Anatomy and Character Sculpture

4/4/2023-9/4/2023 (week1-week14)

Ng Jia Xien (0355062)

Anatomy and Character Sculpture

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Instruction 

ANATOMY AND CHARACTER SCULPTURE MIB

Week 1

In our first week, we were asked to download Zbrush and try on it, we learned some of the basic operations of the software and were asked to enhance our proficiency in the software after the class. 

In class, we were given the chance to try out the software using the pc in the computer lab. I was trying to sculpt out a pretty lady but it end out as a horned monster, and I named it Jennifer. But it's still fun and interesting, it is a good exercise that brings out my interest in the software. 

Fig 1.1 Jennifer's Front view 

Fig 1.2 Jennifer's Side view 

Fig 1.3 Jennifer's Bottom-up view

We also learn the techniques to add a new object to the previous object to work with it, so I add a hat to Jennifer to try out the skills. 

Fig 1.4 Jennifer with hat 

After class, we were asked to complete the exercise under Fundamentals of Anatomy and Digital Sculpting to studies on human skeleton structure before the next class, also we can start to think about the character that we were like to work on. 

Week 2

We were asked to label the skeleton and learned by sketching it out. I was quite lost when doing the first sketches, I was still confused about how the human skeleton works in the human body, since we can't see them directly.

Fig 2.1 Skeleton studies 1 with label 

Fig 2.2 Skeleton studies 2 with different pose 

Then after I have done some of the sketches and research, I understand and recognized how the bones and ankles work in the human body gradually. So I tried to further my studies by using some of the human body pictures searched online and start to sketch out the model's skeleton. 

Fig 2.3 Skeleton studies 3, model 1 

Fig 2.4 Skeleton studies 4, model 2

So, after we have done those skeleton studies on our own, in this week's lectures we are learning to sculpt the skeleton using ZBrush. We were just sculpting the basic shapes of the skeleton and still in the ways of exploring and studying, so the result might not come out well since we still need a lot of effort to master the software. 

We were asked to complete the skeleton sculpting as an exercise, we did the skull in class and others on our own. It is a good exercise for me as it does help me a lot in my skeleton study and also in my sculpting skill, I also mastered the "mirror and weld" tool in this exercise.  

Fig 2.5 Skeleton sculpting

For practicing my skill of using ZBrush, I even tried to sculpt the head again, but it still looks disgusting, I still need a lot of exercise! Fig 2.7 looks like Mr. Potato Head from Toy Story. 

Fig 2.6 Head sketch 1

Fig 2.7 Head sketch 2

Fig 2.8 Head sketch 3

Fig 2.9 Head exercise 1

Fig 2.10 Head exercise 2

Week 3

In week 3 I start to study human muscles, when learning through sketching, I felt that it was harder than a skeleton as I think it is more complicated than a skeleton. I use different colors to sketch out all the muscles of the human body, it is useful for me to understand the line of human body muscles. Understanding the line of muscles is important when doing 3D sculpting, details lines on the body help the model be more realistic and vivid.

Fig 3.1 Human body muscles sketch

After doing the sketch of human body muscles, I start to try it in ZBrush, it looks ugly and weird but I already tried my best. Although it looks ugly, I think the structure of the muscles is correct. 

Fig 3.2 Human body muscles sculpting

I continue with posture study after I have done the muscle-sculpting, learning all those knowledge according to the order makes it easier to understand and more planned. For posture study, I only learned by sketching due to the requirement of the assignment didn't ask for sculpting, and I am also busy with other modules. 

Fig 3.3 Posture Sketch 1

Fig 3.4 Posture Sketch 2

Fig 3.5 Posture Sketch 3

Fig 3.6 Posture Sketch 4

Week 4

In week 4 I start to learn specific body parts that need more detail. I think the hand is a difficult part to sculpt, but at the same time, it gains a sense of accomplishment. My hand looks very unrealistic when I look back at it, I can tell the fingers are too thin and the palm looks too short, but I didn't realize it when I was sculpting.

Fig 4.1 Hand sketch

Fig 4.2 Hand sculpting Process 1

Fig 4.3 Hand sculpting Process 2

Fig 4.4 Hand sculpting final

Week 5

The foot is also a hard part to sculpt, but I don't put a lot of pressure on the foot, and if I can't sculpt it well, I'll wear the shoes. Even in the finals, I wasn't able to sculpt out the toes.

Fig 5.1 Feet sculpting Process 1

Fig 5.2 Feet sculpting Process 2

Fig 5.3 Feet sculpting final

Week 6

Facial expressions are also an important part of the project, and I used previously sculpted heads to do facial expressions. Looking at the results, I think I gained a huge improvement in my sculpting skills, but I still need a lot of work if I want to do well in Project 1.

Fig 6.1 Angry expression

Fig 6.2 Happy expression

Fig 6.3 Surprise expression

Project 1: Character Sculpt 1 -Dynamic and neutral posing

In Project 1, we were asked to sculpt our own characters. I wanted to combine my character design module with anatomy and character sculpting, which means sculpting the character I designed in my character design module. I was super excited while doing this project because I knew we had the opportunity to do 3D printing and I really wanted to do well in this project.

Here is the character I designed in the character design module, but I made some minor changes when I made the sculpture. My character's name is Ruri, she is Japanese, and Ruri is a 14-year-old kid. Because Ruri is a child, she cannot be too tall in terms of height and her face cannot be too bony, she must maintain the rounded facial features of a child. 

Fig 7.1 Turnaround sketch

This is the basic shape of my character, the face still looks weird, but that's just the blockout of Ruri.

Fig 7.2 Character sculpting process 1

As I started merging each body sub-tool, more detail was added to my sculpture, but the face became even more disgusting. I started to get a little anxious because the overall result now looked terrible and didn't meet my expectations at all. 

Fig 7.3 Character sculpting process 2

The hands and breasts were added to my sculpture, and I refined my sculpture while modifying Ruri's face. At this stage, Ruri's face was still horrible and the proportions of the hands were too long, more work needed to be put into it.

Fig 7.4 Character sculpting process 3

I still have a lot of dissatisfaction with my sculpture though, but in order not to let us delay too long, the lecturer needs us to move on to the next stage and put on simple clothes for the characters. So I continued to modify my character while working on the clothes.

For this type of intimate wear, the lecturer introduced us to the function of extract. This function is useful for making various kinds of intimate clothing, such as gloves, socks, etc.

Fig 7.5 Character sculpting process 4

After creating the underwear, I started working on the outerwear, and at this stage, the difficulty started to become greater. Because in the previous sculpts, although everyone's characters were different in appearance, they were essentially the same, Mr. Kannan could take us step by step through the sculpture and teach us the techniques for making that step. But when the sculpting process began to move into the character's clothing and hairstyle, we all needed to study different directions. In my case, I needed to work on loose and weighty "coats" and light skirts. 

Fig 7.6 Character sculpting process 5

I explored a lot of sculpting techniques in Project 1, including making pleated skirts, methods of cordage, etc. I found this session very difficult because a lot of techniques need to be researched and explored by ourselves. I usually look for related tutorial videos on YouTube and sometimes on the Chinese website Bilibili to find related videos. 

In the beginning, I use shape to sculpt Ruri's hair, but the ponytail can't use the same technique to it, so I use "twist" in customize to adjust the shape.

Fig 7.7 Hair sculpting technique 1

Fig 7.8 Hair sculpting technique 2

The result is as follows, it looks very unnatural and hard. But based on my level of sculpting at the time, this was the best result, I look back on it now and feel terrible.

Fig 7.9 The final outcome of hair in Project 1

I also did a lot of research to make the pleated skirt, and the most challenging part of Project 1 for me was making the pleated skirt. Also, it was the most rewarding part of Project 1 for me. (Pleated skirt sculpting technique 1 was too difficult for me to apply, technique 2 was used in project 1)

Fig 7.10 Pleated skirt sculpting technique 1

Fig 7.11 Pleated skirt sculpting technique 2

Here is the result I made according to technique 2, I actually wanted a more solid and stiffer result. However, I asked my friends around me for their opinions and they all felt that there was no problem with the skirt at this stage, so I decided to use this version of the skirt. 

Fig 7.12 The final outcome of the pleated skirt in Project 1

Then, I started to do some details on Ruri's dress, which includes many elements such as plaits and cloth strips. I'm going to keep the cloth strips for Project 2 since I've run out of time to do this. For the plaits, what I did was create an IMM brush using the plaits shape I created. 

Fig 7.13 Plaits rope sculpting technique

Fig 7.14 The final outcome of the plaited rope in Project 1

Project 1 submission: Character Sculpt 1 -Dynamic and neutral posing

Fig 7.7 Base model 

Fig 7.8 Model with clothes

Reflection for Project 1:

I had a lot of fun making Project 1. I was very unconfident at the beginning when I was practicing my sculpting skills and I was afraid that I wouldn't be able to finish Project 1, but when I really started to make Project 1, I found that I could be very involved in it and every time I met a problem I was very motivated to find a solution to it. And with each problem I solved, I was happy to learn something new about sculpting. Although I was still dissatisfied with my Ruri at this stage, I had gained some confidence and a sense of accomplishment and was looking forward to entering Project 2.

Project 2: Character Sculpt 2 -Texturing and detailing

In Project 2, our goal was to add textures and details to our character, as well as color it in. My order of work was to modify the details for Ruri while adding in the clothing designs for her that I had previously missed in Project 1, including cloth strips, etc. And, I think the character's head is very important, but Ruri's hair and face are ugly. In Project 2, I will also devote more time to the creation of the hair and the sculpting of the face.

Revisiting my character, I felt that the hair was too stiff and made of one shape. So I researched an alternative method of making hair that uses "curve tube snaps", a method that effectively makes hair more lively and flexible. I used this technique on Ruri's bangs as well as her ponytail.

Fig 8.1 Hair sculpting technique 3

Fig 8.2 The final outcome of hair in Project 2

I felt so satisfied after improving the hair sculpting that I felt confident about this project again! I started to add some accessories to Ruri, such as earrings, braided ribbons, cloth strips, armor, etc.

Fig 8.3 Braided ribbons

Fig 8.4 Hand armor

Fig 8.5 Leg armor

Fig 8.6 Earring 

Then I finally got slowly closer to my goal! I spent a lot of time and effort, studied a lot of reference pictures, and finally slowly made Ruri look like a 14-year-old girl! But when I took the feedback from Mr. Kannan, he still thought my character looked scary, it looks like I still need to work on it more.

Fig 8.5 Ruri's face in Project 2

Fig 8.6 Ruri's body in Project 2

After that, I started to study coloring and choosing materials for the model. I had to listen to the class recording again because I forgot to take notes during the class, which caused me a lot of problems in coloring, I spent a lot of time listening to the recording again and finding tutorials online. Luckily, I managed to color my model in the end, but next time I will listen to the class properly.

After the coloring, it was time to make the textures. I found photos of textures on the internet and put them on my model to give my model more texture.

Fig 8.7 Armor texture

Fig 8.8 Texture on armor

Fig 8.9 Cotton texture

Fig 8.10 Texture on Japanese style Obi belt

Fig 8.11 Leather texture

Fig 8.12 Texture on leather armor

Fig 8.13 Pattern on socks (removed) 

The coloring process was pretty successful, and I could find myself getting more and more proficient with Zbrush as the project progressed. 

Project 2 submission: Character Sculpt 2 -Texturing and detailing 

Fig 8.14 Model with color

Reflection for Project 2:

With Project 2, I can clearly feel my proficiency with Zbrush increasing. And as my models become more complete, I have a better sense of where I should be making adjustments and changes. Overall, everything is going in a good direction.

Final Project: Polishing and Dynamic Posture with props

Finally, we came to the final project where we needed to design poses and props for our characters. Since I had already designed Ruri's weapons and pose in the character design module, I decided to use the same design.

Fig 9.1 Weapon sketch

When doing the sculpting of the weapons, I didn't face too many problems because I already had some degree of sculpting experience. But still, I was frustrated when I try to cut my sword using shape, it keeps not working so I use some time to explore it. By the way, I am happy to learn new sculpting techniques while sculpting the sword.

Fig 9.2 Weapon

Fig 9.3 Weapon with color

I really like my weapon model, the sculpture of the handle, and the material of the sword, I had a lot of fun and a sense of accomplishment in making it. Then I export it as an obj file to insert in my character pose file.

Fig 9.4 Obj file

I started posing my character after I finished the weapon sculpt. I was happy when I did the weapons, but I wanted to cry when I did the rigging. I went online and found a lot of tutorial videos and tried various methods, but I encountered different problems with all of them.

One of the methods I used was masking, and there are a few things to keep in mind when using this method. When masking, you first use the lasso tool to mask well, and afterward, you must use the pen tool to smooth out the edges so that you can keep the character's skin intact when moving the character around.

Fig 9.5 Masking

But! There is still a disadvantage to using this technique, which is that you can't do too drastic movements, such as twisting your neck or waist. 

Fig 9.6 Masking disadvantage

Another method I tried was "transpose master" where I first made a set of skeletons on my model using zsphere and then used "store TM rig" to store the skeletons.

Fig 9.7 Zsphere skeletons

Fig 9.8 Zsphere skeletons

After that, I clicked on "zsphere rig", imported the character into "tpose mesh", bound the bones to the character, and then it was free to move the character around. Be sure to minimize the character's poly group, otherwise, the character will be very, very, very, very, very stuck when moving.

Fig 9.9 Wrong demonstration

When using these two methods, there is one common point to note, hiding all the extra sub-tools, which ensures that you can move the model more smoothly and without damaging the shape of the sub-tools. 

So, in the end, I used Zsphere skeletons for rigging and brings back the high poly group after creating the pose. 

Fig 9.10 Ruri with pose

After that, I put the model's clothes, armor, and other assets back on piece by piece. This process takes a bit more time, but using the Zsphere skeleton to move the model around really gives better results, so I think it's worth the time spent.

After getting the clothes and assets all adjusted, I added the folder for the weapons to the existing folder. Place the weapons in the right place, move the model details slightly, and you're done!

Fig 9.11 Character pose with props

After listening to Mr. Kannan's feedback, he asked me to add some details to the clothes and make some adjustments to the calves, as well as try to improve the wrinkles in the pleated skirt. But overall it's still good. After adding the platform where the character is standing, it's ready for making a character poster in PS. 

Here is a rendered image with lighting effects, the lighting effects were really, really difficult! I spent a lot of time working on it because I don't know why the character's face is so easily darkened by shadows. 

Fig 9.12 Render

I used Google Fonts to search for fonts that I need to use in my poster, my character is Japanese so I needed Chinese fonts and English fonts. It's hard to find good-looking Chinese fonts in Google Fonts, but I'm lazy to use Chinese websites to find them, so I decided to use Chinese fonts from Google Fonts.
But when I imported the downloaded text into PS, the result was very bad, very ugly overall.
So I ended up spending a bit of time surfing the web to find good-looking fonts and importing them into PS.

Fig 9.13 Fonts selection

Fig 9.14 Chinese fonts

Below is the character assets poster I designed, I tried two types of layout and finally decided to use the second version of the layout.

Fig 9.15 Character Assets Poster 1

Fig 9.16 Character Assets Poster 2

Based on the second layout, I added some special effects in order to make the overall poster more dramatic and cool. After that, I refined my poster based on feedback from multiple friends, and in the end, I chose 2-2 as the final product.

Fig 9.17 Character Assets Poster 2-1

Fig 9.18 Character Assets Poster 2-2 (Final)

After completing this character assets poster, I started working on the character poster. Compared to the asset posters, the character posters show the character's skills, and then my goal is to make my character posters show cool and magnificent special effects.

I googled a lot of photos of flames and then made a collage to arrange the flames into the "gorgeous" shapes I wanted, I also created a reflection for the character. I was happy with the final product and I made two versions: one with names and one without. I decided to go with the version without the name as my final outcome. 

Fig 9.19 Fire png

Fig 9.20 Character Poster 1

Fig 9.21 Character Poster 2 (Final)

I printed out the poster and realized that the character's face was too red, so I finalized my poster by decreasing the reflection gradient percentage on the character's face.  

Fig 9.22 Printed 3D poster 1

Fig 9.23 Printed 3D poster 2

Final Project Submission: Polishing and Dynamic Posture with props

Fig 9.24 Character assets poster 

Fig 9.25 Character poster

Reflection for Final Project:

I finally finished my character! The character that took me almost 8 weeks to build is finally finished! I really feel a great sense of accomplishment, and although it may not be perfectly finished, I'm happy with my progress. The first time I tried modeling with Zbrush, Mr. Kannan was shocked to see my Jennifer. But at a later stage, I felt that my modeling had improved so much that I looked back at my previous exercises and my Jennifer when I made the blog and I was shocked at myself. It's not perfect but I'm happy with the progress I've made, I'll try to continue learning Zbrush over the semester break and will try to make time to learn Blender as well, hopefully, I won't forget how to use Zbrush the next time class commences.

3D Printing First Experience 

After finishing sculpting the character, because it was a great sense of accomplishment, QiaoYin and I decided to go 3D print it.

Fig 10.1 3D printing studio

QiaoYin and I went to the campus's 3D printing studio, the first time we went there, Qiaoyin's file was fine, but mine was so big that the technician asked me if I had made a bungalow, but we gave the folder to the technician there, Mr. Ahmad.

Fig 10.2 Qiao Yin's character printing

On the first day, I went back and worked with QiaoYin on how to make the file smaller, we learned how to use "decimation master" and managed to make the file smaller. We contacted Mr. Ahmad and informed him that we will go back to him tomorrow.

The next day we were informed that our sculptures were finished printed, I was shocked because I hadn't given the small size file to Mr. Ahmad yet. So I went with QiaoYin to get our sculptures, the result wasn't very satisfying but since it was our first attempt, it was satisfying enough.

Fig 10.3 Final outcome

Fig 10.4 Final outcome

But we still continued to work on ways to improve it in the studio, we organized some problems we might have encountered and what we can improve on, and hopefully, there will be another chance to print it after the semester break. I haven't worked on my sculpture yet as I need to go back to Johor, so I'll work on it when I get back to Johor to avoid damaging the model on the way.