Demon Progress Entry 03/31/2010
Submitted by Bryan Wolf on Wed, 03/31/2010 - 1:38pm
So this is my first entry. All I have to say is that ZBrush is not as easy as many great artists make it look! Should I be surprised? :P I'm getting along decently now, but still coming to grips with the good, but unconventional interface.
I created a base mesh for the head in Softimage and stole a body from a previous piece of work, and got to sculpting. The head is still the base poly model out of Softimage, and I haven't really worked on the hands other than to pull the finger nails down.
I'm having a bit of trouble getting the forearms right, due to the nature of how the bones rotate there, and how the muscles wrap around. I've marked how I plan to fix it in red. muscles might be a bit defined at the moment, but I wanted to get the placement right(I hope it is) and then I can always go back and smooth them out later.
One thing I've learned so far, is that modeling for final rendering, is different than base modeling for sculpting. I say this, because one of the benefits of poly modeling is that you can place geometry where you need it, around the eyes for example, and keep other areas, like the back of the head, less dense. The problem with this way of modeling for sculpting is that you want polys equally distributed so you can add detail anywhere without too much faceting. Lets say the back of the base mesh has less polygons than the face, you then divide to get enough polys to add some detail to the lats and traps, but you run into memory issues before you can get to the level of division you need; The face is now too dense and the the back not dense enough.
From now on I will make sure to keep mesh density evenly distributed on models that will be heavily sculpted. Then there is the issue of poles, which can be a minor or major annoyance depending where they are, but I'll save the ramble for another day.
That's enough for this entry, I hope to post a new one soon, time permitting.
