Facial Muscles
Facial muscles are important to understand how to build a human face. Each face has the same muscles, but every man, woman and child look different. That depends on the age, gender, race.
Although, with basic knowledge of the face composition and proportions, the character creation becomes easier and more realistic.
I did several exercises and marking in order to remember and learn faster all the face muscles.
Nose
Today's lecture was all about creating a nose in ZBrush. We made 3 different noses. We used brushes as Standard Brush [BST], Move Brush [BMV], Cutting Brush [BDS], Trim Brush [BTD]. We also used a smoothing [Shift]. To make a hole we used Standard Brush + alt.
Nose 1
The first nose I made belongs to an old man. It is sharp, pointy, wide and quite big.
Nose 2
The second nose I made its simple with a little bump in the middle.
Nose 3
The third nose I made is small, thin and straight.
Nose 4
The fourth nose I made is for my first assignment this semester. I used a photo reference. I am trying to improve my skills so I used tools as TrimDynamic Brush [BTD] and ClayBuildup Brush [BCB].
The picture I used as my reference.
Video of my work in Zbrush and renders.
Mouth
Today's lecture we learned about lips. The most important things: top lip is made from 3 forms (Cupid Bow) and the bottom lip is made from 2 forms. The next thing we focused on was the muscles around the lips. To help us remember all the important muscle, we did a quick exercise in Photoshop.
Mouth in ZBrush
To create a mouth, I used the same tools I used to create noses. I found Pinch Brush [BPI] as a very useful tool to model the bottom lip.
Pictures below present the second mouth I made for the assignment. I still need to practise as it is not perfect, but I feel more comfortable using ZBrush now than I was at the beginning.
The picture I used as my reference.
Video of my work in Zbrush and renders.
Ear
I found ear the most difficult to model in ZBrush so far. I started by creating a basic shape using a mask. To create a mask I hold down Ctrl and draw with a brush as normal. To quit a mask mode I pressed Ctrl again + in the sphere, I click and dragged the left button on the mouse. Brushes I mostly used - ClayBuildup Brush [CBC], Standard Brush [BST], MoveBrush [BMV] and DamStandard Brush [BDS]. The back of the ear is quite difficult to make. There are a few ways to make it. The one I used, in this project, was cutting off the material to make that gap. This part of creating ears is something I need to practise more because it does not look as good as it should.
The pictures I used as my reference.
Video of my work in Zbrush and renders.
Eye
I found the eye very challenging to model. I used two meshes - eyeball (I did not model it, just place it in the middle of the eye socket) and the actual mesh (eye socket plus all the details). The main brushes I used: ClayBuildup Brush [BCB], Standard Brush [BST], DamStandard Brush [BDS] and Move Brush [BMV]. I divided the mesh 5 times to give it a nice and smooth look.
My first step was to make an eye socket and place the second mesh (eyeball) inside it. After I placed it correctly, I model all the details around eyeball mesh.
Class exercises.
It helps to understand better the eye anatomy. Also, I used those pictures as a reference to model the eye.
Video of my work in Zbrush and renders.
I did some minor changes in my project during the lectures.
Villain
American Native Indian/Elf
Ears
The character I am going to model is going to be American Native Indian/Elf. I will focus on large ears, feathers crown and dark skin. All the pictures I have collected, I will be using as my reference.
I have already started working on my project. I finished ears and nose. Therefore ears will be probably partially covered because I am planning to model hair as well.
The first photograph is ready female face from ZBrush, as we agreed on the lecture. Middle and last picture are what I have done so far.
Eyes
I have done slightly bigger eyes than normal human eyes. My character is based on Elf and I have noticed that making large eyes give this mystery look. To make the eyes look bigger makeup artist usually add a lot of eyeshadow around the eyes. I am going to texture my character but instead of eyeshadows I just have made large eyes.
Hair
I have decided I will do hair as well. It is not necessary for this assignment but I can't imagine having a character without hair. The process looks a bit complicated, so I am going to document step by step everything that I am doing.
The first thing what I did, use the mask tool to select the hairline area. After I masked the hair area, next step I clicked on SubTool and Extract. The result was this helmet shape as shown on the pictures above. I clicked Accept to make it stay, otherwise, it disappeared immediately after I clicked away. I removed mask effect. I used DynaMesh (in Geometry)
Hair and flower crown reference
Hair in progress.
Crown
After I have finished with the hair, I decided to add a wooden crown.
In colour
The Villain is not finished yet, but I wanted to see how is it going to look like in colours. I found it really difficult, especially the skin tone as I mixed yellow, red, brown, orange and blue.
I am still playing with colours to make the character look as realistic as possible. At the very end I am going to eyelashes. Also I model the neck.
I have nearly finished my Villain. There is one issue I am struggling with - light spots on the neck. It happened when I divided project. When I am going back to first devision it looks fine although when I am going higher with divisions that is what happens.
With the teacher help I found out it is too many polygons in
Final outcome
To remove all the bright spots from my project I hade to lower the number of polygons. It is visible that the project has fewer details. I also had to remove a few little objects from the crown, otherwise it takes very long to export project to Maya.
Expressions
The pictures above present two face expression I made in Zbrush. I also brought my project to Maya and animate lips and brows movement.