Video lecture!

Here is a video I made that I hope will show some of the techniques I have been using. Its of my work from week2 as I thought it would be a nice section to use.

I plan to talk about Polypaint and Layering. I will show why and how I use them. This should add to the other blogs where I might of mentioned them or given a brief exploration.

Last Test

Here is my last Sculpt! This was truely the hardest and most complex!

I took the sculpt of the bent knee sculpt and cut the bones out purely in Zbrush! The idea was to use the things I have learnt to try carve the bones out and try get something that represents the bones that would be creating the knee.







So first thing first was to use the Slice tool which cut my sculpt up into different groups. I took those new groups and applied them all to their own layer so now I can work a section without the chance of ruining the other sections that I don't want changed.

I took what I learnt from polypaint and again highlighted the areas I wanted to keep and sculpt.


The next stage was to sculpt the actual bones from this by cutting and scratching away. However once I had the areas that I highlighted blocked in. I then cut them into their own groups the same way I did previously so I can sculpt and shape all the bones individually.

PolyPaint

Here is a quick image showing how I have used polypaint to draw over my sculpt so when I bend the leg I have a guide to look at and keep the landmarks consistent.

Legs: Final

 Here are the last images of the legs as they stand! I'm fairly happy with the outcome as legs are strangely very difficult as with the reference the model never had really defined muscles so finding a landmark was hard and thats the first challenge. First finding the landmarks then trying to place muscles as well as keeping proportions and forms correct.

However I have learnt alot and the first sculpt of something is always the hardest. Especially when there some many different variations and things that can cause problems. However I think there is room for improvement.

Leg Reworks and Development

The sculpt of the leg is getting there! Also the first look at the leg that I have transposed to a 90 degree angle. 

Mostly I have had to work on the shapes and the general forms of the muscles. I have worked into the knees alot as they looked off and the structure wasn't right (maybe bad proportions?). Also when I bent the leg I realised muscles looked abit out of place. 

The areas in red show the changes that occur once the leg was bent, these muscles are now tensed and straining. Also the area marks in red lines is an area I tried to develop as thats where a long sheet of Tendon attaches to the lower leg which causes this flattened area.

Legs!

Here is the first look at the leg sculpt. This will be the last set of sculpts I do for this project! After that it will be moving onto full body sculpts which will be outside of this blog. But all these sculpts have been me practicing my anatomy and Zbrush sculpting before I get into complex poses!

So here is the first look at the legs straight. I plan to do a bend at 90 degrees once I get the base sculpt to a good place. At this stage I feel that there is a few shape reworks before moving on but I think I'm nearly ready to start transposing the leg into the bent pose.

Here are the reworks I plan to do to refine the shape as I think in some areas its become to wide and out of shape slightly. With these changes I think I would be ready to bend the the leg 90 degrees.

As for muscles and the forms that create, I feel that I have gotten them to a good stage and with the adjustments I plan I think I will only need to do small tweaks.

Legs have been a challenge. Placing the anatomy and landmarks was difficult and took alot of time to get to this stage. But was a huge learning experience for me as I really wanted to get the forms of the knee and leg right.                    

Hand Sculpt

This week is focusing on one of the hardest areas of the body in my eyes. The hands! Yes they are a sculpt on their own, so this week I have sculpted my own hand in a claw type pose. I wanted a test but not enough where I would struggle as this is a learning process and the hand is a challenge without having some twisted crazy pose. First image shows the base mesh where I have started to block out general forms that will be in the hand in what ever pose I have. Also the proportions were off so I wanted to improve on that straight away but these are likely to change as I get posing. The hand proportions are quite strange and I have indicated in red the geral proportions of the hand. The first menecarple is half way up te finger and the second is around about a half of that. I also in blue I have labelled where I am already think about my tenders going down my arms.

This next images shows where I have gotten the my hand in its pose and started getting into the battle of forms. I have struggled abit to try capture the right forms, sometimes it looks really flat but at other angles things seem to stand out and look unnatural. First blue arrow clearly shows that not all fingers are even started. The area circled by yellow shows a finger that needs to be proportioned and correcting as the shape is off completely. The areas in red are areas I have been trying to get their placement right. I've placed the tendens coming up my arm and attaching to the thumb. This placement will effect the whole back of the hand. Also my battle with nail placements and again some of the muscles of the hands that create some of the major deformation of the hand.

Third image show more development into the sculpt. The areas in red are meant to highlight the idea of over modeling and areas that I want to tone down alittle bit and try pay attention to the plane changes they create the pose. In green shows an area that I think is working well. The little finger has alot of movement compared to the other fingers so when the finger is flexed forward it will cause this change in shape and I believe I have captured that.



Final images show where I left this sculpt, for now. I have Labbled one of the images 1-4 to try highlight areas that I think I am going right. 1: shows the bones that when the hand is slightly closed press against the surface and created this type of plane change same again image 3. Image 4 shows how I have had to try make sure I get the correct plane changes when there is muscle or bone or sking being pressed, red shows the tendon that runs down my arm, blue which is one of the key muscles of the hand. Finally green is a plane change that is caused by the pose. I have really enjoyed this week, it's teaching me practice really is the key and I plan to keep doing these exercises only concentrating on one thing at a time to perfect my knowledge of the forms!