The Development

This was my first piece of development work for the first model I did. As I have shown in a previous post I created a Zbrush model of myself as a zombie. I couldn't quite decide the hairstyle I would have for my main outcome at this point.

These drawings are for my final model. I wanted to develop a model that looked like the drawings above so I attempted to draw the head at different angels. If you look at a previous post of my actual model, this is what it indeed looks like so my work on MudBox turned out very successful to look like my designs.

Here I had a look at many references, preferably of pictures with a person with their mouth open. I thought it would give me more option to creates more designs like these ones and good practice for my drawing skills. :D Even though this was for my final model I thought it would be fun to through in a picture of a zombie, just incase I went back to that idea.

This is a photoshop version of my development work at the top of this post. I thought it would be best to do a photoshop one as well to show in more detail what my model might look like. I could also add more effect and such by doing this.

My sculpting experience

Hello!

In this project we could choose our own thing to do which disturbed me because i had no idea of what to do!
So i looked back on my recent work and thought i might want to model because it will bring my grades up!
But actually i thought no way! i can hit 2 birds with one stone if i model a face and the sculpt it in mudbox. (unfortunately we do not have Zbrush, I wanted to kill myself when i heard this)
So i started out with my last model of work from my last sculpture project which gave me a little head start and gave me an idea of what to do carrying on with my zombification process i tried loading in my old scult in maya and took quite a while because it consisted of 4 million polygons! 'what the ****!'
Yes it caused many problems in maya and it was unable to load into mudbox, so... to start out in maya i had to lower the polygon count so i had to go through the settings and simplify the mesh to it has less vertices, edges and poly count to a minimum of 400 thousand just so i can start to use it without lag.
So after all of that my tutor suggested to re-topologise it is i have a less dense poly count and make it lower resolution so i can get it into mudbox and start sculpting.
I want to be cross marked for modelling and sculpting through this project do i hope i get an extra 10 points for modelling and a distinction for my sculpt.
Here are the stages i went through re-topologising the face:

This photo above is my old version of my sculpt.
I had to use the snapping tool to get the mesh i'm creating around it to keep shape of the face.

i extruded the face to create more faces that was still snapped to the original mesh but again i was retopologising and this was long winded but i had to do it.

So in these picture above and below as you can see I finished one side of my face and the trick is to mirror it on the mother side so i didn't have to retopologise the whole face.

as you can see here is my finished face. I deleted the history of making the model by modify - freeze transofrmations, then edit delete by type then click history to get rid of all this history it took to build my new model. for more info i used this link to help me UV my model to put into mudbox https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OeaOxwS3bnc

As you can see above I had to sort my own Uvs out this was very annoying because i had to select different parts of my model to put in through the UV editor so i could start making it like a face in UVS.

Here are the stages of me mud-boxing :D The image below is my import from Maya i will be working on this to create a better sculpt but first i had to learn about Mud Box and its ...amazing tools... so i tried going on YouTube to see if there are any tutorials but our college computers don't allow us to use YouTube so I went to my teacher Simon he is a god of sculpting! He taught me what brushes do what.

Above in these pictures you can see more of the zygomatic bone (cheek bone) to do this I pulled out where the zygomatic bone would be with the grab tool this is a great tool for moving the mesh around.

Below in this picture i started to use the bulge tool to get a good shape of the muscles aorund the neck as a start.

Below in this image i moved the brow down and further out to get so the eyes had more of a socket to sit in and made it look more defined.

In this picture below i bulged out where the crease by the mouth would be running from around my nose and ending towards the bottom of my shin/mouth.

Below in this picture I sculpted more of an eye socket where the bags would be around the eyes and defining more of  the eye lids.

Below in this picture i again moved the brow to give it an angrier look and looked over exaggeratedto show more of the form.

Here is started to grab and bulge the jaw around to it doesn't look flat like in my pictures above i gave it the correct shape.

In this picture below i gave my sculpt better defined muscles around the neck through going to my 4th sculpt layer i could get more detail into it with the bulge tool.

In this picture below I again bulged the shin out a little more and the jaw it didn't look how a jaw should look and i realized that the jaw is not that long LOL, so i set this as a later task to move the jaw further up. i bulged out the neck muscle again the the obvious bulge tool.

When i was looking at the top of my model it didn't really look like a top of a head so i grabbed the top of the head with an increased brush size for the grab tool and pulled it up and kept smoothing it so it didnt look alienated.

Above in this picture I gave my dude more creases around his brow to give it more of an exaggerated angry look to him I did this with the reverse bulge tool and kept smoothing it into the head because it looked weird when I first did it and looked like he was repeatedly stabbed with a small sharp object.



















Above in this picture i thought my sculpt was coming a long quite nicely even though I still need to sort out that abnormal jaw size i personally think i am getting quite good of understanding the form and how to sculpt form in my own way.

Below in this picture it is on a sculpting level of 5 and i stayed on this level because i think i didnt need to go any further with detail because it showed good form.

In This Picture above it has the sculpting layer to 3 im very sorry i didnt have one of four but it wouldnt upload to blogger :( it shows a lower resolution of my model and how i developed through layers.

This is my sculpting layer 2, it shows an even lower resolution of my model and how i developed through less layers.

This is my scultping layer 1 it shows an even more basic resolution of my model.

This is my basic layer 0 in this layer i tried to get form so i could go through to more detail but i need the basics of the zygomatic bone and the jaw etc. To get these all in a good place i used the Grab tool to move around.

Here is a picture of my zombie crooked teeth i modelled these in maya each tooth is different to its neighbour and the touch i just bulged from the basic part of the mouth into a better tongue shape.

In this image you can see the very scratched face of my model this was very fun and simple to do I used stencils which project a 'stencil' over my sculpt i can rotate and make them bigger to cover better area of the face, i used skin type stencils to get this effect around the face with the sculpt tool.

In this Picture of my hair, i used the grass stencil because it resembles a short hair so it was easy enough and i applied enough pressure so it actually looked like a shaved head.

In this picture i again used another stencil which is actually a tree bark stencil and only used part of the stencil to actually sculpt a scar/cut over his eye.

I have really enjoyed this project probably because i put most of my effort into it and I feel like i know what i want to do now. This model is outstandingly better than my last one.I thank my tutor Drew because he thought i had potential and i can actually do something if i put my head to it.
So here is a project with my full effort i used a lot of references from my other posts looking back and forth where i was at at each picture you see here different stages i went through how would i fix problems i had. I did indeed fix my guys jaw!

Why I chose sculpting

In this post I am telling you why i wanted to do a sculpt and what inspired me to do so.

For my final major project i wanted to sculpt because I found it very interesting and was fun when I did this before. I used Z-brush, Z-brush is used as a digital sculpting tool to create high resolution models for games, movies and animations, How cool is that?! Z-brush has 3D brushes and various sculpting tools. - The brushes come with many attributes pertaining to them, including hardness, different stroke types and alphas which give the brush a different shape with each stroke.
This is to me sounds epic! In the project I didn't rely go use this software for very long because I took too long on my physical sculpt. my tutors say i had potential to do better! So i got an okay grade for this unit but i wanted to expand more so I wanted to do sculpting. It was very enjoyable when i used the software so here we go on a knowledgeable adventure!
On this knowledgeable adventure I found out I am not able to use Z-brush at college *face palm*
So instead of using Z-brush ill be using good old Mudbox.... Wait whaa..? what is this?
Mudbox... This is a the same type of program but isn't as simple as Z-brush is, you have to sort your own UV's in Maya then import it into Mudbox for sculpting.
They have similar tools such as:
Grab tool - Moves the mesh around.
Sculpt tool - Allows detailed sculpting detail.
Bulge tool - Bulges the mesh so it can be manipulated.
Smooth  tool - Smooths rough edges that the other tools create.
These are the main brushes that sculptors work with for sculpting a face.
Holding Control reverses their actions for example the bulge tool would not bulge it out it would actually sink in.
I also have seen many models that look absolutely amazing such as these i found over the internet.

In this picture above you see Master Chief the main character in the Halo franchise i grew up around these games and seeing someone model this is amazing!

Above in this picture you see a sculpt of Kratos from the God of war games which again pleases me to think that you can pull off these types of sculpt in the Z-brush and Mudbox software.

Above you see Liam Neeson a well known actor.

On the left hand side this is him as Zeus in wrath of the titans! 

On the right hand side you have Liam Neeson as Bryan Mills in the Taken film!

These sculpts i found really made me want to pursue this as my final project and also gaining me more points so i can get into University! And even so making me a better sculptor so i can actually pursue it as a job.

Research before the sculpt

I browsed the internet for research on sculpting i found a few cool images that interested me here are a few of them.
In this picture below i really like the wrinkles they sculpted in it gives a realistic effect on the viewer and the lips and chin have a reasonable form to them.

 Below in this Abraham Lincon sculpt i like how the sculptor exaggerated around the eyes to show a deep eye socket.

 In this picture below are a few head sculpts which show a well done neck, it shows a lot of the muscles and a few veins located around the neck too.

In this picture below it shows opposite sides of the face, it also shows a well defined jaw line and chin.
I will not be using the facial expression because its does not appeal to me. But on the other hand it has an accurate structure of the ear.

In this picture i am planning to sculpt this type of facial expression, i like the crease around the mouth it is very defined and i think will be fun to sculpt. Also the brow gives it an angry look to it which again will be fun to sculpt to see how i will be able to pull this off. The zygomatic bone (cheek bone) is shown well when pulling this facial expression so i do want to show a lot of the form so in this expression it hits a lot of criteria i would like to hit.

In this picture above resembles a face which shows all the muscles i will need to understand how to sculpt it into my own.
In this picture below it shows more of the facial muscles that i will add to my sculpt.

In these two the picture above it shows the neck muscles and i also had to understand them to again put the sternocleidomastoid muscle and show a good form and understanding of anatomy. The sternocleidomastoid is a very prominent muscle and is very visible. In this picture below it shows the face spread with faces, edges and vertices.

Above is a block out of a nose for sculpting, it shows the basic sub division and what i will need to sculpt it into.