Zbrush 3 - Lt. Ripley Character Development Thread

[Dodo]

Aloha
I'm gonna do a course in high-poly character modeling workshop using Zbrush 3. I thought it might be a nice idea to post my progress here. So this thread will be updated weekly with my progress.

The character I'm gonna model is Ripley from the Alien movies. Specifically Ripley in the second Alien movie ("Aliens") standing in between eggs in the alien hive.

All feedback, ideas and suggestions are more then welcome.

-dodo

PS: First update will hopefully be tonight, cant promise anything. : )

 

[Stormy]

Good luck!

 

[Dodo]

Ha!
Thanks Stormy! I'll need it : )

-dodo

 

[Dodo]

First sketch of the character, just to study the anatomy. In this case its just a basic female human.
Later sketches will have clothes, gear and items...

-dodo

 

[Stormy]

Thats really good dude

more more!

 

[Dodo]

Small update:

-dodo

 

[Barnz]

Much better. You need to work on anatomy though.

-Get rid of huge boobies.
-She has a bigger chin, strong cheekbones.
-Try to reveal her face more (make ears visible).

http://men.style.com/slideshows/mens/standalone/gq/feature/0205/goldenGlobes360/00002h.jpg
http://www.afterellen.com/archive/ellen/blog/uploads/Sigourney Weaver- Alien.jpg
http://www.uni-c.dtu.dk/~unikcm/ImageGalleries/SigourneyWeaver/SigourneyWeaver-099.jpg

 

[Dodo]

Thanks! Great feedback.
Youre right about the breasts, they need to go up and get less shadow. The chin could indeed use some extra attention, but I dont want to over do it.
And making her ears visible I completely forgot, thanks for pointing that out!
...now its time for sleep.

-dodo

 

[Dodo]

Small update:

Basicly adjusted breasts and slightly altered the jaw, cheek and ear shading.

-dodo

 

[Tyron]

if you make the width of the pelvis bigger they'll be more attractive (think where you want to look at when you see a nice girl )

 

[Ennui]

Moved to Art and Design as per OP's request.

 

[Krynn72]

Man, you were beat by a few weeks on this idea

http://zbrushcentral.com/zbc/showthread.php?t=063340

Anyways, I'm looking forward to see your progress. I'll be watching the thread, and if you have any questions about how to do something in Zbrush, I'll try and give you what help I can. I'm a zbrush artist at the studio I work for, so hopefully I've learned some stuff that can be helpful to you.

Good luck!

 

[Barnz]

Man, you were beat by a few weeks on this idea

http://zbrushcentral.com/zbc/showthread.php?t=063340

Doesn't looks nice, tbh. I'll wait for Dodo's version.

 

[Dodo]

Update:

Front & side view modelling sheets.

-dodo

 

[Krynn72]

How are you going to make the base sculpting mesh? Z-Spheres or will you model it in another 3D app?

 

[Dodo]

ZSpheres! There very fast and easy to use.
With a bit of luck ill get the base mesh finished tonight.
First thing ill do when its done is post it.

-dodo

 

[Krynn72]

Do you have the image plane plugin for zbrush? That makes blocking it out in zbrush a hell of a lot easier.

 

[Dodo]

No I dont... Could you pass a link ? : D
Thanks alot,

-dodo

 

[Krynn72]

http://www.zbrushcentral.com/zbc/showthread.php?t=46396

Enjoy!

 

[Dodo]

Wow, looks very useful. Im sure ill give it a try later on.
Thanks,

-dodo

 

[Dodo]

Update:

Basemesh.

-dodo

 

[Krynn72]

Hope you plan of putting a lot of detail in the hands, because thats where most of your polys are going :|

 

[CrazyHarij]

Looking good. Keep us posted!

 

[Dodo]

Update:

I'm stil adjusting the basemesh, im nearly finished with it (apart from the manly hands and the kinda low tits that still need adjusting) before sculpting in some more detail.

Hope you plan of putting a lot of detail in the hands, because thats where most of your polys are going :|

Were most of the poly's go isnt a big deal atm, as its all gonna get retopologized a few weeks from now.
So the final mesh wont have the gazillion poly hands as it looks like its going to get now.

Looking good. Keep us posted!

Ofcourse! : )

-dodo

 

[Krynn72]

Were most of the poly's go isnt a big deal atm, as its all gonna get retopologized a few weeks from now.

Word, but is that going to be before or after you sculpt?

 

[morgs]

It might just be the angle, but the right hand pinky looks a bit odd.

 

[Dodo]

Word, but is that going to be before or after you sculpt?

After sculpting.

-dodo

 

[Krynn72]

After sculpting.

-dodo

Then it should matter :|. I wasnt necessarily talking about having an animatable mesh, because yeah, you can just re-topo it easy enough. But the mesh density and topology matters a lot even for sculpting. And it requires a much different view on poly count, edge-flow and polygon density.

The reason it should matter is that you cant get a lot of detail into areas that need it if all your polygons are going somewhere else. Look at your character's head. Now look at the fingers. When you subdivide to the next level, each of those faces are going to be split up into 4 more faces. Just the fingers alone right now at your lowest subdivision account for 480 polygons (assuming they're six sides around, hard to tell. ). The face of your character has 8 polygons. So that means when you take it to the sixth subdivision, your character's fingers are going to have 122,880 polygons, while your character's face only has 4096 polygons to sculpt on.

You will have to take it up to probably the ninth or tenth level just to get enough polygons to sculpt any actual detail into the face, and unless you have like a dual quadcore machine with 12 gigs of ram, you probably wont be able to get to the tenth level.

 

[Dodo]

Thats why ill mask everything but the face when sculpting the face. That way i can get it up till level 6 or 7 giving me millions of polys to sculpt with. Once the head is done, ill go a few levels lower, and sculpt the hands...
I see what you mean, but apart from it not really mattering in my opinion (the difference in geometry detail) it was the only way to get the right kind of topology in the hands. Your thoughts?

-dodo

 

[Davina1961]

I cant wait to see renders.

 

[Krynn72]

Thats why ill mask everything but the face when sculpting the face. That way i can get it up till level 6 or 7 giving me millions of polys to sculpt with. Once the head is done, ill go a few levels lower, and sculpt the hands...
I see what you mean, but apart from it not really mattering in my opinion (the difference in geometry detail) it was the only way to get the right kind of topology in the hands. Your thoughts?

-dodo

To be honest, I had forgotten about local subdivision. I suppose if you're willing to lose your lowest subdivision on the head then that will work fine. Its just going to be a little more difficult to make any major shape tweaks afterwards. As for getting the right kind of topology in the hands, what do you mean? You really only need a cube to sculpt out fingers.

 

[Dodo]

Well I ment when making the basemodel using zspheres, i had to use more zspheres in the hands then any other part of the body to get the topology of the basemesh generated by the zsphere right.

Once I've finished sculpting, I'll ofcourse retopologize everything, that way getting a consistent polygon density all over the model. Its hard to explain, Im confusing myself as I type lol...

Anyway, UPDATE !

-dodo

 

[Krynn72]

First things I noticed were that the hands are way too big. Although... it looks like one hand is bigger than the other... You're not sculpting with perspective on are you? If you are, I'm gunna smack you.

Second thing is that her entire torso is too narrow, and her shoulders should be a bit further from her neck. It seems like the whole torso should be scaled up, because looking at the backside view, her legs look way too big compared to the rest of her. Also, her forehead looks a bit too tall.

 

[Dodo]

Update:

-dodo

 

[Dodo]

Update:

Nearly finished sculpting, started retopology.

-dodo