Timmy the T-Rex Model

Just a quick update of what I've been working on recently. I've gone back to one of the images I created a while ago and I've been making him into a 3D model. I was attempting to create a turnaround for Timmy but I was finding it hard so I took him into Zbrush and sculpted him up. This was great as it really helped me pinpoint the flaws I had in my initial design and although I really liked it and it worked in a 3/4 view there was something odd about him when I turned him to the front. I still think he isn't quite right and this is a work in progress. One of the things I wasn't sure about where the legs, there really far apart and small making him look as though he is going to fall over, but in a way I quite like that. I looked at T-Rex skeletons for comparison and there legs are also quite far apart, although they are a lot longer. This means they would have had more stability that my character will lack but as he is a toddler I quite like the idea of him waddling around and falling over all the time, as though he is trying to learn to walk. In my initial design I used an S shape through the body. I like the way this flows through the character and gives him soft round curves like a chubby little child. I'm going to continue to add texture and refine the design as at the moment he looks a little rubbery and unfinished. I also think he's lost a little bit of his cute ness and perhaps the jaw is too square making him look older and like a bully. If I soften the chin and make it more round I think this will add more appeal and bring him back to the original design.

 

Cadi Final Zbrush Model

Here is the final turnaround of my character Cadi that I've been working on over the last few weeks. I've learnt a lot in Zbrush and I know I need to improve in areas mainly the hair and expressions. I would also like to look more into adding colour to the model next time as I feel that would improve the quality and finish of my final character. I need to look at adding texture as well to add more depth to my model and learn how to light it to show off the textures. Considering I've only used Zbrush a handful of times before I feel I've come a long way. I feel confident that Zbrush was the right software for the job, especially for me coming from a traditional background and moving into 3D was a lot easier using Zbrush. Companies such as Laika using the software also compounds my feeling that this was the right software for the job especially when doing 3D printing. I think I now need to focus on practicing in the software and improving my knowledge of the technology, 3D terminology and 3D pipelines.

Zbrush Expressions

After finalizing my model to a point I was reasonably happy with I began creating my expressions. I first clicked the sub tool that I wanted to use which was the face. I then went into the layers panel and created a new layer naming it original. I would never change this layer as it would be my base layer and it would always remain on zero, meaning that it would never change position. To create the expressions I copied the original layer, renamed it with as detailed name as possible so I didn't get confused using the name button and then pressed the record button next to the layer. This allowed me to sculpt onto the model to change the expression using the brushes such as move, clay, smooth and once I had finished I pressed record again to stop it recording. This seems a fairly simple process but I often found myself sculpting when I hadn't pressed record and then having to undo and repeat the process with the record button turned on. Now when the slider was at 0 the expression was the same as the original layer, but when I moved the slider up to 1 this gave me a new expression using the position that I had just sculpted. I created different sliders repeating the above process and doing one for each side of the mouth separately for a smile, each side of the mouth separately for a frown, each eyebrow separately and so on until I had a range of sliders. I could then use a combination of these sliders to create the expressions moving some of them only part way, as the expressions I had created were very extreme for this purpose. I had also created an open mouth slider, but this posed a problem as it opened the mouth, but since the teeth were on a different layer they stayed in the same place. To correct this I had to go into the teeth sub tool and create another slider just for the them, which was easy enough, but when it came to producing the expressions I had to keep going back and forth between sub tools which became tedious. Below are the range of expressions that I created in Zbrush. I ran out of time to do any more which was disappointing and some of them haven't worked as well as others. Another problem I encountered was when sliding the layers some of the in-between positions were really strange probably because I hadn't re-topologised my model. I hadn't done this due to time constraints, but also I didn't think it would matter as 3D printed models don't necessarily need re-topologising. If I had had more time I would have done this but overall I'm still fairly happy with the results.

 

  

 

Adding detail to the hair

After my experiments with fibermesh, I decided to go back to sculpted hair. The initial hair I had created needed refinement so I spend some time doing that. I used the clay brush, along with alpha 01. I changed the settings of the alpha in the alpha pallet under modifiers and increased the H tiles to 3 giving me the desired results of having 3 soft lines every time I sculpted. I tried not to use them in straight lines as this would look unnatural and she was supposed to have curly hair so I waved them in the direction they were going. After I had finished sculpting I started to create separate strands that would come off the model and make the hair seem more realistic. I did this by masking out lines on the model that I wanted to lift away, and then I used the extract option under the sub tool pallet to separate them. It took me hours to separate the lines using the trim options once they had been extracted, moving them away from the sculpted hair using the move brush, smoothing them out into a rounded strand with the smooth brush.

 

 

After around 7 hours of trying to do this I accepted that unfortunately I didn't have the time to finish it. In heinsight I feel that it was too much to expect to be able to do this with plaited hair as that was what was causing most of the problems. If the hair had been straight or wavy I would have been able to achieve this a lot quicker and easier. Below on the left you can see the results of what I had done. This has been a heavy learning curve for me, and in future I must analyze if something is achievable before embarking upon it, but also after two hours attempting to do it I should have given up and moved on. On the right you can see my final hair. I'm not 100% happy with it, but as I have never sculpted hair before it was a challenge and I'm glad I attempted it.

 

Adding Teeth in Zbrush

Today I have been working on adding teeth and a tongue to my model so that I can create facial expressions. After my mistake of sculpting the hair on the head I had learnt my lesson to never work on the same subtool, therefore I created separate ones for both my teeth and my tongue. I recently discovered what the IMM brushes do and to save myself time I used the toon teeth from within them. Each IMM brush contains a range of different meshes already created by other users and some of the pre loaded ones include features from a dragon, human and a toon. I added the toon teeth to give me a basis to work on as I was running out of time to create my model. I then sculpted onto them and manipulated them to give me what I wanted for Cadi's teeth. I went on to add a tongue on a separate subtool. To do this I clicked insert, subtool and then added a sphere. I dynameshed the sphere and then warped in into the shape I wanted using the move tool, smoothing it off afterwards.

 

Hair Experiments

Today I experimented with different ways of creating hair. Firstly I tried using fibermesh to create the hair. I've never used fibermesh before so I took some time to watch tutorials to get a grasp of how to work with it. Initially I masked out the area that I wanted the fibermesh on and then added the fibermesh through the lightbox. I tried several different fibers and experimented with the modifiers tab under the fibermesh pallet. I increased the gravity, the colour, the length among other things to create the effect I wanted.

  

           

Finally when I got the style of hair I wanted I used the groom brushes to pull and push the hair to where I wanted. I had a lot of trouble with this at first until I began using the groom strong brush. This helped me manage the hair a lot better and I brushed it into a fairly straight position. It was impossible without practice to get the hair to do what I wanted and I found that I was either brushing the hair into the scalp, missing strands that were still floating in the air or when I was brushing one area it was effecting another, possibly because of the way I was using the brush.

 


From here I tried to emulate the hair style I had in my original design but to get the hair to curl in ringlets seemed almost impossible. I tried all the different brushes, but none of them seemed to have the desired effect. GroomTwister, GroomSpinKnott and GroomHairToss all seemed to be working to some extent but without practice and a lot of time that I didn't have I realized that this tool was never going to give me the desired effect. In the end this is as close as I got to what I wanted using fibermesh and it would take a lot more practice to do the tedious task of plaiting the hair.

Zbrush Model Progress

I've been working on my Zbrush model again today. I managed to get my graphics tablet back working and finished off the other eyebrow, making some other minor changes to the face, which I'm pretty happy with now. Last week I separated the hair from my original sculpt giving me three sub tools, the face, the hair and the eyes. I should have done this in the first place as it would have saved me a lot of time and thats definitely something to consider for next time, but as it is my first human sculpt with hair I didn't think about it at the time. To separate the mesh I duplicated the subtool and then used trim rectangle, move and other tools to push and chop out the areas which I didn't want on that subtool. This has allowed me today to do some messing around with the hair to see what I like. I definitely want the hair to be in pigtails, as that is what I originally decided from my early development sketches where I tried out lots of different hair. My main problem has been that on my initial paint up of Cadi I gave her a large quiff, and this doesn't work in profile view. This has meant I've had to change the hair slightly. I originally sculpted it fairly flat but I decided it needed more volume and life, I therefore wanted to quickly try out different hair styles for her quiff area in particular that I could then sculpt into the final hair. To do this I created several subtools by duplicating the original and using brushes such as inflate and snake hook created rough ideas for what Cadi's hair could look like. I made sure to rename each of my subtools so that I didn't get confused between which one I was working on at any given time.

 

I didn't like the middle idea as it made her head look too rounded which I felt took away from the initial design and original silhouette of the character. I quite like the first design, reincorporating the quiff but also changing the back of her hair to suit it so it looks as if her head is slanted. I brought the entirety of one side of the hair up otherwise in profile the huge quiff looked really out of place. I feel like the design of this hair has a lot more personality and really gives Cadi an edge making her silhouette really stand out from other characters with plaits such as Anna from 'Frozen'.

I also looked at the neck to make it more delicate and bring it forward slightly. I joined it onto the chin more and I definitely think this change makes her look less manly. I now need to work on  smoothing out the neck and adding the final touches to the face, perhaps adding more volume to the forehead and working on the chin and lips a bit more.