Looking for feedback on first sculpt

This is a sci-fi girl I sculpted from a base mesh and my first actual sculpt attempt. To be honest I’m planning to retopo and make a low poly mesh to use for animation in my class later. I sculpted this straight out of whatever my mind can think of which I originally had Tron:Legacy on my mind but it turned out different. The idea is just to have a sci-fi suit similar to that of what you see in Tron and maybe mass effect. I left some details out on the helmet cause using dyntopo would destroy some of its edges.

I started off with a multi-res modifier which was kind of my mistake because I feel Dynamic Topology is much better in the sense that my mesh won’t get too dense fast. It eventually got to 2 million tris where my computer started to choke so I had to decimate a bit. All together its about 1 mil. tris still but I think it should be okay as there is only very slight lag when I go in edit mode. Anyways if anyone can give me some feedback on how to improve that would be great. I know this might not be as impressive but its my first attempt because I always saw how easy people can make detailed characters and it looked faster than modeling. If someone could also recommend the brushes I should and shouldn’t use that would be nice as well.

On a side note I wish blender had mask extract and maybe a brush to raise a specific area leveled and flat.




Nobody has anything to say? Was hoping to find improvement somewhere.

Hey zeph,

first of all: for your first sculpt I think this is pretty good! I started sculpting not to long ago and my first drafts were just terrible. For me the only way to improve, and I guess thats not to much of a surprise was to do it over and over again until I had done something that was close to what I had in mind.

I sculpted this straight out of whatever my mind can think of

But I guess thats the most important thing to understand: What you have in mind isn’t allways as precise as you think. More often it’s vague and you have to guess here and there. The result is that you have to do a lot of corrections and you are loosing a lot of time. So the best thing you can do is to feed your mind with as much references as possible. An I think you already got a thon of sources to get them from: So look up Images of Tron:Legacy, MassEfeckt but don’t stop there: Maybe the original Tron movie has something to offer for you or there are more sources for inspiration regaring space suits like this. I for example had to directly had to think of samus aran of the metroid series. Then try to find our witch parts of your references you like the most and keep them as an image to come back to while you sculpt. If something comes to your mind you can still make changes (so it’s not that you loose all your creative thinking that way). But it’s a good way to not get lost.

Also the first thing about your figure that i recognized was that it seams a bit flat from side view! Find some references for anatomy as well so you can get the curves right. In the long run I guess (as a sculpor of characters or creatures) one can not study anatomy enough.

I started off with a multi-res modifier which was kind of my mistake because I feel Dynamic Topology is much better in the sense that my mesh won’t get too dense fast. It eventually got to 2 million tris where my computer started to choke so I had to decimate a bit.

I would not dismiss the multires modifire entirely. It’s a nice tool to nondestructively edit the overall shape and go step by step to more detail. Thats something one should do in dynatop as well. But if you have limited hardware, try to start with a really basic base mesh that only articulates the basic proportiones, use the multyres modifier for two, maybe three levels of subdivisions and then move on to dynamic topology. But thats personal preference. You can use dynatopo right away of course!

I left some details out on the helmet cause using dyntopo would destroy some of its edges.

If someone could also recommend the brushes I should and shouldn’t use that would be nice as well.

I have seen some peaple on youtube using dynamic topology sculpting for hard surfaces like the helmet in your case. Here’s a link to the first video of that kind I could find:

He uses mainly the crease and flatten brushes to maintain the appearence of a metal surface. Also pay attention to the way he configures the curve of his brushes: Making a very sharp and uniform crease. He also uses a curve tool I find very interesting. I never used it but it looks like something you could try.

So, again really nice start! i guess if you keep practicing you will make huge steps. I know I wrote a lot but I hop it’s still helpful.

Have a nice day and have fun sculpting!

Aaron

Thanks Aaron for the feedback, yeah I sculpted this from a base mesh so I didn’t really do to much of a change in terms of shape. I’ts still a learning process for me and I’m starting to see how fast it is to make a nice detailed mesh compared to mostly modeling. I still do prefer to model certain things like I want to try to make armor or a stylized knight but I know for that I must model the pieces first then sculpt in the details. I will definitely take a look at the video but thank you for the feedback, honestly. Good luck to you as well on your sculpting journey!

seams ok but i wonder she must be a verry skinny person, its like you cut it al deeper with sculpting, while on a normal shape one would have armor over the main shape. but thats just my 2 cents, overall she looks great.

Hey thanks for the feedback Geographic, yeah to be honest I just cut away and worked with the base mesh I had rather than add any armor or geometry. The idea was to go for a more tight suit like in tron for example. I’m gonna try to work on it later on to fix it up more and maybe fix certain details that don’t look right. Planning on making a knight next which I know will require armor pieces. But yeah some parts I had cut away for some random reason.

Hi there I feel you started sculpting on the body itself instead of an extra layer for the suit/armor. I have no experience in sculpting but I can see quirkiness in the anatomy. In the second photo the thigh is way too thin unless that’s the art direction you are going for. That’s my 2 cents anyways!