been working on this for a while now, please don’t hold back on the crits…
Not bad!
I think the back looks better than the front…
from the front it looks like the pectoral muscles are finishing too high up the chest.
starting from the collar bone they should probably extend down by 50% more than they do…
The side pose reveals some problems with how the biceps, triceps and shoulder deltoids fit together…
The biceps/triceps should both look like they insert under the shoulder… and the shoulder really inserts half way down the upper arm…
Personally I think the pose is too straight from the side (it’s impossible to actually stand like this) which can make it difficult to judge… teh center of mass in a static standing pose should be above the balls of the feet.
I’d rotate the thighs back slightly and the feet up to compensate… the torso itself could allow a little arch of the spine too (bum back, chest tilted up and shoulders back slightly…) I must admit I overdo that myself though! the bum could blend into the tops of the outer thighs a little too… (looks saggy compared to his overall “buffness”… groin and pelvis in general could do with some work… but i guess with teh lack of genitalia you’ll probably be covering that up at some point… 
Anyway, it looks like a nicely studied piece that’s pretty good already!
Hope my mutterings help!
thanks for your critique, you have given me quite a bit to ponder about.
i think you are right in that right now everything looks a bit too straight and uptight…
however i have been told that modeling a character arched back too much will most likely result in problems when animating it later, so i’m gonna be very careful about that area.
its surprising to hear that you like the back best… this area has always been the hardest for me.
its actually the first time that i’m somewhat happy with how it turned out.
this is the first time that i really took the time to study exactly how every muscle is connected to the bones, instead of just approximating their mass… big a-ha moment there.
so i’m very thankful for your comments about how to improve em.
when i get home from work i’ll try to improve the silhouette and make the shapes a little more dynamic as well as relaxing the pose some. once i have these things sorted out i’ll add the missing muscles… theres lots of stuff to do in the belly area and at the lower end of the chest.
ps.:
the guy is a bit too buff for what i actually have in mind, but exagerating kinda makes it easier to figure out what goes where.
i’ve been changing quite a bit, the new pic doesn’t really show much of it…
been focusing on the head and overall proportions today… i’ll post some better pics tomorrow as i have them on the other computer…
i’ve also been messing with DOF and SSS a bit… DOF is waaaay too exaggerated… but it was fun to play with and learn something new.
ultimately the model is going to be the base for a couple of game models so this was just pure fun/learning.
update:
i have mainly worked on the face abs and pelvis, bit on the arms as well… redid the legs, focus was on the overall shape and knees. worked a bit on the outline, haven’t really changed the pose yet tho.
experimented a bit more with SSS and DOF and added some silly boxes in the background to make the DOF noticeable.
what do you think?
Very cool, I like the shaders
UPDATE:
new face… minor tweaks all over the place… worked a bit on the pose.
i think whats bugging me the most are the forearms… any suggestions?
Very nice! I’m surprised this hasn’t gotten more attention. The forearms look fine to my eyes…At least from this angle. It would be nice if you could render out some orthos so we can see the changes you’ve made since the first post. I would also like to see some closeups of the “problem” areas like the feet, hands, and head. Overall a very nice and accurate sculpt! Do you plan on retopologizing, rigging, and texturing it?
-FD
thx for your kind words.
yup it’ll be retopoed and rigged as well as textured… its going to be the base for many models that are to be used with the source engine. a female version is coming up soon as well.
and… clothes of course.
i will post some orthos and detail shots later, since i’m at work right now.
whoopsey! totally forgot about the pic
here it is:
i didn’t post the detail shots yet because i was in the process of retopoing the mesh to create a new base model… the topology of the hi poly wasn’t very good, and it got stretched quite a bit while sculpting, so i spent some time to figure out how to carry over all the details to the retopoed mesh with multires on using the displace modifier… i’m really surprised how well it worked.
the new mesh has much better topology, however i still can’t seem to get a much higher polycount…
its weird…
i’m on a phenom x6 3.3ghz with 16gigs of ddr3 ram and a radeon 6950
yet i still can’t seem to go much higher than 1-2 million polygons…
shouldn’t i be able to at least get up to the 6 millions that jonathan williamson is getting as he explains in one of his tips over at blendercookie?
right now i haven’t even gotten 2.5 million to run smoothly…
anyway… new pics comin up later, might even release a blend file of the retopoed mesh with the normal map and/or a displacement texture.
EDIT: ok did some further tests and i did get slightly more than 3 million to run smoothly… this seems to depend on more than just the amount of faces as i get very different results every time i try… very odd.
its amazing what you can do with displacement maps… it allows me to upload a model that was almost 100mb in a file that is now just slightly larger than 3mb
the file contains the basemesh with a subsurf modifier and a 4k displacement texture… the texture size might even be a bit overkill … i baked the displacement for the second subdivision… so its not exactly at the same subdivision that my original model was at and going higher causes distortions, but they can be easily and quickly smoothed out in sculpting mode if you exchange the subsurf modifier with a multires one and apply the displace modifier…
if you like the model and have some use for it, feel free to use it in whatever way you like… if it’s going to be part of a larger project i’d like to know about it and be credited, tho.
if you know of ways to improve either the shape of the hi poly, or the topology of the basemesh, please let me know.
i think this is much better than uploading alot of pics showing detail areas… this way you can inspect the whole thing from all angles, and i can’t attempt to hide any bad parts.
EDIT: forgot to post the link http://www.sendspace.com/file/8v99l8
EDIT2: minor update… the model was rigged and skinned and exported to the .smd format and then compiled
this is a shot of the sourceSDK modelviewer
this is showing only the model with normal maps and a very simple color map playing the default idle animation.
i’m very happy with the result, overall it deforms quite well and i only have to do some minor tweaking of the hands and armpit area.
next up: creating some clothes.
photo textures, normal/spec maps and SSS and ray traced shadows
- some fooling around with color correction and a silly background in GIMP
3800x4800
this is all still 1 mesh… eyelashes and hair in general are modeled onto it and are also in the texture/normal map… eventually i will create alpha planes or particle hair… or both.
oh and the nails on the thumbs are still missing in the texture.
full resolution:
http://img98.imageshack.us/img98/6797/sk4v.jpg
particles for the hair and eyebrows would definitely improve this model… a couple of other minor things that you could do is add a subdermal texture to add a more fleshy feel and sale up the small toe. The two smallest toes actually look too small… idk why that is bothering me so much. More detail in the face could add a lot too… and he NEEDS eyelashes haha. And like you said fingernails etc.
looking good so far. Excited to see where this will go!
I would like to see you take a little out of the legs. They seem solid like stumps. If your gonna use this model as a base for more models I think you would want a model with an average body build ( meaning not leaning towards muscular or skinny) Upper half is starting to get a nice muscle structure. Its definetly a good study on anatomy.
Good study.
Anatomy is hard : it takes a lot of study and practice to get it right …