Week 13 - 8th of December - Rendering the models

This was the most relaxing part of the project.  The BPR tool in Zbrush is a fairly new system which allows you to render out different passes of the figure and compose them together in post using a programme such as photoshop.  In this case I rendered out an ambient occlusion, shadow, master beauty, a mask, and a depth pass.  My favourite pass to play around with was the depth because it allowed me to play with the lens blur effect in photoshop, giving some good realistic results.

I used a matcap shader with a clay finish and applied it to the models.  I wanted the eyes to stand out so I applied a basic material 2 shader to that. This gave the eyes a more shinier feel to it.  Ultimately I wanted the renders to look like they were clay sculptures and I was pretty happy with the result.

To present the models I also sculpted something more realistic as a base for the models to stand on besides the usual box or cylinder.  For the female I wanted something to accompany her sexuality, so I thought a silk cloth would be good for this.  For the man I wanted something heroic and manly.  This got me thinking about creating sky scrapers, however I wanted something simple so I just sculpted a rock.  This still proved effective in my opinion.

Overall I was pretty happy with my success with this project.  I learnt alot about the way the human body is shaped and sculpted and drawn.  I wish i could name all the muscles off by heart but I would probably be able to name a handful at most.  However whats important is that I know, at least, sub consciously, how the body looks, and have a deeper appreciation for it.  The names of each muscle will come in time.

The last few weeks were, admittedly, rushed to an extent.  I ended up having to fit in 3 weeks within one week, however it proved pretty achievable as I tend to work more efficiently near the end of tri.

The female figure was not a part of the original weekly tasks, and it is something that I do not regret doing.  Doing the original plan meant doing 3 male poses, and this would just be exhausting after a while.  Sculpting and posing the female was a refreshing experience and rejuvenated the project for me in a sense.  

I hope you all enjoyed my journey to discovering the human body and I will try to keep updating my progress with things that I continue to learn along the away.

Week 12 - 8th of December - Posing the female figure

This week was again an enjoyable one as I got to pose the female figure in any pose I found appealing.  This again meant gathering a lot of reference imagery.  At first I was going to take the male figure's pose and transform that into a female form.  However I really wanted to show off the femininity of the woman.  So I looked at models and superstars and got a bit lost in the process :)  

After about an hour of researching I found a pose which suited my purposes and got to work.  When posing this character I really wwanted to focus on my speed and took less care in getting everything perfect.  It took my 4 hours to pose and fix the sculpt to the point you see below.  Unfortunately I do not have a video showing my process but it was exactly the same as the male figure, using the transpose tool.

Next time I will be rendering my characters.  I would like to use keyshot however I do want to keep the project entirely in zbrush so I would probably end up using zbrush's BPR rendering tool.  Hope you guys like it.

The female figure posed

Side view

Side view

Back view

Week 11 - 6th of December - The female figure

The female figure

The female figure was surprisingly easy to sculpt.  This was due to the fact that I spent three quarters of the trimester studying anatomy and sculpting it.  So when adjusting the male figure, all I had to was look at reference of the nude female figure and adjust it accordingly.  Like any endeavour, I began with a fair amount of anxiety.  However with the incredible amount of resources available, I was confident that I would be able to complete this task.  

To get the female figure into a sense of believability, I had to bring down the muscle tonality a fair bit.  This meant using the clay tubes/clay build up with low z-intensity to fill in the recessed places of the mesh.  This meant the muscles would be filled in, giving the impression of the fatty deposits of the human body.

The one thing I wasn't entirely happy with was the hair.  I may actually change the hair when posing because for some reason all I could see when sculpting the hair was the male figure.  

In addition, I had difficulty with sculpting the female legs.  I had to really go in from a low subdivision and shape it out and then in higher subdivision levels create the bony landmarks I wanted.  I got a bit confused as to whether this girl was a fit girl or a little bit chubby.  

Below is a video of my sculpt.  Next time I will be posing the female and finally finish this entire project by rendering out the male and female figure.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k86FYLXUJH8&feature=youtu.be

The female figure

the female face close up

No hair

Week 10 - 28th of November - Posing the male character

Posing

The first thing I thought about when posing the character was what pose I actually wanted to do.  I was thinking about a fighting MMA type pose so I began my research to find a pose that I found appealing.  I then compiled it into a combined picture to make it easier when sculpting as shown below.

Reference images

I then took to moving around the mesh.  The tool I used was the transpose brush in Zbrush.  I would first mask out the arm for example, and then use the transpose brush to draw a line from the shoulder to the tip of the fingers.  I would then use the rotate function of the transpose brush to rotate it into place.  This in turn got it roughly into the pose I wanted it to be as below.

The basic pose

I then had to fix it up because in certain parts the mesh deformed really badly.  This meant going back to lower subdivision levels and doing a smoothing pass on each level up.  It was a bit time consuming, however I got a result which I really liked.  I went a bit overboard with the detailing and in the process made him a bit bulkier then I would've preferred.

The pose refined with hair added

Next time Ill be trying to change the male character I sculpted into a female which should be exciting.  It'll be the first time Ill be sculpting a female character so I'm not sure whether It'll turn out good or not.  However I am confident in my skills as a sculptor.

Week 9 - 21st of November - Hands, feet and figure finish

The hands

The hands to me were one of the most difficult parts to sculpt.  It required me to get into depth with sculpting each individual knuckle and the way it bent and curved.  I noted the arc of the knuckles as they went accross the hand.  The hand consists of the carpals, or wrist bones; the metacrapals, or bones of the palm; and the phalanges, which are the finger bones.

The surface anatomy of the hand is defined mostly by the skeletal structure.  When sculpting, i paid attention to three main surfaces.  The thenar group or the base of the thumb; the hypothenar group the base around the pinky; and the pads for the bases of the fingers.  

At the higher subdivision levels I was adding in finer details which proved more enjoyable such as the wrinkles the knuckles make as they stretch out.  The veins of the back of the palm, and the bony landmarks of the fingers.

The feet

The feet is very similar to the hand from its skeletal structure.  It is made up of metatarsals and phalanages like the hand.  The surface anatomy is again similar, being made up of three major landmarks.  These are called the medial longitudinal arch, the lateral longitudinal arch, and the transverse arch.  The underside has fleshy pads which protect the bones making up the feet.  When sculpting these in, I used the flatten brush to make it seem like they were carrying the weight of the person.  

feet and figure finish

After the feet and hands were sculpted in I took a final look at the sculpture as whole.  The video below shows my process of the feet and finishing off the figure  I ended up reducing the visibility of the muscles and tried to bring it into a sense of reality.  I also kept in mind that I was going to pose this character, so I paid attention to things like the armpit, putting in a deeper hole to make deformation easier.  Overall I was pretty happy with the result.  Next time I will be posing the character and rendering it for presentation.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I41K0bdHEMY

The male figure finished

The feet up close

The hands up close

Week 8 - 20th of November. The Legs

I must apologize for the lateness of this post.  For the past 2 weeks i've dedicated my time to animating my IEP project and have therefore fallen behind.

This week and the next I am going to try to catch up by focusing on the legs today, and finally finishing off the figure by focusing on the hands, feet, and the figure as a whole.

But this week i focused on the legs.  Again I focused on just massing in the forms of the muscles, then broke down each one individually.  The final figure wasn't as detailed as some of the reference images I took from Digital sculpting, but as I did a smoothing pass on the legs, it lost some detail but maintained the overall silhouette.

I broke it down into two cylindrical forms, with a slight taper from the top to bottom.  I also re-addressed the pelvis as it was off the measure guides slightly.  I also massed in the obliques a bit more to maintain a more aesthetically pleasing model.

The muscles of the buttocks consisted of the:

• Glueteus maxmimus
• Gluteus medius

The muscles of the upper leg consisted of the:

• Tensor fasciae lata
• Sartorious
• Gracilis
• Great trochanter
• Iliotibial band
• Vastus lateralis
• Vastus medialis
• Rectus femoris
• Bicep femoris
• Semitendinosus
• Seminmembranosus

The muscles of the lower leg consisted of the:

• Extensor digitorum longus
• Gastrocnemius
• Peroneus longus
• Tibialis anterior
• Soleus

I made most of these muscles visible in the final figure, however some were lost as I did the smoothing pass.  This was slightly intentional as the level of detail did not match with the figure overall.

the final leg sculpt

Diagram displaying some of the msucles

The figure so far

Next time i'll be focusing on finishing the figure and then sculpting clothing.  For the clothing i'll most likely keep it simple and maybe just sculpt pants.  The point of this assignment is to learn the muscular anatomy and i fear that clothing will detract from this.  After this then its off to posing. Can't wait.

Week 7 - 30th of October. The arms

For the arms I was able to sculpt it in alot of detail, even close to the escorche model provided in the digital sculpting book.  However for a more aesthetically pleasing look, I smoothed it down with the clay tubes with low z-intensity and the smooth brush with a low curve.  This meant however that alot of the muscles that I sculpted were lost in the overall sculpt.  However the end result was a more convincing look.  

I started by sketching in the deltoid and biceps, and then moved around the back to the triceps.  The tricky part with the biceps was creating the 3 heads of the tricep muscle and having the deltoid wrap around all 3.  I then moved on to creating a tendon that holds all three muscles together.  

The forearm was by far the most challenging as it is made up of many muscles the way they wrap around the arm.  

The elbow is composed of several bony landmarks.  The main one however is the elbow itself which runs down to the ulna.  The other two are the lateral and medial epicondyles.  The forearm muscles can be simplified into two triangular shapes.  From the back of the arm, you can see the extensors, on the front is the flexors.  Together they radiate out from their insertions and curve around the forearm.  The ulna bone serves as the dividing line between these two groups, the flexors and extensors.  

I also always checked the sillouhette in flat colour mode to get the angle of the highest crest in the top and bottom profiles of the arm muscles.  I also rotated the arms to give a more relaxed look to the body.  Next i'll be focusing on the legs.  

I'm also experimenting with different shaders and rendering which gives a different look and feel to the sculpt.  Below is the video for the sculpt.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mt1dBLBcRUc&feature=youtu.be

Arm from the back

Arm from the front

Top view

Render with different shaders

Week 6 report - 23rd of October. The Torso

Muscles of the front torso

I began by making some general changes to the gesture sculpture i did in week 4.  I also tried to give him a more heroic stance and appeal to his torso.

I first sculpted in the pectoralis by using the clay tubes and just etching in horizontal lines on the chest. I made sure to insert the clavicular head at the top of the pectoralis.  

The abdominal muscles were next and again i used the clay tubes brush with no alpha to sculpt in the soft forms of these muscles.  I'm taking advantage of the fact that if i want to smooth something it is better to do it at a smaller subdivision level rather than a higher one.  

I also realised that you can adjust the smoothing curve of the smooth brush.  If you bring the curve down, what this does is reduce the smoothing the brush does, therefore if you've sculpted in alot of detail but still in rough form, the smooth brush with a lower curve will smooth only the highest surface detail, leaving nearly all the sculpted detail still in but with a smoother look which is what i wanted.

Muscles of the side torso

On the side of the abdominals is the external obliques and serratus muscles.  All these muscles inter-connect with eachother, so as i was sculpting each one at the very end I had to go back in and fill in the gaps so as to make it seem as though they were doing this action.

Muscles of the back torso

The back was a bit more complex as it has the greatest number of muscles visible.  I started by re-addressing the trapezius muscles, sculpting in where it connects to the lattissimus dorsi muscle.  The lattissimus dorsi wraps around to the obliques.  To the left and right of the trapezius muscle are the rhomboids.  At the end i started to think of the arms and therefore sculpted in the deltoids or shoulders, but this will be addressed later. 

Overall I am always moving back and forth between weeks, constantly addressing the face and overall structure of the body.  I hope to bringing the sculpt up in detail rather than concentrating on one area at  a time.

Below you'll find a link to the sculpt timeline as well as a few pictures outlining the different muscle groups and skeletal landmarks of the body.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vUYwkroVbMo&feature=youtu.be

Front

Back

Side

Week 5 report – Friday 18th of October. The face and neck muscles

The Head and Neck.

To sculpt the neck and head, I start by sculpting the form of the skull on the basic shape.  From there I addressed major bony forms of the skull and how they influence the face.  I also thought about how certain muscles influence the final fleshed form. 

I addressed the neck in the same way.  Starting by sculpting the major muscle forms and where it connects to the torso ie. The spine of the scapula and the clavicles. 

The skull

Representing the entire bony structure of the head, the skull consists of serveral distinct parts.  Dividing this up into two major shapes, the cranial mass and the facial wedge. 

The cranial mass is the cranium, the protective casing of the brain.  The facial mass consists of the eye sockets, zygomatic bones, maxilla or upper jaw, and the mandible or lower jaw.

I will be taking a escorche technique to sculpting the face.  Escorche is French for flayed and is a layered approach to sculpting.  I will start by sculpting the skull, then build muscle and fat and skin.  

As I sculpt I am using measure guides provided by Digital Sculpting in Zbrush to help place the features of the skull.  I begin by sculpting the major landmarks ie, the eye sockets and nasal cavity. 

I then move to sketch in the zygomatic bones, making sure to get that zig zag look as it wraps around the face.

I then rough in the jawline, adding negative space for the muscles that will be sculpted in later.  I constantly switch to silhouette ie. Flat colour to adjust the shape of the skull.  I then sculpt in a hole for the mouth and then pull the two ends together. Below is a sculpt video of it

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ptnZQG26Wg&feature=youtu.be

The muscles

For the muscles I used the rake brush and clay tubes with the basic red material applied to give the model a nice colour to the muscles.  I basically followed the pictures given on human anatomy for artists as well as the tutorial to mask out the basic shape of the muscle and fill it in with the rake and clay tubes.  To view this sculpt click here

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7q_k922odV0&feature=youtu.be 

The overlay of skin

Refining the surface meant bringing the model back into a basic material, and then using clay tubes with no alpha and low intensity, and the flatten brush, I was able to put in the fatty tissue and skin of the human.  The challenging part was trying to give the model a smoothed look but not too smooth as to lose some of its realism.  This was done by going in different passes.  The ear was also challenging as I was constantly trying to both get it looking right as well as stay true to its anatomy.

The final face

The biggest challenge overall though was the eye lids.  I spent hours just on shaping the eyes and seeing how light would catch and make shadows.  I made huge improvements on just taking the time to sculpt and shape these.

Final face before fixing up eye lids

Final face front

Final face 

Week 4 report – Friday 11th October. Gesture and masses

To create this form, I had to focus on the different plane crests of the body ie, the flatness of the chest or the side of the leg.  The plane breaks ie when the chest moves onto the abdominal muscles. And the profile of the way body looks in silhouette form.  

This week I focused on blocking out the general form of the character.  I started by sketching in the torso masses by quickly blocking in an oval shape for the torso and a box for the pelvis.   The torso is made up of three movable masses; the cranial mass, the thoracic mass and the pelvis mass.

The legs was the next thing.  Here I quickly sculpted in an oval shape for the muscle groups here.  The legs are made up of interlocking muscle groups but for this part I was only concerned with the most basic shapes.  

The main brushes I used was the clay tubes to build up form, the move brush to get the silhouette right, and the standard brush and inflate brush on the fingers to give it more shape.  I also used the rake brush to fill in areas.  The smooth brush was used with a low intensity to reduce the bumpy look that artists usually find themselves in. 

I constantly checked the silhouette of my figure to make sure that it looked right at all angles.  You can turn perspective on and off in Zbrush as well to get different views.

Sketching in the torso

Sketching in the leg masses

the sillouhette of the arms

constantly checking the sillouhette

I ended up creating 2 gesture figures and 1 planed figure to really get a sense of the human figure in its basic form. The next step is focusing in on the different parts of the body.  Below is the final gesture figure.

I also did a planar analysis on the figure, focusing on using the pinch and flatten brush to create show the different plane changes, and breaks on the model.  This helped me realise how each muscle is formed and wrapped around the body

Week 3 report – Friday 4th of October. Blocking the mesh

Week 3 report – Friday 4^th of October

Zsphere mesh

I created the zsphere mesh on the basis of 8 heads high.  I made sure to hit certain landmarks as below and utilized the measure guides as a tool to achieve this look.

Landmark	Head Measure
Chin	Head 1
Nipples	Head 2
Navel	Head 3
Pubic Bone	Head 4
Lower thigh	Head 5
Bony protrusion of the knee	Head 6
Lower shin	Head 7
Bottom of feet	Head 8

The good thing about zspheres is that you can then use it to create evenly spaced polygons that follow the curvature of the zsphere.  You can then use it as a base mesh for moving onto the next stage.  It was created within a day.  I also purchased the two books aforementioned in the earlier weeks reports