Modeling
Helene V.Walmann - ANIM2005
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ZBrush Modeling
ZBrush Modeling
Following a Zbrush tutorial on LinkedIn and a OneDrive folder provided to us by our tutor, Jaime, I was advised to not start modeling from scratch. Rather we choose one of the existing skeletons that are already in one of the Zbrush folders at startup, take one that is similar looking to what we are looking for and go from there.
What is needed whether we start from scratch or not is our turnaround image. We want this in the background so we can sculpt alongside it to get the proportions and design just as we planned it. After plopping in our chosen model I needed to make sure that the floor grid was showing. Sometimes this will not be toggled on and it will not let us go ahead and import our image planes at all as the option to do so will be greyed out. Expanding the dropdown called "Draw" will let us click on a circle in the top left corner of the dropdown menu that makes it magically attached to our menu on the right. Doing this will make it easier for us, as the menu won't disappear on us after clicking on options avaliable to us in the dropdown menu. Now we can easily import our images and adjust their positions at the same time. Clicking on front-back and map 1, choosing import and navigating to our image will bring our image up in the field behind our sculpture.
A short video showing myself smoothing the pre-selected model that I selected to make it look better and easier to sculpt on.
After smoothing out my model, I moved onto the "Move Topologies" tool to create the over-all silhouette of my character. As I was moving the specific parts of my model around I quickly noticed that either my turnaround is not accurate or my model in general from the drawing is not symmetrical. Now depending if this is 100% needed, I will only focus on the left side of the model to make it as accurate as possible whilst I have "X" (Symmetry) enabled in ZBrush so that no matter what I do on the left side, it will be replicated on the right side of the model - making it symmetrical automatically.
Now the next problem will be the side view, as it does not seem accurate. So I will need to figure out a way to make it accurately fit into the front view perspective.
Notes for next time;
Notes for next time;
After some of the feedback I will be looking into trying to sculpt the clothing separately from the character.
Creating and separating a new object
Creating and separating a new object
Before trying to create the clothing separately from the character, let's looking into what that process will entail with he help of some videos. As a student at Worcester Uni, we get free access to LinkedIn Learning with tons of video tutorials for basically anything you'd want to learn or learn more of. There is a "ZBrush Essentials" tutorial session that covers exactly what I will be doing with my sculpt and the clothing.
Until I get my own model done this is an option for doing the clothing on a model - only he is demonstrating it with eyebrows on a statue sculpt. He uses a mask to draw on the eyebrows, then extracts them in the Sub Tool section where it will give us a preview of what that will look like.
I also watched his other tutorial - his "Extracting Cloth in Zbrush" to have a much better idea how I would go about actually doing clothing instead of other body parts like the eyebrows above. The process here is very much the same as before, just with a few notes; if the clothing is tight and close to the body you can easily use the Mask tool (holding Ctrl whilst sculpting/drawing) and the Extract option in the sub-tool area to create a shirt on top of the model by using her body as the direct reference as it will make the shirt look more realistic. Like she's actually wearing it and following the body's anatomy.
This is what a finished "drawn on" shirt will look like from the video tutorial. It retains some of the details from the model's body itself which are unnecessary but we can fix this later by smoothing out the sculpt.
Solo mode off, we can see the shirt is clashing with the model because it is "stuck inside" of it instead of being laid on top of the model. The Move Manipulator has been selected and we want to choose the outer ring (red).
After drawing on the mask on the areas where we want the shirt to be, we can then make it into a new object by going into our Sub Tool section - and clicking Extract. There is a thickness option if we want our clothing to be thicker than what we currently have, but as a point of advice from the tutorial we can always apply this thickness on later. If we apply the thickness immediately we will have to keep track of the inside and outside surface of the sculpt instead of just keeping to one surface at a time.
After clicking Extract we will have a preview of what the new object will look like. If we are happy with what it looks like we can just hit the Apply button and we have our basic shaped shirt object. Currently the shirt is kind of "stuck inside" our model and once we have a look at the full model it won't really show well. What we can do is simply "puff up" the shirt so it looks like it's more on the outside/on top of the model. By using the Move Manipulator (as seen on the 2nd picture on the left) we can Right click and drag the outer ring (Red) outwards to bring the shirt up on top of the model. It should look like what is shown below.
Screenshot taken from Ryan Kittleson's video tutorial - "Making Cloth Folds"
Next up is that we need to have a look at it's topology. Clicking Shift + F - will let us have a look at the mess of topology that is currently in place. There are no subdivisions present and it is also very dense at the moment. By going into our Sub Tool selections again, we have "Geometry", and under Geometry we have the ZRemesher tool. This tool basically lays out new topology for the selected sculpt object which is lower res than the previous topology was. We will be sculpting in our own folds manually so it being low on details is just fine. Before we start sculpting these folds though we will have to sub divide our shirt a couple times with Ctrl + D. The tutorial did this about 4 times, till he hit about a million - but just a couple of times will be fine. Smoothing out the model will be better done on a lower sub division, so clicking Shift + D to do this will decrease the amount of sub divisions. This makes it easier to smooth out the model so we cannot see the over detailed remains of the model's body.
Moving on to the bigger and more flowing skirt in the tutorial video. Some advice from Ryan is that for more free flowing clothing on bodies or clothing that is not super tight onto the model's body it is better to create an entirely new object and simply sculpt it onto the existing model's body. Starting with a cylinder shape he then cuts off about 80% of it, keeping only the front part of it so he can fold it around the character using the Move Tool.
Here is a video of him creating a large fold on the dress of his character. Source; Ryan Kittleson's video tutorial on LinkedIn Learning - "Making Cloth Folds".
Sculpting the body
Sculpting the body
A look at how far i am
A look at how far i am
After sculpting for a while and getting happy with how it looks like - I noticed a few "spikes" near the under arms. I could not smooth them out, and I could not sculpt on top of them to make them go away.
So after we had a show & tell on the 14th of December, I realised I could try and use the ZRemesher tool to fix it, and voila! It did!
Masking and Exctracting Clothing
Masking and Exctracting Clothing
My first try with the skirt didn't sit quite right with me. When I used the Move Tool to get the right shape of the skirt it would constantly fold upwards and create folds. For now I left it as is to move onto other things, and coming back to this later.
Adjusting the Feet
Adjusting the Feet
From a feedback session I got the suggestion to point my feet more forwards. I left the feet for quite a while as I was having issues with even sculpting them at all, but after seeing some drawings and knowing that in the end they would be covered by shoes, I decided to just make them very simple shaped (without toes though) so that when I make the shoes later on they will be easier to shape around the feet.
Neck Folds
Neck Folds
So for her neck thing (scarf?) I was looking to keep it very thin and as 1:1 with the design as possible. I wanted this because in my mind when I was designing the character she was inspired by sweets and I saw the "scarf" as a topping, or icing of some sort on top of the dress. Therefore I wanted the "clothing" to be rather thin when it's on top of the dress and make it look like it just barely falls down over the shirt.
Shirt Folds
Shirt Folds
Face
Face
For ideas on how to sculpt the face, I looked up some 3D sculpted faces on ArtStation and Google to use them as inspiration.
When it was time to sculpt in her face I realised just how many different face shapes there are by looking up some example female 3D rendered faces. For a long time in the session her eyes looked very Asian (from comments of friends) and I had to specifically look up double eyelid eyes to make sure that I was doing the right thing. It's not that it was a "problem" per se, but my character was not designed with an Asian background in mind, thus I needed a different eye look.
From the YouTube channel Pixologic ZBrush, they have plenty tutorial videos as well as responding to often asked questions with "#AskZBrush" and making tutorials for certain questions asked. I think it is also their official YouTube channel for ZBrush as it is verified.
For when I am extracting stuff from the masks I create on the model I was told by the tutorials that it is difficult to manage an object with thickness to it. This made me only make very thin masked objects - like the ribbon lace around the waist and on the legs. But when I was searching for ZBrush tutorials I found one where you can add thickness to objects that start out thin. Although in the video's case its a more "structured" object than what I am dealing with.
The Shoes
The Shoes
So far this is what her shoes look like. I managed to lose the recording of me making them and I had already deleted the history so I couldn't press record and then just scroll through what I had done. I looked up some pictures of some low heeled shoes and found them difficult to fit as my character's legs were thinner than the over all shoes were (in real life). I left the shoes as is so I could focus on moving on with my character and coming back to the shoes later on.
Sculpting the Hair
Sculpting the Hair
Tutorial video by "Edge-CGI 3D Tutorials and more! " that I used for when I did the hair for my character.
Since the hair on my character vastly differed to the one on the OneDrive tutorial, I decided to look up some tutorials online to see if there was other ways to do it. It seems the way around it was rather similar but instead of using the SnakeHook brush and the DamStandard brush a lot, I basically only used the ClayBuildup Brush and the Move Tool for my hair that I did.
His model size also seemed to be rather large in comparison to mine, as I used a pre-made skeleton and sculpted on top of it. So when he was using big brushes and went down in size when adding hair strands, I wasn't quite able to get that with my model as it was smaller in size compared to the one in the tutorial video.
Hair Timelapse Videos
Hair Timelapse Videos
The tutorial I followed for tips on how to do hair said I should pretty much never have symmetry on when sculpting hair in ZBrush. This is because hair in real life is never 100% symmetrical and thus I tried to do mine without symmetry on as well, even though the "hair style" is similar on both sides - excluding the swirl in the middle which technically leans sideways. Before I started on the hair I felt like I had to make a decision.
Would I put the buns as separate objects/tools and shape them after placing them on the hair?
And would I keep the ribbons in the design?
I quickly decided to just follow the tutorial and just use the Move Tool to create a rough rounded shape where the hair buns, pig tails - and the swirl, would be on her head. I did initially want to add the ribbons in to the hair but I might use other ways of "connecting" the buns and tails to the hair so it isn't just shapes added onto/into the hair. Maybe try it with just some simple lace or some jewels around the buns and pig tails as hair ties.
Now of course if the character specifically required the hair to be symmetrical on the model I would've probably just modeled with symmetry on. Since this is my own character and not being used for someone's real game/animation I wanted to see how it would turn out without symmetry on.
Personally I see now that if I were to re-do this character or this type of hair style in the future - I would maybe keep symmetry on for certain things, like maybe her hair buns and the pig tails.
My thoughts on the hair afterwards is that if I spent more time I could definitely make it more detailed, but knowing myself and how I draw hair - I never stop with adding hair strand and everything. So to keep myself sane and to keep the project/model moving forward I needed to get to a certain point where I was happy to leave it as is.
Cleanup / Fixes
Cleanup / Fixes
As I was doing the last clean ups I realised I forgot a couple small accessories here and there and made changes to the ribbon laces around her waist and her legs to make them more appealing and more than just "thin strings" around her. I also had noticed that her legs were going "inwards" when looking at her from a front view when realistically they would go a bit outwards and backwards when she is standing up straight. I just looked down at my own legs in comparison and that's how they looked like.
Old
New
The more I looked at her shoes when doing the last cleanups, the more I did not like them as they looked too simple and to be honest - not like real shoes. I extracted a thicker mask of the feet this time than last time and imported a picture of a heeled shoe to help me out with the shape of it. I did not want to use it as an exact replica because it did not fit her foot completely as it is of course a real life shoe compared to a 3D modeled girl.
Shoe picture for reference, taken from Google.
Back to fixing the skirt (I did this a bit earlier on, but I forgot to point it out) as my first 2 attempts didn't go over quite well in my opinion I started a new attempt. I put the insensitivity quite low on the Move Tool as I shaped it into something I was happy with and trying to follow along on the size/length of the design. When I got to the length I was happy with I used the Clip Tool to cut it off so it was a clean line on the dress ends.
I then used the Duplicate Tool to basically copy and paste the top skirt onto another layer of its own so that I could make it an underskirt by moving it downwards a little and added some folds to it.
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