Very nice, great to practice poses.
I notice that the face of your asleep character is not visible. I think it makes it look dead rather than asleep.
I find it difficult myself to start from 2d drawings, the artists tend to easily alter proportions which 3d forces you to obey.
That piece of cloth looks like a nice challenge too 
Keep it up!
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Indeed, I was planning on adding a fill light to fix this, but I was unable to do so 
I’ve been repeatedly reminded of this recently, buffeted by it even 
I keep accidentally picking 2D concepts that break the rules and I don’t realize it until it’s too late. That’s one reason I really love Marcel Hampel, the artist from the lanterns above- he always follows the rules and uses very simple shape language. I think I prefer concept art as a generalized idea of a scene, rather than following it 1:1.
It took a lot of self-control to not sculpt that, I had to remind myself repeatedly that the focus was on lighting and composition, and if I started adding details, I’d get lost in the weeds. Normally, I’d use that blockout to do a detail pass, but again, I can’t open this file or change it in any way, so… what can you do
Thanks for the comments!
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Day 39 - Trying Mixamo rigs again
First off, I have had no motivation today, so while this isn’t much, it’s something! I was actually planning on skipping today, but I didn’t. So yay!
That aside, I was determined to figure out what was wrong with my Mixamo rigs and lights. I have no idea, still, what was wrong with my lights, but I did figure out my problem with Mixamo rigs- they have keyframes, even if you download them in T-pose 
So I’m definitely feeling very smart right now 
That said, I wanted to do another round of what I did yesterday, since I learned a lot from that exercise. I used this (very pretty) reference image:
Which- @piranha4D - seems to be this print from a webcomic. Side note about webcomics- comics generally make excellent reference images. It’s essential to convey a lot of information in a visually striking way in one single image, and it’s essential to do so with good composition that leaves plenty of empty space for speech bubbles. So I do tend to use comics myriad as references.
I created this result:
This is what it looked like pre-processing:
Let me just say that I recognize the hair is a really important part of the contrast in the reference image, and that it’s really starkly missing from my image. This is weird, I know, but I hate adding clothes/hair/etc to mannequins. It gives me the heebie-jeebies big time. I begrudgingly added the dress because it was really important to the composition, but even still, it gave me the heebie-jeebies. I don’t like it. I’m not going to be updating my thumbnail for this reason- this is a good image, but ugh! mannequins with clothes on are creepy! Why did I do this??
Truth be told, I’m really not doing this reference image justice, maybe someday I’ll try again with an actual person
Music
Back to Xenoblade, babbyyy 
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If I may make a couple of suggestions about composition, the pale curtains are drawing the eye towards the top corners and away from the figure. If they can be darker (or translucent as in the reference) they would be less distracting. Also the back wall is warmish in the ref, and I think that provides some colour contrast with the cooler colours of the figure. Also perhaps reduce the width of the horizontal crossbars in the window.
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Thank you for the suggestions! These are all really good points. Honestly I think my biggest problem was that the mannequin wearing clothes made me so uncomfortable that I couldn’t really see anything else. This is why I don’t do horror - working on some revolting flesh monster would make me so grossed out I think I’d quit after 30 seconds
Also before anyone asks- “but don’t mannequins wear clothes at clothing stores?” Yes, they do, and I hate clothing stores for many reasons, but that is sure one of them
Stepping away for a while can help with the tunnel vision. I must say I prefer these more narrative images, I find them more relatable.
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Yay for doing anything at all, despite not being motivated! And you even successfully debugged your problem, way to go!
I’m a little glad I’m not the only one with weird, seemingly senseless things happening in my brain that make me shy away from certain things. But that doesn’t help you at all, :wry grin:.
Could you use a more human-like character instead of a mannequin rig? Stylized is ok, right, just not stylized to the point where all the facial features are gone? I’m thinking if you go just far enough to avoid the reaction to “mannequin, ugh” you’ll still have something fairly neutral.
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I could, you’re right. I had a really nice basemesh once, but then my hard drive crashed. Then I started a new one and it was really good, but it disappeared into the digital aether. So… now I have a bunch of heads, a few hands, and a few highly stylized characters with normals so heavily edited they don’t work outside of a NPR scene I do need a less mannequiny mannequin to work with, but I haven’t had the energy to make that with this stupid cold. I guess that’s my next project? With some help from Dikko, I can whip out a body in a day I suppose.
I think in a more normal scene the mixamo mannequins work fine, that’s on me for picking a scene that required clothes and hair
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Yeah, if you can’t find anything ready-made (I was thinking of the Daz models which are also rigged, but I really have no idea how easily any of these are importable to Blender). Making your own has the advantage that you can make it exactly how simple or complex you need it, and you’ll know it inside out and won’t get sidelined by surprise keyframes. Might be worth investing a day or two in – it’ll last you for a lot of scenes afterwards.
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Day 40 - Ok, I can do most of a body in a day
I did the two main loops yesterday, but then I spent the rest of my evening watching the midterms (not on TV, I would rather die than have live TV or any variety thereof or watch the news, I just mean refreshing NPR on my phone) and watching Community with my wife. I also called my parents, it’s been a while- long story short, I didn’t do enough to warrant making a post here. Today, I did!
A few quick notes- so far, this is entirely poly-modeled, with no sculpting (beyond smoothing and grabbing, I just mean no sculpted base).
It’s very low-poly- 754 faces, all quads. No n-gons, no tris.
Perfect double-diamond topology on the knees and elbows, perfect shoulder topology, and all the parts of the body that are voluminous - butt, breasts, thighs, calves, biceps, and stomach- are self-contained within loops, which makes changing the volume very easy. That is to say, if I want to add fat or muscle to any part of this body, I can do so rapidly and easily without breaking anything or affecting the mesh as a whole. This is really useful for a basemesh like this- I can add a few shape keys that will completely transform the body type here without having to make a new one.
It’s definitely a bit stylized, but it’s pretty close to realistic proportions, as far as I can tell - I used references and model sheets, and it fits the 7.5-8 heads rule. (the arms might be a tad bit short, it’s hard to check that without hands.) I’m not a fan of the wasp-like proportions you usually find on stylized 3D models- I like to make the breasts, hips, and butt proportionate to the rest of the body. Crazy, I know.
I also checked with my wife quite frequently during the process, as someone with a female body, she’s helpful both as a reference and a critical pair of eyes. It’s very convenient being able to say “hey honey can I see your boobs real quick to check my modeling here” This is my main reason for making a female base mesh- I live with a woman and I do not live with a man, so it’s just a lot easier to check female proportions 
There’s a decent chance I’ll finish the hands and feet tonight, it depends on what I do with my evening.
I used Dikko’s tutorial as reference for some loops and as a double diamond refresher, but most of this I did entirely myself, with no guidance. Pretty proud of myself 
Music
Xenoblade this afternoon, Interstellar this morning
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The real test of good animation topology, as everyone knows, is the macarena^:
(ignore the terrifying placeholder head)
^ No seriously, it’s actually a really good way to test deformation
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I never knew wiggling your hips like that can test how good your joints were 
Could be yoga, haven’t taken classes since elementary school, I don’t know.
Second thought, alien dance w/ one of the HL characters.
Looks smooth though, good model 
1 Like
Day 41 - Feet, Hands, Help?
This cold (I’m starting to doubt it’s a cold, it very well could be the Big Bad, despite my quadruple boosting and vigorous masking) is absolutely wrecking me, body and soul. If I’ve slowed down the last week, blame this blasted sickness that is ripping every cell in my body apart one by one. That said, I got some dope hands done today:
I’ve also added volume loops for the biceps and calves, done a whole lot of tweaking, and added feet. Disclaimer- they are not mine, they are from SketchFab:
“Standard Foot Topo For Ray II” (https://skfb.ly/6SZZM) by ChamberSu1996 is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
Feet are not something worth my time, honestly speaking, especially because there’s a (disturbingly high) number of highly realistic feet already out there 
At this point, things are looking really good- 2500 faces, great topology, great deformation, etc. However, I do need help- a sanity pass, if you will- with proportions. Would someone please be so kind as to download this and give it a look over and tell me if I screwed anything up proportionally? Again, this is a bit stylized, but my hope is to keep it within a reasonable distance of realistic.
bm_d_sharing.zip (900.6 KB)
Note that you can toggle out of camera view to lock the rotation of the viewport on the right. This will also hide the little blue dude. It makes more sense when you actually open the file.
It’s kind of embarrassing that this has taken me three days, I should be faster than this at this point in my journey. Blame the cold.
3 Likes
I’ve added a head and done quite a bit more proportion tweaking:
Honestly speaking, I feel like I’m still missing something really obvious proportionally, but I can’t put my finger on it. I’m not super happy with the head either, so that may not be a permanent fixture. This version is also available if you want to take a gander:
bm_d_sharing2.zip (958.1 KB)
Again I can tell something is off but I’ve been staring at this for too long and I’m questioning myself. I think something about the head is the wrong size? Something about the arms is wrong too. I’m going to drive myself crazy if I keep doing this, though, so I’m going to walk away and hope someone smarter than me has chimed in tomorrow morning
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You see, proportion and topology are always tricky, so I have my own template which work well for me so far. You can get it here.
I’ve shared this on someone else’s post before, and it’s oddly popular with 50 clicks on it. So I guess people find it useful. I hope you find it the same as well.
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Character Creation. That’s nice.
Here are some tips:
Andrew Loomis - human figure proportions;
SpeedChar Youtube channel.
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I have all of Andrew Loomis’ books - big fan- but I haven’t thought to check this against them yet. Thanks for the reminder!
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Hm. You know I am not good at this, right?
Caveat out of the way: Something about the upper arm doesn’t seem right to me. Or rather, it’s probably the shoulder – that seems too small in comparison with the upper arm.
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I’ve been thinking the same thing, so I’m glad to hear someone else thinks it 
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My observation:
The whole span of the arms is usually about the height of the person.
But I feel like that is caused when you have a small body with long legs. Legs apparently are just a bit longer than the body (in some cases the opposite), and the shoulder width (I don’t know which part of the body to match this to) might be better wider.
Overall: I feel like the torso is a bit too short and narrow (small) compared to the rest, which might make the arms seem too thick, and the legs bulging out from the sides, while not being able to carry that head around. The feet might be just a bit small, but that’s compared to the hand, which I feel is already affected by the head specifically. I’m ignoring the head, since (at least in anime) that’s what people usually make bigger, but even then the other parts of the body are proportional to each other.
Going from the top again: Head too big > hands become big / shoulder width seem narrow.
Torso small > arms & legs seem too thick/long (which it probably is compared to the torso, but opposite with head). Those two lines of thought make the hands a bit big while the feet look small.
I feel like the “Overall” thought process is closer to your making process, but anyway.
Also, I agree with the arms part. The elbow joint looks like it’s turned 90 degrees. When your hands are facing down, the elbow joint should still be bending on the Z-axis. Try twisting your hand while reaching out in front of you, or do a T-pose. While the hand twists around, the elbow joint won’t as much. Apparently, your two forearm bones cross each other while doing this, allowing you to twist your hand while the elbow stays.
Or maybe the joint is correct, but it looks like the forearm is going above the upper arm, breaking the joint, possibly. Or maybe the joint isn’t even there… I think that’s what it is, the bulges of the topside of the arms aren’t matching up with the lower-side bulge, which makes it look like the joint will bend upwards.
Hmm, I don’t know where I’m going with this, maybe I’ve looked at it for too long as well
Sorry if I over-explained some parts with not-so-explanatory words, I’m not good at this either (Grammarly says it’s not good). I’m not an expert on this topic as well, what do you think?
I do think though, that your individual body parts are looking good 
(Not to be creepy)
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