This is really awesome!
I also liked a lot the other head you did from the drawing, reminded me of Star Wars Rebels don’t know why… maybe Admiral Thrawn (but yours much more detailed 
)
But the male body, just… wow!
I have faith that I’ll reach your lvl someday 
Thanks for the nice words Capa 
I found sculpting from a drawing easier than from a photo with the second head because, a real face is very difficult to replicate exactly. I guess it’s because any tiny change in detail is noticeable by us and makes a huge difference to the appearence of a human face. Interesting stuff!
I believe you, the slightest crease or smooth can make a lot of difference.
Like for example, differences between an old and a young person or the shape of the cheek bones and so on.
I find it hard to sculpt anything because often I lose the reference of which axis I’m “extruding”…
Well the real model I ever sculpted was the Rabbit for the course though… so no much practice yet and probably there are some tricks to work around this.
That happens to me too or at least it used to before I discovered what the snake hook brush was used for. Now I use that, then inflate to fill it out and the grab brush to fix the form.
Sculpting is very addictive although when I did my rabbit, I remember thinking that I could have made it faster if I’d modelled it and played around moving polygons. However, I resculpted another rabbit just recently which turned out better than my original in much less time.
It’s nice when we can see how we’ve improved.
Retopology is not so much fun though. I really need to learn how to do it better haha
do you use a mouse or pen tablet for sculpting?
what do you find easier?
I’ve just recently bought a tablet and pen and yea it works fine but I’ve never used it in blender except for trying out the grease pencil in 2.8. I’ve got used to using a mouse for sculpting and it seems to work fine although according to what the pros say on the internet (youtube at least), using a mouse is frowned upon but it works fine for me.
Maybe, some time soon I’ll sit down and try my hand at using my pen but I’ve only had it about a month and a drew a cat in GIMP with it with my little daughter. It was pretty bad haha It’s a new skill but I guess it’s like everything, once you get used to it they’ll be no going back but we’ll see lol
Short answer: I use a mouse
Ah I see.
Just started a Maya course on udemy on 3D modelling / sculpting, and still debating whether to get a pen tablet or just stick with a mouse for now since I am only just starting.
Wow Maya. I’d like to start learning Maya but honestly I can’t afford the ridiculous price they ask for that software. Unfortunately, it’s the industry standard so if I want a job soon, I’ll have to learn it. I’ve watched a few youtube tutorials and the tutorials on the AutoDesk site and the UI looks pretty difficult. I hope it won’t be too difficult to transfer my knowledge from blender to Maya but if blender 2.8 is as big a success as they it will be, it might be able to attract more companies to use the software but we’ll see what happens
Even though I’ve never done myself I found some methods long time ago:
Once I seen a video of retopology where you start with a plane with a shrinkwrap modifier selecting the HP object, then it’s “just” start extruding the edges.
Also Mira Tools can help also https://blenderartists.org/t/miratools/637385, it has some tools that snap to surface and can use grease pencil to you draw 2 lines then it creates the faces based on the numbers ot cuts you provide…
Also found Instant Meshes - https://www.blendernation.com/2015/11/16/instant-meshes-a-free-qaud-based-autoretopology-program/
Looks like importing the mesh there it retopologizes automatically…
Wow… it should have taken some time to sculpt all this right?
Mark, you can learn it without spending that exorbitant amount on software you might not like.
I’m also taking a Maya class here, and thanks to a friend who’s into 3D Max, I discovered you can obtain an Educational License for most of the Autodesk software apps, and it’s good for about 3 years. I did that, and when it expired earlier this year, I just downloaded the newer version they were offering on their site, and got another 3 year license.
Needless to say, you can’t use what you create with it as a product you would want to sell, but at least you would be able to get a feel for how the software works, and whether it would fit into your creative workflow. That’s the route I would go if I wanted to learn as much as I can about the software, because all of the Educational version’s features function fully.
Yea I tried to get an educational license with it but I think I needed a certificate or enrolement number to prove I was a student. Is it possible to get an educational license without having any of this information or can I obtain one from an online course if I enroll with udemy?
I’ll have to look into it because the sooner I get learning Maya, the better I think haha.
Thanks for the info Miss_B
And yes, it’s annoying that things you make there are owned by AutoDesk unless you pay for a seat which is irritating. I’m going to have a look now I’m back from work and see if there’s any way I can do it haha
I didn’t have to provide them any information when I originally got it, or when I updated it earlier this year, so not sure if that was something they were offering for a while or not.
What I did find was this link to “free software” (see below), and you do have to create an account, but that may be the way you would get it without the verification information most companies ask for.
There is a link at the top that says Free Software, so maybe after creating an account that’s how I got it. It’s been 3 1/2 years, so I don’t really remember.
Great Miss_B! I’ve got it downloaded now. I finally have Maya and can start learning it! Thanks for that link
This time I didn’t need to add any extra info so I’m thrilled about that! Thanks again
Well now, sculpting is actually pretty quick for me. Poly modelling something like this would have taken ages. The body took me an evening to sculpt and the head another evening. Unfortunately, I don’t have a lot of time to do much 3D because of the kids and my job (plus at the moment it’s exam period time - I’m an english teacher by day) so I’ve had to learn to be very efficient with my time.
It really doesn’t take long to get quite good at sculpting. I recommend sculpting a monster and playing around with the different brushes to see what they do. Play around with the curve too to see how that changes the brush (to the left of the curve is the tip of the brush and right is the fall off). You can have hours of fun and when you think you;ve finished and keep returning to the screen to admire it, you’ll see something else you need to tweak so you keep going back to it. Hours of fun haha
For that body I used about 7 or 8 different reference photos which I switched out and kept a coloured diagram of frontal and rear muscle structure. (I split my screen into two and then split the second screen into two quarters and change them to UV image editor and import two square-ish images in there).
Sculpting has really inspired me ot get to grips with human anatomy. The other night I was reading about the forearm muscles. There’s about 17 different muscles in the forearm and 9 of them (based on what I was reading and assumption) are visible under the surface of the skin. I’d never have tried to read up on it had I not started sculpting the forearms haha
I dunno if it’s me but I tend to need a lot of reference photos. That might improve with time I hope lol
I know I said my next post would be with clothes, I also said I was itching to post more so… Here we are:
Wow, that fast? Pretty impressive I think…
Yeah, this black friday I bought a graphics tablet and another udemy course about sculpting some kind of monsters, dinosaurs… I’m waiting the tablet arrive to give that a go hehe.
Nope not a exclusive thing…
Also, I think that it’s part of being a good 3d artist, even more if you strive to realism and I don’t think that it goes away or should.
As Andrew from blenderguru says, the way our mind remembers things lack a lot of details, we really need images to compensate that.
And it’s proven to be true most of the time.
Like, try someday to model anything without using a reference image and then compare to what it should have looked. Probably you’ll see that should have been done different.
Great, I’m glad it worked for you.
How did you make the texture for the head and eyes!? Please tell me your secrets! They look great!
Hey Astroneer,
Thanks for the nice comments.
Here’s the node setup for the skin.
For the eye I used a tutorial on youtube by a guy called Cesar
That’s an odd material lol.
Principled bsdf with SS mixed with SS bsdf.
And another strange is part using the texture straight to normal map node while it’s still black and white. Don’t need to use the bump node to convert height to normal?
But anyways it looks good and that’s what matters, right!
II can’t remember what I did exactly with this. I think I plugged the subsurface scattering node into the Principled BDSF after I’d mixed them because the Principled BDSF SSS wasn’t behaving the same way as the standalone SSS node but I really hate the glossy shader. To me it always looks metallic so I prefer the Prinicipled BDSF for the roughness.
And yes, you’re right! The black and white texture used for the clearcoat normal input needs to go into a bump node to convert it properly. This material isn’t very well set up but I wanted something basic to get a render out lol
