This is my first attempt at sculpting a head in a 3D program. I’d like some advice on how to make the sculpture be more “crisp”. Critique is very welcome.
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That is very good for a first sculpture, I like that it is not a “perfect face” and think that it has a lot of character.
I would work a bit more on the lips, they seem to be “sucked in” and I am not to keen on the shape between the eyebrows.
Those are the 2 places that distract me.
Viewing more angles can give a better idea of the general form.
I am not an avid sculptor so these are just my impressions. I am not sure what you mean by more “crisp” I get the feeling of a stone sculpture with this (which I quite like).
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Surely you must have some background in an other art medium? Because this is an excellent sculpt.
The difference between a traditional sculpt and a computer sculpt is that you have to manage the resolution. It can be a good idea to start at a lower resolution to get the general shape correct, then progressively remesh the model finer and finer to get increasingly smaller details in.
If you want something that looks more crisp, you should remesh the model finer than this, it’s the main way you can sculpt finer details.
You might also try the crease and pinch brushes. They attract polygons towards your stroke, allowing a line to be tighter. A little warning though, this can cause the polygons to get visibly stretched and hinder further work in the area if you overdo it.
An other option is the “dyntopo” mode. It’s a sculpt mode that will allow extra polygons to be added in real time to the areas you sculpt, so you can add very fine details in spots where there wouldn’t be enough faces to support those details.
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Thanks! I agree and admit that I somewhat rushed some parts of the face (including the ears). The thing that bothers me, is the pixelation on some of the transitions and features and when I try to smooth them out, it looks uncertain . I’m struggling to get the shapes and creases to turn out the way I want them look…Probably because digital sculpting is new to me.
Yes, thank you. I mainly to do 2D art (traditional & digital) but we also have a sculpting course at school.
Thanks for the advice, I was aware of remeshing and increasingly added more resolution to the mesh as I established basic shapes and details but I think I will also look into dyntopo.
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Looking at your model, I am thinking you can probably get the resolution finer than that if you have an even somewhat decent computer. If you can’t get it with remesh, you might be able to add a subdivision modifier with 1 level of subdivision and get more detail that way (and apply the modifier so you can sculpt on the result).
You could also set the model to “shade smooth”. It will visually blur the borders between faces, giving the illusion that the model is smoother than it is. You can also try “shade auto-smooth”, which will keep the sharper edges but blur the rest. Although, keeping the faces hard isn’t a bad idea during the sculpting process, so you can see what you are doing to the polygons and know if you are stretching them in weird ways.
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I should also note that if you were sculpting a character for a movie, it would go through further steps after sculpting which would allow the model to be cleaned and finer details to be added.
So if you are doing a sculpt with remesh, it will always remain a little bit lumpy in its current form (though you could manage to get the lumpiness very fine), and that’s to be expected.
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After a character is fully sculpted, it would go through the process of retopology, where you would reconstruct its polygon structure into a more even grid. This allows the lumpiness of remesh to be cleared and will allow a character to deform cleanly if it gets animated.
After retopology, the model would be textured through various techniques. This allows not only color, but also adding much finer details than sculpting could ever do.
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