I’m asking because nobody likes my model.
Well, you’ve got a good grasp of the basics down, but…well…
…she kinda homely.
It’s obvious you’ve studied enough anatomy to be able to build a good foundation of a human model, and have all the individual parts be immediately recognizable, but it’s still very rough. The silhouette is blocky, the skin is too unnaturally white, the hair, eyebrows, and pretty much everything else are very 90’s CGI. It needs more.
My opinion: you’re off to a good start, but you need a lot more practice.
2 Likes
I think you could change proportions like so
- narrower torso, longer legs, smaller hands.
3 Likes
Looks like you’ve targeted this as low polygon model? You are spending a disproportionate amount of vertices on the feet from what I can tell.
You might want to post multiple wireframe views from different angles to get better feedback on topology.
In broader terms I’d say:
- Proportions.
- Proportions.
- Probably topology.
Feet and hands certainly look very big to me.
2 Likes
I think you need to be clear what your goals are in terms of results.
If you’re going for a toon like character, then this is a good start.
If you’re going for anything resembling realism, then it need a lot more work.
The hair could use some work. I’ve seen your posts working on hair cards. I’ve seen you have better results than this, specifically on the horse (that’s you too, right?).
Your sculpting and proportions have gotten a lot better, though I agree that the hands in particular seem off, as do the overall shape of the feet.
Clothing look fine as a starting point, but again, could be further refined.
1 Like
So, about that turbosquid link… While your deer model looks pretty good, your character modeling skills really aren’t good enough to sell characters yet. Leaving it in the turbosquid store will probably be a demoralizing experience. Look at it this way: MakeHuman is free and open source. If the quality of your model is less than MakeHuman, why would someone pay for your model? (And realistically, MakeHuman quality isn’t good enough either - its saving grace is that it’s free, and CC-0, and with better textures and some sculpting can be made to look good).
I don’t want to be discouraging. It takes a long time to get good at modeling characters, and I’m sure with time you can continue to improve and be capable of a professional level model, but you need to develop a better eye for realistically assessing the quality of your work first, particularly if you want to eventually sell your characters. I’d recommend looking at some tutorials on character modeling, texturing, shaders, and character design.
As for the problems:
- You need to use references for body proportions. Find a an image with a front and side view (or two images, one for each), and drag it into blender, and reference that to fix the shape. A quarter view would be good too. Do that for the body and the face (note: photographs aren’t in ortho, so keep in mind that sculpting or poly-pushing in ortho may not look right in perspective). There are experienced skilled artists who can sculpt without reference, but you aren’t there yet, so use reference. I can’t tell whether this is supposed to be realistic or toony, but either way the hands are too long, probably the feet as well, and the legs are probably too short.
- Tubular Hair, odd eyebrows: The hair looks like low-poly spaghetti, the hairline is a bit high, and the eyebrows are sparse, oddly shaped, and the hairs are pointed up. She also has no eyelashes (which might be fine for a basemesh, but less so for a finished character). There are many tutorials on youtube about using curves for good looking toon hair, or you can go the planes with alpha masks route if you’re aiming for realism.
- Skin looks virtually untextured: Your skin is flat, and probably too pale. Look at some tutorials on texturing skin, even a toon character should have some color to it. The clothes texturing may be fine for a Sim or toon style character, but it is still pretty flat too. Eyes could use some better textures too.
- Facial anatomy: Facial anatomy is hard, and this still needs a lot of work. The eyes, nose, lips, ears all have incorrect forms, and connect to the rest of the face incorrectly.
- Shaders: the metal looks alright, but everything else needs work.
- You need some tutorials on clothes modeling. Consider how clothes are constructed. This includes shoes. Also, hoop earrings go through the earlobe.
- Character design. For a product you are hoping to sell, the character design is not cohesive, lacks personality, intent, and visual interest, and the random blue boomerang looks like it belongs to another character entirely.
4 Likes
I took down my turbosquid listing. I don’t want it becoming a burden.
No artist thinks their work is perfect.
What do you think are the worst parts?
I figured the head would have been the top of the list. But now that I had some feedback on the model. I can see the faults in it, that they have said.
Portraits and proportions is the main focus right now.
I’m not an expert user of Blender by any means, having just started in February. But I just wanted to add that it helps to figure out why you are doing what you are doing.
I started out making some sci-fi images, but quickly moved on to furniture renders, product renders etc. These works often get likes - photorealism is popular. I hoped it might help me find work. But for me they soon get boring. Realism is what Blender is designed to do. There’s a lot of competition, and frankly, a lot of jobs seem to allow little creativity. I realised this is not what I enjoy about 3d modelling.
For me it is more interesting to make “art” - more painterly, to see what Blender can do outside the core use for industry. My latest works get zero likes or attention on BA. But I still post them, and carry on. I put a lot of work into them, and for nothing else, having them here (and elsewhere) is a motivator for me to continue (I can look back on my work). Likes and support from others are great, but it’s not the core reason I make them. Obviously it is important to listen to feedback and criticism, but don’t let it be the only reason you create.
Your work should at the very least aim to please yourself. Anyone else is a bonus. If you are solely motivated by likes, I expect it would become very tiresome. It can be very shallow - in general, people like things they’ve seen before, even if it’s not very well done. If you’d made a model of Mario, or Link, it might have gotten more attention, even though the model still needs work. But is that satisfying? How would you stay motivated if others lost interest in your work further down the line?
Maybe this is a bit more philosophical than you were expecting. But to me whilst this model has issues, I think more the issue is your desire to see results too quickly, in terms of monetisation etc. At the end of the day we are going up against seasoned verterns of industry, professional artists, and plain gifted people with years of experience. Everyone starts somewhere though, and in my opinion the hardest part of learning any new skill is just keeping it going past the first few hurdles. The next thing you make will undoubtedly be better and closer to being suitable for sale. But maybe it’ll be 50 models down the line before they do sell. Don’t be put off. It’s hard, but something being hard is usually what makes it rewarding in the first place.
1 Like
I hope I didn’t come across too harsh in my post. You have improved a lot, and your deer and horse are good, so you’ll get there eventually. Humans are so hard they’re basically supposed to look bad when you start out, that’s more or less part of the process. Same for clothing and hair.
Just give it time, and keep practicing.
What immediately stands out to me are the eyebrows and the ponytail. (In image #1.)
But – you know – you can easily fix these problems. I wouldn’t use the word, “worst.”