I've sculpted this character in Mudbox,
starting from the base mesh. And I begin
by using my Grab and my Wax brushes to distort the shape
of the character's silhouette, so that I take it from the default
Mudbox base mesh, and I turn it into something that more closely matches
the shape that I'm looking for. I'm
using the Wax brush the Grab brush
very liberally in the beginning to add volume in the areas where I need it,
to cut away areas where I want to remove
volume, and in some cases I'll use
a sharp negative brush - in this case the Foamy brush -
to start to cut in sharper details; so,
edges around the mouth, shapes in the cheeks,
around the eyes, shapes in the nose. And
between the Wax brush and the Foamy brush (the sharp negative brush),
I start to lay out the basic shape that I'm looking for.
Once I feel comfortable with
the base shape laid out, that's when I start to subdivide my mesh
to allow me to create extra detail.
So I start with a very low res shape
I deform that low res shape using the Wax and Grab brush as we saw a
moment ago.
And once I'm happy with the base shape, it's only then that I move on
to actually starting to add a little bit more detail.
I iteratively add that detail throughout the entire process.
I'm starting to add details such as the eyes now,
and I can see that the mesh is...
it looks very aliased, there's lots of triangulation -
this is an indicator of when it's time to subdivide,
to add more details to my mesh. I'm trying to create detail but it shows up
pixelated or triangulated or aliased:
that means that the level of sculpt detail I'm working at
isn't sufficient for the level of detail I want to carve into the mesh.
That's when I can start to up res my model.
And once I up res the model, then I start focusing on creating
tinier details; again, using a sharp brush like that Foamy,
or in some cases using the Pinch brush,
as I'm using now, to pull points together to create
sharper creases between existing areas
of detail. The eyeball area
is definitely an area that we focus a lot of attention on,
because our viewer is going to focus a lot of their attention there.
And creating proper eyelid shape can be difficult.
I like to actually create an eyeball shape that I can fit
into the eye socket, and help guide me in my placement
of the eyelids. I created a new sphere just inside Mudbox
and now I'm repositioning it and
scaling it so that it fits into the eye socket area.
And that will guide me: now I'll be able to use that
to create more accurate detail around the eyelid area.
And speaking of detail, now I'm going to start adding
wrinkle and muscle detail to the face. I'm using
a brush that has a very sharp fall-off
and a negative value to carve
those shapes in the face. And I also use
a Pinch brush at the ends at these wrinkles,
so that the wrinkles taper to a very fine point.
This pinch, this taper at the end
is very important for creating the sense that
these wrinkles or these shapes are actually fitting into the
the geometry of the face. I also use
the wax brush. As we'll see, I
emphasize around the edges of various wrinkles,
build up around them, and then smooth that Wax
into the surrounding area. Now
we're looking at lots of fine detail, but at some points, we
want go back and change the very shape of the object itself.
In this case, I want to change the shape of the jaw. I'm using the Grab brush to do that.
You'll see that I've stepped down to a very low level of detail.
It's easier to make changes that affect the entire mesh
at the lower levels of detail, than it would be to make at the higher levels of
detail. When I want to make big structural changes,
I step down to a low resolution. make those changes,
and then step back upwards, to process those changes,
and to use my detail brushes, like the Foamy and the Pinch,
to start to cut into the mesh,
and to ground those details. And we see, in this case, the details that I'm
adding are kind of like
wrinkles or stretch marks over the musculature
in the back of the neck and the shoulder area. And I'm just cutting those in using
that sharp negative Foamy brush.
And I'll blend the edges in
on one side of that crease, and
I'll leave it as is on the other side of the crease.
So that we get a sharp contrast in one area,
and a smooth contrast in the other area. That gives that
stretched skin feeling that I'm looking for.
Throughout the process I'm switching between
the low res and the high res, making structural changes to the shape of my
object on the low res,
and then adding fine level of detail on the higher subdivision levels of
my mesh.
A good example is coming up, where I will start making changes to the
ear. There will be structural changes that I need to make to the
to shape of the ear, so the exterior silhouette and
the overall position of the ear: those will be done at a lower subdivision
level.
Then I'll use higher subdivision levels to start to carve in the actual
form on the shape of the ears.
The outer lobe, and the interior structures
on that ear, happened at middle levels of detail.
When it's time to really sharpen that detail and create
much sharper edging and creasing, those happen
at much higher levels of subdivision.
While I'm adding fine details, we see the camera is very close on my subject,
but in a moment, I pull out here, so that I can make changes to the overall shape
of the ear,
using a more broad view. Now we'll see that
I'm repeating the 'line' process that I used in the cheeks. I'm using a sharp brushe to carve in
some lines
in the forehead region; smoothing out some other areas so we
get a nice fine blend between shapes and it feels like a cohesive whole.
I also use the Wax brush again, to
overlap the sharp lines that I have created.
This gives the sense that we've got bulges of skin that are creating
these fine lines. |t's not just some lines that we
etched on the surface of our object.
I use a lot of different lines in different areas to
add surface detail to the shape of my model.
When it comes to surface detail, at a certain point, we reached the limit of
what we can do
with just sculpting, and it becomes much easier to use
our Spray or our Repeat brushes
to add detail to the surface of our objects.
I'm adding something that looks sort of like pores using my
Spray brush. Anytime I'm doing fine detail like this,
I have it on it own sculpt layer, to make it much easier to manage.
We will see that that I Spray it on,
and then I can control the opacity or the strength of that effect,
by simply adjusting the sculpt layer.
We see that as I'm applying the spray brush here,
the effect is very overwhelming. It overpowers a lot sculpt detail on the
model.
But when I reduced that sculpt layer,
to of strength of 8, now I end up with something that's much more usable.
As a final part of the process, now I'm using my Grab brush to go and
start to create asymmetry on the shape of my model.
We always want to have a less than perfect symmetry
on our characters, to create a more organic feel.
The Grab brush allows me to move shapes very quickly to break that
symmetry.
Then I can go in, add a little bit more detail,
use that Grab brush to create bigger changes,
like repositioning the eyes, the ears, and nose.
So we get rid of that symmetrical detail. All of this is happening
on its own sculpt layer. This means that I can always turn that sculpt layer
off, and then go back to make structural changes that will affect both sides of
my model.
Because once I've added asymmetry to my model,
there's no going back. I'll be able to use
symmetrical changes anymore, especially if
I change the location of key features,
such as the eyelid and the edges of the nose.
So having that asymmetry on its own layer
is extremely useful, if I have to go back to make changes for whatever reason.
We see that I'm just adding a scar over the top of the one eye,
as a bit of fine detail. To integrate that into this surface,
I lay it in fairly heavily using the Wax brush,
then I go in and I use my sharp-edged brushes and my Smooth and my Pinch tools
to integrate that shape into the surface of my mesh.
So we don't want tit o stick out as if it's a separate shape,
we want to work extra hard to show how it then blends
in to the overall shape for the mesh,
so it feels like it's a part of the cohesive whole, instead of just being something that
was slapped on top at the last minute.
And at this point the sculpt is basically finished, I'll make last tweaks to the
hi-res skin detail layers - the pores, the skin surface.
Here's the final results, I've enabled ambient occlusion in the viewport
to really help those fine details pop on our sculpt.