Hello blender artists. I hope you guys and gals are doing well. I’m working on a sculpt study of one of Amelie Lundahl’s paintings (Flower Girl). I’m looking for critique/workflow tips on these two specific things;
How close is the likeness of the sculpt to the original painting?
Workflow question/tip/clarification: What is the best workflow for having changes in my high resolution sculpt reflect quickly in my low poly version? (I’ll explain this question below)
So my end goal for this project is a low poly model with hand-painted textures. I have never taken a character to full completion before (textured, rigged, and posed). I have always just done sculpts. This would be my first complete character.
I’m planning on texturing the face first to see how close my likeness is. Right now I’m in the middle of retopo, then I’ll be hand painting the textures. Then I will post a render of the hand-painted face for critique. My biggest fear during this critique phase is that I might get critiques that would necessitate me to edit my high poly sculpt. If I need to edit my sculpt, what is the best workflow to translate these changes to my low poly as quickly as possible?
For character creators out there, do you guys always have to edit the high sculpt? And when you do edit it, do you tediously retarget the low poly to the new changes?
Any help/tips you can give me would be greatly appreciated. Sorry if my question sounds so vague or noobish.
Some minor quibbles, considering I can’t even get close to this good…
Why are her nostrils so bright?
The child-like look the artist has gone for, involves a “fat chin” -that bit underneath the jaw is a little puffy, sort of not quite the Rubens look. You can almost see a bit sagging under the jaw and the chin itself in the painting and maybe puffier back of the jaw. (This is the bit vain women today get a chin tuck to remove)
If you’re going for accurate reproduction of the character, I would look into adding a bit of this.
Also, edge of her right eye (on the left) seems further out and not as recessed as the painting. (Actually, when staring at the painting, it seems a little not quite right in eye placement, but hey… it works) The fleshy part of the cheekbone line extends up and past the eye in the painting. Again, are you looking for a reproduction of the look or just something similar? The painting’s face/head seems to be longer vertically than your sculpt.
But again - minor picking. The whole is incredibly well done and I’m just being minorly constructive, since you asked.
Hello! Creating a 3D model from just one image is very challenging and it’s not easy to get to the point where your brain recognizes the person and tells you, “yes, that’s the same person.”. It’s even more difficult when you want to copy the style and lighting of the reference.
You made good progress so far. To me, the sculpt could be a sister of the garden girl. To increase the likeness of the sculpt I would change a few things:
The focal length of the viewport (side panel) and the camera for the render to a value between 85 and 110mm. These are common values for portraits. This also works for painting. The default value of 50mm is close to a view of how our eyes see a scene. But this results in distortion and does not match the image.
About the face
I tried to “photoshopped” your screenshot a bit with Gimp to give you an idea. I’m bad with overpainting but I hope it still helps.
your sculpted face looks too round. I would make the face a little narrower (90%, maybe a bit more?)
the facial contours are missing. Make the forehead, cheekbones, and jawline a bit more prominent. With a flat shading, you can check the silhouette. See the example below.
the chin is taller (Z-axis) in the painting. But when you make the face narrower it might be fine.
the lower lip is a bit smaller (just Z-axis) and you might need to move up the mouth a bit.
the bridge of the nose is too hard in the transition to the cheekbones. The upper part of the nose is just the skullbone and skin. The transition is hard between the eye sockets but the In the middle (Z-axis) the transition to the cheeks should be fairly smooth.
the nasal wings should be slightly smaller (Z-axis) but wider (X-axis). There is also a little wrinkle that can be added later (MultiRes, see below).
the eyes are too big. I scaled them down to 80%. In the painting, she has sly eyes with the lower eyelids slightly raised. I would push the lower eyelids a tiny bit up and smooth the transition a bit. There is also a diagonal “wrinkle” that runs from the lacrimal gland towards the cheek.
add a bit more volume to the tissue below the eyebrows, the area in the eyesocket above the eyelids.
retopology (create a low-poly mesh from the high-poly version)
add a MultiRes modifier to the low-poly mesh
optional: add a ShrinkWrap modifier to the low-poly to get details back from the high-poly sculpt
optional: sculpt to MultiRes to add fine details, like wrinkles, scales, scars, etc.
bake a normal map from the MultiRes
duplicate the low-poly mesh, remove the MultiRes modifier, and use the baked normal map
You can sculpt a low-poly mesh like a high-poly one to make changes. In consequence, you can skip step 1 and 2 and just use a premade base mesh and sculpt it into shape to save time.
The MultiRes modifier allows you to switch (viewport) levels and reshape the base mesh.
@md2000@JoeBlunder Thank you guys for the crit. I went ahead and textured the piece only for me to get rid of the textures later on because of edits to the mesh. I had a sneaking suspicion that was going to be the case. The good news is that the texturing didn’t really take me that long since I was going for a painterly effect instead of realistic. So all in all I just lost less than ten hours of work.
As of now, I’m just going to finalize the sculpt of the character (her body and outfit). The current state of my face WIP;
Still looks good. Very good. better than my efforts have been so far.
I wonder if the puffy lower/back cheeks are from the way the girl is drawing her head backward.
But the chin is maybe not so much “longer” as she’s got the beginnings of a double chin, which makes her have more of the “baby face” look. Again, exacerbated by the way she’s pulling her head back in the pose, compressing the lower jaw flesh.
Thank you. I honestly think your earlier assessment of it being an early double chin/baby fat is correct than her head leaning back as the cause of the bulge. my attention is elsewhere right now but I have taken yours and Joe’s critique in mind. I’ll try to add your suggestions the next time I’m able to.
to give you an idea. I’m bad with overpainting but I hope it still helps.
