorf

No one said it's unusable, i know people that do it that way too, it's just they really know how an arm works... It's not guess work, if you don't know how things work together, you can't make it look believable (and then realistic) if you don't use a "daily life" appearance ref... It's a bit like starting to sculpt a face with a reference turned upside down, ok, it's a face, you see them a lot everyday, you may be able to make something of it, but still wouldn't be more useful to turn it in the right direction in the first place ?

I mean if you can do it with the ref upside down, why bother with refs ?

You obviously are skilled enough to avoid using it, and err...I don't see that n this thread sorry.

Anyway, it's probably useless to post in this thread since every critique you do is absolutely ignored. Good way to progress or not... I may actually return to my usual "only comment on people who know how to listen" routine.

I though I could help but some people don't like to be helped and only accept the "wow your work is good" response, makes me think of children talking about their drawings: "yours is cool, how is mine ?"... pretty sad

[Javis]

No one said it's unusable, i know people that do it that way too, it's just they really know how an arm works... It's not guess work, if you don't know how things work together, you can't make it look believable (and then realistic) if you don't use a "daily life" appearance ref... It's a bit like starting to sculpt a face with a reference turned upside down, ok, it's a face, you see them a lot everyday, you may be able to make something of it, but still wouldn't be more useful to turn it in the right direction in the first place ?

I mean if you can do it with the ref upside down, why bother with refs ?

You obviously are skilled enough to avoid using it, and err...I don't see that n this thread sorry.

Anyway, it's probably useless to post in this thread since every critique you do is absolutely ignored. Good way to progress or not... I may actually return to my usual "only comment on people who know how to listen" routine.

I though I could help but some people don't like to be helped and only accept the "wow your work is good" response, makes me think of children talking about their drawings: "yours is cool, how is mine ?"... pretty sad

Beat, that is the sole purpose I don't critique any longer. Most "artists" are just fishing for comments they like about their work, and yes, that is absolutely sad. Frankly I find the attitude down right annoying and amateurish; What ever happened to the human yearning of wanting to expand outward your skills and knowledge and to be a better person? It seems like a lost concept these days.

I'd rather get an ass kicking then a bunch of useless praise. At least I'll learn something.

As for the facing of the palms. I used to do it facing down, but after I started rigging/skinning more I tend to model them facing forward (for the reasons noted above). Facing them backwards however, unless it's going to be static sculpture, is going to really piss off the rigger.

[ekunzendorf]

Um, you all might want to read back through the critiques given. I am coming to this in the middle, so there may be some history here of which I am unaware; but I am finding these critiques to be contradictory, snarky and in the case of the American Werewolf reference downright childish. At the risk of offending those who have posted, I don't get a sense that some of the people providing critiques are caring or trying to be helpful. Things got sarcastic fairly quickly. From what I have read, I think Phil has restrained himself fairly well.

Phil provided his reference in the first post. Given the next few "crits" I think he was right to ask if anyone actually looked at the reference. The reference is 9 heads tall! Telling him to look at "real life" examples is not helpful. And suggesting he look at porn? For "real life"? C'mon, we can do better. I mean, if he were trying to make a "sexy" character, you could make the case for porn, but not for this.

The purpose of a good critique is to help someone get where they want to go; if Phil had said he was creating a generic female, then these crits might make sense, but given his reference? No.

Now as to the model:

The proportions of the model are very close to the concept art. Compare the front and side views from the turntable to the concept art. I'd post a comparison, but I don't own the concept art. I don't think anyone would tell a director or modeling lead that an approved piece of concept art is not "proportional." You build to the artwork? Right?

That said, the shoulders are too broad for the concept art. Her shoulders are narrower in the concept art. And yes, the arm and hands are problems. Part of the issue is that the bicep and tricep are too bulgy rounded. We see bodybuilders and assume that these muscles have to bulge, but they don't. In most people, females especially, they fit fairly neatly into a mostly cylindrical form which can then be modeled to barely indicate each muscle's locations. It would be better if those bulges were understated rather than overstated as they are in your model. The forearm as you've modeled is also problematic, and it may be the toughest part of the arm to get "right" because as mentioned supinating or pronating the hand changes the forearm shape. Tennis players and people who really use their forearms are great for this type of reference.

And, yes, the palms of the hands are too long. Furthermore, the way the wrist blends into the hand is too tapered. This transition could be sharpened up a bit. The cylindrical form of the forearm doesn't insert into the hand with a hard edge, but it doesn't taper like you have modeled.

Now, as to the legs. It seems to me that the back of the knee is a little high on the leg, but that could just be me. I do, however, think the front of the knees are a touch high on the model. I would suggest dropping the top of the knee to where the top of the patella now resides.

What is annoying is that the reference artist kind of dropped the ball on the feet. (I SWEAR, people who draw or model females fighters/thieves/warriors etc in high heels or platforms should be FORCED to walk around in them for a day!! There would be no such drawings from them any more, I promise! The top of her foot is too thick. I would suggest modeling the feet straight and then deform them using the pose tool, then model the platforms. Here the concept art fails, so you have to work it out on your own.

And then there is the face.I think I would model the face separately, allowing you to not worry about how it fits in with the body and just try to match the reference. Actually, I would probably create it in a 3d program like Maya or Lightwave, export as obj and merge it into the 3Dcoat scene. Heresy perhaps, but it should be effective. I hope this helps.

This brings us to the real reason I think most people don't critique: IT TAKES A LONG TIME TO THINK THIS STUFF UP! I've spent 30 minutes on this. And I won't be hurt if you don't take the advice because at the end of the day, it is just my two cents.

Excelsior!

Eric Kunzendorf

Jacksonville University

users.ju.edu/ekunzen

[philnolan3d]

Thanks for the useful insights. I think the muscles will be smoothed out a good bit to help with it looking like clothing. Same goes for the knee, good advice but in this case I think the knee will be hidden by the top of the boot.

Latest updates:

[Tony Nemo]

Really nice details there, Phil! Maybe some videos to round out the project?

[philnolan3d]

I thought of doing a hair video. Almost all of these details were done with retopo, then loading that into the Cloth tool. It's been really helpful that we can now pull the retopo away from the mesh, though that could still us improvement.

[Tony Nemo]

I thought of doing a hair video. Almost all of these details were done with retopo, then loading that into the Cloth tool. It's been really helpful that we can now pull the retopo away from the mesh, though that could still us improvement.

Duh, are you creating the detail with Points & Faces? Like the zipper. How is it done (which video?)

[philnolan3d]

Well sometimes Points & Faces, Sometimes Strokes, sometimes Quads. it doesn't really matter how the retopo gets made, just as long as it gets there.

For example right now I'm working on these bullets. I made the bullet in LightWave and then loaded it into the merge tool with the "On Pen" option. So now I need a strap that goes across them. Here's the retopo, in this case made with Quads and then Split Rings around the edges.

I gave it a little Additional Extrusion too. Back in the Voxels room I picked the Cloth tool and hit Pick From Retopo. Hit the Subdivide button a few times and I have this:

Press Enter and I'm done with that part:

Render:

[philnolan3d]

The zipper started as an object in LightWave:

I used the Copy tool to copy the zipper area to a higher res layer so I didn't have to increase res on the entire body. Then dug a "trench" for the zipper to go in with the Curve tool.

The teeth object from earlier was placed in this folder:

C:\Program Files\3D-Coat-V3\VoxStamps\Splines

Now it can be used as a Curve:

I don't remember the exact rules for making Curve objects so there was a lot of trial and error to get the scale of it right.

[Tony Nemo]

The zipper started as an object in LightWave:

I used the Copy tool to copy the zipper area to a higher res layer so I didn't have to increase res on the entire body. Then dug a "trench" for the zipper to go in with the Curve tool.

The teeth object from earlier was placed in this folder:

C:\Program Files\3D-Coat-V3\VoxStamps\Splines

Now it can be used as a Curve:

I don't remember the exact rules for making Curve objects so there was a lot of trial and error to get the scale of it right.

Egad, Phil, I see this as a major workflow innovation (apologies to those for whom this is not also a revelation). It certainly tops the list of "Phil Nolan tips". Thanks!

[philnolan3d]

Hehe, glad to be of service.

[philnolan3d]

Boots:

Still needs work though.

[philnolan3d]

Ok I redid the boot details and made some other small changes

[JensD]

Really hot female heroic character!

JensD

[philnolan3d]

Thanks.

[G-Rom84]

nope, i`d say that you`ve started with details and accessories too early, there are still a lot of places to improve(i not mean to make them absolutely perfect) the arms are the most distracting, especialy palms and fingers. Start to study and sculpt anatomical correct models, its like a spring the further you pull with it - the harder it will smash you back later... actually will smash if you care of course about doing the good job.

humm accessories looking not bad in some places

[philnolan3d]

Hands / gloves are next up:

[philnolan3d]

OK here's the latest just about ready to start retopo.

[BeatKitano]

Nice detailing over a failed anatomy and you can't say it's because you followed the concept, the concept is believable, your character is alien. Rince and repeat, a shame.

[artman]

i think you can get away with anything except face on this one.

Thats what i meant when I wrote it needed much love (you answered that you waited for higher res to add details on face)

But I wasnt talking about details i was talking about general shape...especially lips area.

I suggest looking back at your concept and try through various small 20min sessions to achieve that look .

Right now she looks like she has a bad generic face from Poser.

That makes her look 40yrs old instead of 20-30.

IMHO I think if you save the face the whole character is gonna look much better.

Accessories and folds really stand out tough.

[philnolan3d]

Thank you, I'm working on the face a little now actually. I downloaded a bunch of reference of early 80's era Connie Sellecca to use as reference.

[Calabi]

The jaw area looks like the most off to me. It should angle upwards at the back(and probably come up a bit more, womens, faces are close to a square/circle, mens are more rectangular/angular.