Ok, so basically this is a personal project to create a NextGen-ish character. Basically the following pipeline:
Basemesh, HD sculpt, low poly mesh, bake, texture, etc.
I’m also going to be rigging this character once he’s done for my reel to show character animation as well.
So, clearly not finished yet. I created the base mesh in Blender 2.56a in about 4 hours. I’m using Sculptris for sculpting the high res model. I have ZBrush 4, but I’m favoring sculptris because its doing a mighty fine job, and I can detail exactly where I want without ending up with 10 million polys (or more). So, for sculpting, I’ve probably got about 4 hours in so far, still a ways to go.
Left: Sculpt so far. Right: Original Blender basemesh that was brought into Sculptris.
That’s definately looking great, I love the style, but I agree with thedaemon about a few more polygons on the low poly model, but I suppose it does depend what the character will be doing, there’s always a hierarchy of how many polygons are necessary depending on how important the model is. I also notice there is no detail in the ears, are you planning on adding any? I can’t wait to see a finished prouct, keep it up
guys I think that’s his base mesh that he used for sculpting he hasn’t retoped it yet to create his low lowpoly mesh. He outlines his workflow quiet clearly in his post, basemesh->hd sculpt->lowpolymesh->bake->texture.
Wow, I didn’t realize how much this forum moved these days! Thanks guys, and yes, that is just my basemesh… the topology is so gross, just something to get the basic shape to take in for sculpting. I’ve also noticed some notable proportional issues between the original drawing and my model so I fixed a few of those last night. I’ll get more work done on him tonight and post an update.
I can’t wait to see an update, looking at the model again I notice that the thumb looks a bit odd from the angle the right hand is on. It seems to just be a flat extension of the hand, maybe if you pulled it in a bit at the base of the thumb?
If I might ask, why model the low poly version twice? I’ve been seeing this alot and I don’t understand why people don’t do it right the first time. I’m currently working on some game model and I plan on doing high poly normal maps, but I was going to use my base mesh for low poly. Why would I not do this? Thanks
Basically the reason I’m doing the low poly twice is this: Initially the basemesh is just a rough shape to get something to sculpt on. Topology isn’t the focus, just the primary shapes and proportions. During the sculpting process, some of the proportions may change enough that the basemesh couldn’t be used for the game model. Or, details may be added that weren’t put into the original mesh and would have to be added later anyway. Also, once the model gets subdevided, its no longer exactly the same shape so it would have to be conformed to the sculpted mesh anyway before it could be baked. Another reason the low poly is created after the sculpt is that since the shape is locked in the HD model, the topology can be altered, removed and recreated as much as you want without fear of loosing the shape. I know before I started sculpting, it was always a pain if I got the shape I wanted but then decided I needed/wanted to change the topology. I had to be extra careful to not destroy the desired shape while rebuilding the desired topology.
There’s really no purpose for the original basemesh other than giving you something to sculpt the HD model out of. Now, with ZSpheres in ZBrush, and dynamic tesilation in Sculptris, the need for a basemesh is going away. Now its becoming more and more common to just create the HD model with these techniques because of how easy it is.
Tech and history aside, once the high resolution sculpt is done, the low poly game model can be created right on top of the sculpt, making sure its an exact fit to the model for baking.
Ok, just got home from work so now I’m off to work on this some more… I’ll post an update in a few hours.
Update: Alright, so there’s not a TON to show but I did promise an update. I mainly focused on the hands. In my original post I had done hardly any work on them at all, thats the main reason they looked so bad. I also reproportioned the head area, moving his eyes and brow down, lifting the top of his head and shifting around the upper lip and cheek areas to better match the concept drawing.
Yeh that’s good, the hands definately look much better. It’s looking great, for some reason I’m always drawn to that dip between the nose and lip. Keep up the good work
Alright, a fairly big update. I did a lot of work on the ears this time around. Mainly because it was the only part left that hadn’t really been touched since I divided the basemesh :). I’m not TOTALLY happy with them yet, but they’ll do for now. The main thing I did other than the ears is a lot of surface detail. I added a lot of wrinkles, creases and veins, as well as a bit of micro bump/detail across the entire character. I also lowered his head a bit from my last update. The drawing had a much shorter neck than I had going on, so I shortened that up a bit to match the drawing closer.
Hey dude, that’s a very nice job, I liked a lot your character, I’m following your progress in this. But, looking at it, I would say that it reminds me much more a Goblin than a Troll, but it’s just an observation, I really haven’t critiques at all
Quick update. I haven’t had too much time lately to work on this but here’s the latest. I went over the model and pushed in the creases a bit to make them pop a little more before this.
I started modeling the Low poly model with Blender’s retopo tools. I decimated the mesh a little in Meshlab from 2.3 million to 800k before taking it into blender. Here is the head with the normal map baked and some basic test texturing.
Sorry to kind of derail your thread but does blender 2.5 have retopo? Oh and great work on the troll! It inspired me to start work on a goblin creature of my own!
Yea it does… they kinda hid it but its there. Its under the snapping functions. Thanks btw, I’m actually kinda surprised with myself at actually keeping motivated on this project. Usually I loose interest by this point.
Nice character. Reminds me of the miners in the Galaxy Quest (Tim Allen, Sigourney Weaver, ring a bell?) movie, although a little different when it comes to the arms. It’d be great to see this well done and moving around a realistic back drop.
