This is a character for one of my assignments for my degree. Sadly we are limited to XSI for it, so it hasn’t been made in Blender (I hope no one minds). I miss the Blender community and won’t be able to use it much for awhile since I’m being kept quite busy with various things.
Anyway, he isn’t actually supposed to be a shaolin monk, just based off one. I’m still in the process of tweaking the mesh. I’m going for a sort of stylised realism, which is why the muscles are as defined as they are (he’ll be in my portfolio too so I wanted him to be more detailed). Please excuse the basic materials used.
@Xzzy: Unfortunately I’ve not learnt much from the module this is for. It is an XSI module (beginner level) so all I really had to do was learn the hotkeys/workflow etc. and just use the same techniques as before. I’ve been working on it on an off for a few weeks, doing a LOT of minor tweaking and spending a lot of time sorting proportions.
@Shadowman99: Wow, praise from THE shadowman I’m honoured. I wasn’t keen on XSI at first (the usual when moving to a new program) but I’m comfortable with the modelling tools now. A few tools are better than Blender’s (the ‘move point tool’ is great) but overall I think I used to work a bit faster in Blender. The main problem with XSI in regards to modelling IMO, is that it isn’t Silo . Silo is just superb.
@BgDM: Cheers. Yeah that pole concerned me too, but the quick tests I did on moving the brows around didn’t cause any smoothing/deformation problems, so I thought it best to leave it as is instead of make it more complicated to get rid of the pole.
really beautiful, have you done much anatomy study before? I have seen your work and really enjoy it, but I must admit I don’t know enough about you! I’ve been kept unfortunately a bit busy now and can’t keep up with so much happening here
if your needing some crit, imo the lower back looks like it could have 20 minutes of love, but that may be my eyes tricking me, there is some fat storage there i think, everything seems really quite perfect, im sure your going for such a defined look, if your texturing it it should turn out perfect! without shiny phong and adding textures can really lose detail, so since you have it so well clarified it should be nice.
My focus has been on organic modelling for quite awhile now (I just love it :D). I did a man before…errr…that didn’t sound right. I mean I have modelled a man before (based off comic character drawings) and then remodelled him without skin, so essentially modelling all his actual muscles.
So this monk character was not as difficult topologywise, however trying to make him more realistic has required much more fine tweaking.
However the anatomy study helped me greatly in all organic modelling I’ve done since for both topology and understanding how the body is put together.
This one was actually done in Blender.
Please excuse the somewhat shite texturing and terrible proportions.
Not sure what happened to the forehead when I imported it into Zbrush…hmm
The lower back has been bugging me too hehe, but he is going to be wearing a sort of sash that will wrap around and go over a shoulder, so it will cover some of the lower back. I’ll have to see how that turns out at the end before deciding if it’s worth working more on that area.
I’m familiar with your work (love the Shinobi in particular), good luck with project Orange!
Overall the anatomy study looks pretty good! However the front leg muscles do not merge into one big muscle, there are several muscles that end at the sartoris muscle. In your picture those muscles merge into the large middle muscle that connects to the patella (don’t remember the name ) Also the nose and mouth seem to be off on the model. I think If I had done this I would just model the basic form in blender, than take into zbrush and defined the leg muscles.
I didn’t actually have zbrush at the time (also wouldn’t be as good for practicing topology). The problem with trying to model something like this is pretty much every reference picture of muscles I looked at was different (including those leg muscles). So it ended up as more of an approximation. I consider the project done anyway
For the monk I’m intending on using the new XSI pelt mapping tool for the uv mapping. I’ll let you know how it compares to Blender’s LCSM.
Your model looks really great, however your anatomy for the lower back area is wrong. A person will really only get that horizontal dip across there if they’ve got fat deposits that make up the classic ‘love handles’ or ‘spare tire’, and from looking at this guy’s physique, I can’t see him having that. You’ve got the upper latissimus dorsi about right, but you don’t finish it out to the bottom. The muscle turns to sinew as it tapers down to a point around the top insides of the gluteal muscles. It’s also got the iliocostalis lumborum running underneath it down towards the bottom, which bulges the sinewy part out some, too. This (especially in body builder types like your model) makes a sort of ‘V’ that points right down the butt crack.
I know I just typed in a bunch of gobbeldeygook, so just google ‘back muscles’ in the google images, and you’ll be able to see what I’m talking about.
Again, great model, though. I’m definately going to study your wires.
awesome, inspirational model, any chance of shot screen shots of the wireframe for the side of the head? So we can see the ear and jaw, I’ve been working through the joan of arc tutorial http://www.3dtotal.com/ffa/tutorials/max/joanofarc/joanmenu.asp, but he seems to introduce tris to get the jaw bone, and since your model seems to be only quads, I wondered how you did it… They do say, that Plagiarism is the greatest form of flattery,
. Silo is just superb.
) Also the nose and mouth seem to be off on the model. I think If I had done this I would just model the basic form in blender, than take into zbrush and defined the leg muscles.
