Original subtitles

All right.

I hope that you're having fun with your character.

I think we're tracking pretty well, and I think the character as well is shaping up nicely.

So it is time to move on to the next stage of the process.

Now, in this set of steps that I'm giving you for, you know, the design with a story, they're very,

very specific and they're a very limited set of tools that I would recommend that you use.

So before I jump into the core of this lesson, which is volume, adjustment and transition,

I want to give you a quick rundown and essentially do a recap of the processes that we've done so far.

So let's go ahead and jump straight.

That's right. So I want to do a quick recap with this very simple sphere in ZBrush.

And just to show you how simple this is.

So I'm going to start by let's just go ahead and type them here.

So the first thing we did was the blocking,

right?

So the blocking is equivalent to what we have right now here.

So this sphere is the blocking.

Let's just go ahead and put it there.

I'm going to press shift S and then bring it here for the second one.

Now, the second step is to adjustment,

right?

And that basically means that you take your blocking and you can have multiple ones, obviously.

And let me just select a move brush.

And this is kind of like the idea, right?

These are the type of tools that we use doing the adjustment, maybe the move topological as well.

So let's do something random. Doesn't have to be anything.

It's just to do a quick recap of the process.

All right. So these would be adjustment.

So let's go ahead and place it there.

Shift S for the next one.

Then we move on from that second adjustment to the sketch definition.

All right.

And this is sketch definition.

What we did before, I was just try to give these a little bit more of a shape.

So I'm going to use the dam standard brush to

carve here into this model. Maybe we need more resolution.

So don't be afraid of adding more resolution if you need to at this point just to define things

a bit more, you know, these sort of things like that.

All right. So this is the definition. Again, it's nothing.

This is not nothing in particular, but it is this is the process, Right.

Is defining these adjustment basically.

And then we can also use the smooth brush.

So very limited set of tools mostly is the standard brush as well, the dam standard and smooth brushes.

And obviously if you need to,

you can add more resolution as well as using or adjusting things with the move brush.

But this is basically the sketch definition.

So you start defining the ideas that you have in your head.

So let's leave it there.

So shift s and now we're jumping into the fourth one.

Let’s do it with a green color here, which is the volume adjustment.

And also this is kind of like the same thing, but I'll call it transitions as well.

And I'll show you what this means in just a second.

So let's take these this sphere again.

And what I'm talking about adjustment of the volumes is basically the same thing

as we did before with the adjustment.

But this time we need to make sure that whatever we have in our sketch or in this blob is actually working.

So I will just go ahead and make sure that

everything in terms of the volumes, the big primary shapes is working.

So let's say this is kind of like a quick refinement just to make sure maybe this is more of a square.

The distance between these line and the this section could be better, right?

So I will spend the time just doing these little tweaks with the move brush, move topological,

just adjusting things.

And if you have multiple things or like multiple layers,

definitely this is the time to do it just to make sure that everything is working nicely.

Now the transition is probably the most important part of this stage because it is the ultimately

the sculpting side of things.

So that transitions just means that I'm going to go ahead and select something like the clay brush, right?

It just means that you have this very sharp let's say let's go ahead and also add another subdivision level.

You have these very sharp lines, those markings, which is just the way that it works.

And that's how we define the sketches by marking things in.

Again, if you're doing some sort of like anatomy, you could have done the same thing.

Just carve into the muscles and the different muscle groups and that's it.

Right?

But now in this section in transition, I'm just going to go ahead and slowly start

building volume so that this let me do a different color here.

Let's just do it with a dark acme.

So let's say these line right here or this crevice

and let's say these other crevice here, they're just like the markings of the sketch.

So I'm going to concentrate on do a transition so that it feels integrated with the rest.

That is the whole point of this lesson to concentrate on the areas that we need to transition

between one, let's say, crevice and another volume to make sure that everything is working nicely.

So I'm using the clay brush again and also the smooth brush just to smooth things out like so.

And I'm going to concentrate on this area again.

This is absolutely nothing, but it sort of gives you an idea.

So it's just about building volumes.

But we already have the blocking. We already have the main areas.

So we don't have to really build that right, because that's already there.

So we don't have to, let's say, put too much thought into it.

We can just concentrate on this very repetitive and almost therapeutic

action of adding or subtracting volumes.

So that's pretty much it.

Let's see, that makes a difference.

So if you compare the bottom area with the top one, in fact, let's just extend it

a tiny bit more so that is more obvious from that camera angle and you kind of see that

there is a nice transition between those, you know, high and low points.

We just a little bit of volume, whereas the top one is just the markings.

So this is going to be a lot more evident

when we actually started with the character, especially around the face.

So I just wanted to give you that sort of like step by step so that you have there as a reference.

All right.

So with those out of the way, let's go ahead and move on to the character.

So I'm just going to hold control and N to clear that example.

And here we have our characters.

So this is where we left off from the previous lesson.

The yellow color is the ones that I sort of assigned this body paint to.

So I know which ones have already adjusted.

But it is, you know, this is exactly the same thing as we did before.

So I went ahead and did the whole adjustment, the sketch adjustment throughout the entire character.

And I'll walk you through everything that I did in just a second.

So let me just give you again the comparison the before and after.

So I'm going to drop this in the canvas shift as move this around and I'm going to bring in the final version

that I have.

All right.

So it looks a lot more detail. And you know, from this distance of the camera,

it almost feels like it is already polished and ready to go.

But I assure you, it is still very sketchy. Right.

And I'll show you what I did for every single piece.

Again, I'm not going to let you hang in there.

I'm going to give you all the processes and everything.

It's just that there is a lot of repetitive action.

So in an effort to sort of like save some time, I kind of like

did it this way, but I'm going to cover everything if I, you know, use a different technique.

But for the most part, it's just more of the same.

All right. So let's go back to this guy. And so, yeah, this is what we had at the beginning.

And let me just show you the next step.

So the next step was this The green color is little things that I added.

All right.

So the first thing that you might notice is that this piece right here

is different from the previous one, which is this one.

Okay, So that the main difference is go into solo mode, this is before and this is after.

I decided that this section that I did in the previous lesson wasn't really adding anything to it.

It was just like a random design.

So I just got rid of it by simply undoing the history and clean it up.

And I also try to make the corners a little bit sharper.

But that's just move brush and you know the undo history basically.

So that's the only thing.

Now this section here as well in the center, let me show you this is before.

So this is this part here that, you know, it's pretty much the only area that you see.

And it's you know, I wasn't sure about like the design.

So I decided maybe this is an important area that needs to be covered, kind of like a hard surface

metallic area with some padding that protects the sternum or of this guy or something like that.

So I just went ahead and did that.

So this is what I did, actually, I split it into two pieces.

So this is the original right?

This is what we had.

So I just applied at the subdivision level and I cut it up into three pieces.

So this is three pieces using the panel loops.

And then I took the same bits that I created and then duplicated as a second layer.

And let me just show you to create this sort of shape.

Again, these are all things that I've covered in the past.

But just to be 100% sure that we are getting it, I'm just going to do it here as a quick reference as well.

So let's some as remesh this with symmetry.

I think I must have done it.

Yeah.

So sorry there's rotate it like that so that we can actually have symmetry bit less than this.

All right so let's assume that this is the, that sort of neck or sternum piece with dynamic subdivision.

And we also had thickness

something like that, right? So that's what we had.

So I went ahead and use the polygroups.

So let's start this off. I use symmetry as well.

Let's assign a group here.

So now we have three poly groups, still a single sided mesh and a strong double off, on.

Sorry.

So yeah, we have three different polygons.

I went to the panel loop section that I covered before, so in the Edge loops,

panel loops, and that basically creates that.

And I obviously changed the thickness, so it was a bit thicker.

There we go.

So that is done and then we can go ahead and Polish and then maybe Polish by groups or by features

that is all those sliders are from the deformation palette anyway, so polish by features

and also with the move brush, I just went ahead and, you know, adjusted it as well.

All right.

But that's about it, right?

So we have these dynamic, let's remove thickness.

We have this portion.

And if you want to sharpen things so that it looks more like a hard surface, you can click on clay polish.

And that definitely sharpens things up.

And in this case, I think it is working fine.

And you can also, you know, duplicate and continue. So this is the second step that I did.

So I duplicated this, turn off dynamic.

This time I hit everything but the top polygroups right?

So again, these three poly groups

and I also removed parts of it just to make it more interesting in terms of design.

So I went ahead and did all of these and as well as something at the bottom

and on the side as well.

Now you can do it with a bit more care, right?

If you're doing something simple, delete hidden, dynamic, thickness, and bring back everything.

And there we go. So that's roughly what I did.

So as you can see, it is more of the same. That's what I was talking about.

That is a very repetitive thing, is doing the same action over and over.

And you can build a lot of complexity just by duplicating bits and pieces.

If you want to do more, you can just duplicate that one, maybe,

maybe inflate things just so that they move away a little bit.

Let's just move it as well with the gizmo like so and let's go ahead and delete something else.

Delete hidden.

And now we have this section.

So. So yeah, this is very, very simple.

But when you look at it, it is a very complex object.

And of course, we haven't even gone to the process of adding details or, you know, cuts or

dents or anything like that.

So that is the whole point, right? So that's what I did with this one.

Now, with this one, there's nothing new.

Actually, I would say with the jacket, there's nothing new with the vest.

I went ahead and I did more of the same. So I use the H.R.

Giger cutter to essentially go through the process of marking the these areas.

But if I zoom in, obviously you see that this is still pretty sketchy.

If I need to, I can subdivide these because this one has subdivision levels and just add more.

Don't be afraid of if you are at this point, need more resolution to define things.

Don't be afraid to do it right. So this one has 1.1 million.

This is not going to be the final topology by any means.

It's a nice topology, but you know, it has areas that doesn't really, really work.

So we're just going to tackle this after.

But the whole point of this previous step was to sketch and define.

So that's what I did, just a bunch of lines, just manually adding them.

Nothing fancy here.

These one, this strap.

I use the same technique with the topology brush, so more of the same.

That was pretty simple.

Now these ones I did this kind of like a some pockets, the pockets are done with the with the same brush

so let's actually use that one and I'll show you what I did because you want to do something similar.

But again, it's more about the technique rather than the actual object that I created,

but I'll cover it anyway.

So for this, I went ahead and let's do a tiny, tiny pocket here.

I use this to create the base.

So this is a tiny pocket and then went ahead and did that, then click somewhere else.

Let's go ahead and split unmask points.

So now I have this piece that I can go ahead and uncrease everything and then increase

the maybe the thickness just with the actually, let’s keep it simple.

So I'm going to hide everything.

But the first or the top group and then at thickness like so

there we go.

So that is the pocket.

That's the base at least.

And then for the top bit, I'll just duplicate it.

So let me assure you.

So what I did was to apply this and let's go ahead and duplicate that, go to the lowest observation level,

and then use the selection tools to isolate just the top portion like so, delete hidden.

So now we have this bit that we can just give it a single poly group.

So again, more of the same, just reusing a mesh that we had like let's say

the equivalent to duplicating one of the blocks, cutting out some pieces, and then then

you have another piece and then we can use dynamic to change the thickness a bit.

And that's for the top maybe actually let's remove these bit as well.

And if you want to make something a bit more interesting, right, than just a square pocket

like these,

you can totally use something like slice curve something else that we've talked about in the past.

We can just slice it.

We cannot slice it because we don't have, we have subdivisions, so let's cut that up

and we can slice it like so, right.

And we can hide everything but that delete hidden and then we can do a quick Zremesher as well.

Maybe a lot less than that.

Then we go something like this that works fine, so dynamic.

And then you see we have a more interesting pocket.

So that's the idea, right?

Like just to, to follow the process and to follow the techniques that I gave you before

that we've been talking about in terms of blocking and adjusting things

and just generating things or other volumes based on what we had.

So that's what I did for those pockets.

Nothing else.

Let's move on to the next stage now.

The green once again are pieces that I added new to them.

The blue ones are new techniques that I'm going to cover in just a second.

So let's say these this area right here is just another belt.

So the bell was it, you know, the original that we created with the with that technique.

So I just went ahead and duplicated this delete the top and bottom of the kind of like the poly loops

so that I can make something smaller.

And then I just added a couple more edge loops using the Zmodeler so that I can move this away.

But that's it. That's just using the, the move brush to, to move it around.

And I think I added one of these. I can remember. Let me just, just check.

Yeah. So I just took this bit, duplicated it and that's it.

We have it in there but that's it.

There's nothing new to that.

Now, I did spend quite a bit of time with the hands or like converting the hands into the, the gloves

because I think I decided that yeah, this guy is going to be

kind of like MacGyver, like a repairer of all sorts of like sci fi stuff.

So it made sense to, to have like some nice, tough working sort of gloves.

So let me go into solo mode with the hands

just because I want to show you that even though it looks cool,

I think, I think it looks cool from the distance.

It is super sketchy, right? So I still have the same

topology.

The only difference, though, is that I decided to combine a few poly groups.

So if I compare it to this one, what I did was isolate the poly groups because I just had too many,

auto group, so that I can just hide that easily and then work on

this, let's say to add this around.

So this was easier to just isolate it them like that so you can decide whether or not you need that.

But that's what I did, really.

I went ahead and find a nice pattern and started defining those areas.

So there's kind of like padding around.

And then after cutting through with these brush, just to define, let's say that the design of the glove,

I went ahead actually let's give it a full yellow color so that it's not distracting.

So I went ahead and changed to another brush, this standard brush, and I use it slightly more intensity.

So I'm just going to increase that.

And I went ahead and basically redefined those edges

so that it looks more like a padding section.

Yeah, you can see a pretty prominent version of what I just show you in here.

So yeah, that's, you know, that's a pretty simple way of doing it.

And I also did some cuts in here to indicate, you know, a bit of

the all

wear and tear or maybe the memory folds that have been created over time, but the rest is more of the same.

Now, the only difference, which is these green bits, these are new.

What I did was the same technique of extracting.

So I use the masking brush to on the hands, just mask an area.

Right.

And then went to the extract, click on extract and accept and that's how I created this bit.

And then I polished it with Polish slider and the Polish by groups.

So pretty straightforward.

It's just, you know, when you start adding things on top of each other,

it becomes a lot more complex and it looks that is very polish, but it is not, it’s a separate object.

This is what I have and it's a it's a pretty dense mesh, but it's okay.

We don't need to have any perfect mesh at this point. We're still sketching.

Just remember that always have that the back of your head that we can make changes,

we can destroy things, rearrange things in any way that we want.

Now, one thing that I want to mention before we move into the adjustment of the transitions, really

is that for this specific example, this section right here, this padding

for the gloves, I use a very interesting technique that hopefully is going to make sense in just a second.

So because I have these very sharp markings

and that's another reason why the previous lesson is so important to be able to mark things out.

I was able to mask things very easily.

So let me give you an example of what I did, actually.

Let's do it in here.

So keep an eye on all these section right here, and this is pretty much what I used to extract.

So if I go ahead and do that manually, right, I can do that.

So masking all of that and, you know, might not take too long, but it's not going to be perfect.

And, you know, but it will take time. Right.

And if you have something a bit more complex, it will take time.

However, if you have done the markings or the definition of the sketch properly, you know,

very sharp lines and all of that, we can take advantage of a tool called the Transpose Smart Mask.

So when I click on that and that is basically a gizmo, right so you see it's kind of like a transpose line,

but it's really, really cool

because what it allows you to do is click on a surface by holding control and click and drag.

So I'm going to click here Holding control,

click and drag, and you'll see that slowly start generating this mask.

But it's going to stop whenever he finds a very harsh line.

So this is super easy to use.

So I'm just going to stop here because it's kind of like spilling around the finger, right?

So I'm just going to stop before it starts

spilling around there and then I can just keep it using this tool to add to this mask.

So if I hold control, click and drag, I can start adding another mask.

And if I press shift is just going to add to the previous one.

So I'm just pressing control and shift to add to this one.

Then fix this one around here.

So control, click and shift to add to it.

And that's how basically once you have your sketch defined like we did in the previous lesson,

things like these become like really, really simple

at this point.

Let's just leave it as it is at this point.

I will just go with the masking brush and just manually refine the borders maybe,

but it just takes a lot of the

you know, a lot of the time that you would spend if you were to sort of like mask these by hand.

And then, yeah, just once you have these one, you can refine the mask a little bit if you want to.

So and then use the extract and that's how you come up with all these pieces.

And again,

if you layer things that's going to, you know, that is going to make it look a lot more interesting.

But that is the idea even more of the same is just about trusting the process really bit by bit,

you're going to start seeing a big difference in the way that you approach things and the quality

that you produce because it is a much more structured way of building things.

All right, So the blue ones, the only thing that I did artists like tubes around it because I think

this is going to be like some kind of protection, but I want to make it like a hard letter maybe.

So just want to show you how I did

this one is the same thing, the same technique that I use for these sections right here.

So basically what you can do

let's go ahead and select this and let's clone it so that I can show you what I did.

And I'm also going to remove that, isolate this, delete.

Okay. So this is what we had in the previous lesson.

So I wanted to add those that extra borders so you can do this in a few ways.

You can, for instance, isolate this poly group, you know, give it up, poly group

like this, and then you can use the panel loops and then just split it or duplicate these,

delete the rest and just leave the green one at a bit of subdivision levels and, you know, inflate.

So there's many, many ways of doing the same thing. Right.

What I did, though, was to add tube.

So I'm going to select the twos and here it is. Right?

So this is what I did.

I just started doing this.

Well, I didn't do that, but this is something that you can do

by the way, if you do this and it's not attaching to the surface.

I think I covered this before, but it is in the picker.

You can just change these to constant from oneZ to continueZ, and that way

it sort of follows around and you can just extended like so.

But obviously this is very tedious. So that's not what I did, but that's how it looks.

So what I did, if I turn off dynamic, this is a single sided mesh.

I went to the stroke palette and in here under the curve functions,

you have this border poly group and crease edges.

So I can click on frame mesh and ZBrush is going to frame whatever the mesh is open.

So I can use not only the tube brush, I can use any curved brush and you know,

define the size with my brush size, click on it and then click and that's it.

That's the technique. Now for the neck of the character.

I use the same technique, but I also added multiple poly groups.

So let me just show you how that looks.

So if I take these one and let's just do something like this

and then just go ahead and do auto groups, there we go.

And let’s actually hide these so that it doesn't create an extra one

if I do the same thing because I have all these switch enable I'm going to turn of border

so that it doesn't create anything in the open space or the open geometry and the crease.

I just don't have any crease edges.

But we have poly groups, so I click on frame mesh and you see creates one along each part of the mesh.

So I can just click once, click outside, remove my mask.

And now we have an interesting piece, right?

So that's just something else that I wanted to cover.

I want to make sure I covered that.

And there we go.

So that's the only new thing for this one.

And finally, this is what I came up with.

The only new things after I just went through and added some details

or not details, But, you know, the finding the sketch was this bit here,

which is using the same technique that I showed you before.

So extracting piece, giving you thickness and that's it.

And I'm thinking that these will be like a holder for like not a gone by

some kind of like device that I'm that this guy will use for as a mechanic or something like this.

But I'm not going to do that right now. I'm just going to concentrate on the character.

And later on, we'll see what we can add in there.

So this is just kind of like where the thing will sit or how it's going to attach to this.

Yeah, to this belt.

Then as I thought that this guy could be,

you know, a mechanic or something like that, I thought like some kneepads.

If he has to sort of like kneel down and just work under a shape

or something like that, it would be very handy to have that.

So I just added a couple of spheres and pushed them in.

This one is just blocking.

There's nothing complicated about these.

It's just this sphere that I pull and push to generate that.

And then I went with the dam standard and just cut it up just to generate some more interesting details.

These sort of like straps that I'm hoping to add a kind of like a custom buckle when we get to detailing

later on.

It's essentially that is just be more of this topology brush.

So just clicking and adding pieces like this right so that's how I did those pieces.

And also the last thing is this one that I should have also made it green.

I also duplicated the boot what I had as a dynamesh I think duplicate it then cut it up in that area.

So I use the slice to just cut it up in pieces similar to what we did during the blocking.

And then you just did a quick redynamesh and generated that sole of the boots.

But that's it.

Oh yeah.

And this bit as well.

So it's the same thing I just went ahead and use the dam standard brush to cut through this,

but everything is very sketchy so hopefully you can see that there's no, there's no real definition.

We will have to, you know, if we want to maintain these later

on, we'll still have to come through and refine it later, but I think that covers it.

Let me just do a quick check.

Oh, and the eyes .

So that was the last thing.

All right.

So the eyes are just a couple spheres.

So four spheres to be precise.

And those figures are just in there so that I can I went ahead and manipulated

the eyelids a little bit so that, you know, they fit nicely into their into the face.

That is about it.

One thing that you can do that is quite, quite cool.

Let me just do it in here, ZBrush has this macro that comes with ZBrush which is called the append eyes .

So you can click on that and ZBrush is going to append a new sub tool

that has two spheres with, black color and the toy plastic enable.

So this is a macro that comes with ZBrush. You can have it.

So I use that one is just a very quick way of, you know, having a couple of cities or the eyes enable

local symmetry and preposition that, hold control and reposition that at the back and that's it.

That's how I created those eyes .

But you can do that with the normal spheres.

All right.

So with that long intro, hopefully that covers everything.

I you notice that the thing that is here on top of the arm I haven't covered that

or haven't changed or define any of that because that's going to be more of a hard surface bit.

So I just want to show you different techniques when we get to that.

So I'm just going to leave them as it is and let's go ahead and turn off all the poly paint.

So we kind of like judge the character as, you know, as a whole thing.

And now that we have these, we're going to move on into the transition,

which is the whole point of these lesson.

And for this by the way, you can use the clay brush or the clay builder brush.

I have them here as my you know, my go to brushes, but you can use the clay builder,

brush the clay tubes as well.

I just think the clay one gives you a lot of control once you have the blocking ready

and once you have the markings, you can alternatively use the clay builder brush.

But it is something that I would use in an area that I haven't defined or that I'm trying to define

just with the clay brush.

Hopefully that makes sense.

But you know,

I think the clay brush works better in this environment that we have something a lot, a lot more defined.

So I want to select the face going to solo mode and let's actually duplicate

so that you can have a record of those that difference and with this clay brush.

I'm going to start refining that transition.

So this is what I mean about the transitioning.

So let me get closer here and mark it down.

So the attention to this area, it's almost like I can very easily

mark down or, you know, highlight these areas

of the face.

So it's very easy to recognize those. Let me just show you right.

And the idea is that if you need them, then you leave them there.

But if you don't, you can just go ahead and blend them and play with the transition between one volume

or one shape and the other.

So I want to use these blue to indicate what I'll try to do.

So this area right here, I'm just going to blend it a bit more so that the eyelid, it feels like it's

transitioning nicely into this other protrusion or this area

of the zygomatic arch, let's say, of this character, so that it creates a bit of tension as well.

So it's going to go ahead and do that just by adding bits and pieces of clay.

With the clay brush, you can also reduce the intensity a bit so that you can have more control over it.

And then you also use the smooth brush to smooth it out.

I'm going to use the smooth peaks that I showed you in the previous lesson,

but that's basically all there is to it.

Right.

And this again, this is more repetitive, even more than before,

just because it's a lot of like little, little tweaks like I'm doing right now.

But I want to try to do this, this first section kind of like in real time so that you can see.

And what I'll do is I'll jump into a time lapse with the with the face

so that you at least can see that I'm literally using the same technique, nothing else,

just to refine this and for the rest, for the body it’s not as organic.

So refining the transition is not as important.

Step is more about like the.

Yeah, the polishing later on.

So I would say that these refinement of these transitioning is the most important way

when it comes to organic surfaces like these.

In this case.

So a lot of smoothing, a lot of pulling and pushing geometry.

Same thing here.

How these and this is something that I will have to figure out as well as I do it,

which is something that I really like doing anyway,

which is try to figure out how this would actually work.

So there is a bit of a tendon or something that will pull down this eyelid,

but how is it going to integrate with the top of the other eyelid?

These are the questions that I ask myself when I'm playing around with the transitions again.

All right. So hopefully this makes sense.

And another thing that I would say is

remember that when we are dealing with 3D is as important to subtract volume as well as adding.

So, there are certain areas that I will just push holding the alt key instead of adding.

And let's see, for example, this area right here, I want the eyelids sort of like blend a little bit more

here at the top

you see is,

you know, ultimately pretty subtle stuff because we already figured out the rest.

And that's why when we did the blocking I mentioned, that is one of the most important steps

of the entire process, because if we get the blocking right, these next stage is just the braces.

You don't have to spend any of your energy figuring things out in terms of the big shapes

because you know that they're working and you can just spend your time and your energy

just playing around with the volumes, adjusting the transition so that it looks a lot more polished.

And that's one of the keys, I think, of this whole process that

once you figure out the main areas, the details and what I'm doing right now,

the transitioning becomes really, really fun and, you know, an enjoyable process.

And this is what I would call the sculpting part.

The rest is more about

I mean, it does have a bit of a sculpting, but it involves a lot more of the technicalities

of, you know, extracting a mesh or deciding whether or not to use a poly group, that sort of thing.

So whatever I cover in the previous lessons, I believe they're a little bit more technical,

but they're all fall within those four pillars of sculpting that I cover in the at the beginning.

So this is more about like the traditional sculpting of just strokes and adding volume, subtracting volume,

smoothing things out.

So hopefully you can see how this you know, this process,

this is structured approach to sculpting can be very beneficial.

But Yeah.

So I think that is a process.

Let me just give you a comparison going between the previous one and this.

So this is the original one.

This is what I just what I just added.

So again, pretty subtle, but pay attention to the top area here around the corner of the eye.

So this is before and this is after, before, after.

And it doesn't have to be 100% the clay brush.

You can also use the standard brush and it's just reset it in case I have used or change the settings a bit

and I'll use this one just to, to bring back some of the important landmarks that I had before.

So now that I have a nice transition.

I can go back and maybe refine this, you know, this area right here.

And the same thing here for the top.

So again, it's just about playing with the volumes.

Yeah.

And you know, this is another area that I would have spent some time

maybe with the Clay brush pushing things in and, then pushing things back on.

That's just transitioning between those crevices that I marked in the previous lesson.

So same thing here, just adding a bit of volume, smoothing more of the same.

So very repetitive action. But it is quite fun.

So I would encourage you to spend as much time as you need to during this, you know, this process.

But it shouldn't be that long.

It shouldn't take that long in terms of, you know, I would say a day or two maximum

in this process if you want to, I would spend maybe like a couple more hours on this

just because, again, when you figure out everything else.

So this should be l pretty simple.

But if you enjoy the process, by all means, you know, take your time.

Just make sure that you're not

detailing anything just yet because things might change.

So, yeah, I think I'm going to leave this one here and then going to a time

lapse where I'm going to finish the transition and the volume adjustment of the face.

One more thing that I'm going to say before I jump into the time lapse is that if you need to

right now I have 837,000 points with dynamesh of 728,

but I'm probably going to be adding a bit more resolution

redynameshing so that I can, you know, smooth things out

a little bit more and then refine with, you know, with more detail.

So feel free to do so if you need to just add resolution.

And yeah, just define the transitions.

I would say another thing just before I jump in a time lapse is to when you're doing things like, like folds

or wrinkles like, like

large wrinkles for skin or any type of skin, just pay attention in the way

that you envision the character or your creature to, let's say, open the mouth or have an expression.

And that will create those memory forms of memory folds you know,

not everything is going to be the same thing as a human face, right?

Because in this case, I'm doing kind of like a character creature.

But even though it has a face that, you know, has a couple of eyes and I'm trying to make it,

I try to add traits of human or yeah, human characteristic is still going to be a unique thing.

So I need to figure out how that works.

And that's what I'm thinking about the flow of this folds.

And when the character opens the mouth, what happens?

What tendons, what muscles are playing a part in that behavior, All of that good stuff.

So that is all of these that I'm mentioning that comes into play

in this specific step, which is the transition.

So think about those things as well.

Think about the possibility of the design, making sure that things work

so or at least that they could function in real life, even though it's a it's a creature.

All right. So let's go ahead and jump into the time lapse now.

All right.

So that's it for this time lapse. Hopefully, you can see that

these more structural approach of sculpting is something that is very helpful.

It also helps you to avoid that sort of lumpiness or bumpiness in the surface.

That sometimes is a very characteristic thing from someone that is just starting out with sea

and just want to jump into details straight away.

But, you know, doing it this way, you can really see the benefit of blocking things out, taking the time

to make sure that the volumes, the primary shapes are there then moving into secondary,

which is pretty much what we're doing, just playing around with the transitions.

And you know ultimately polished to sketch later on. All right.

So I'm going to show you the before and after so that you can compare basically what we did.

And then I'm going to show you an extra technique so that you can

work with the transitions or just the volumes in a surface that is less organic.

Like it's not the face, something else in the body. All right. Let's go ahead and jump into it.

All right.

So if I actually I'm going to just go like this when I go into solo mode.

So this is the one that I just sculpted and the previous one is this.

So quite a significant change in of how these markings and those lines are working together?

I think these as markings or indications of the details were really well.

But when you spend time refining it, it sort of like feels more cohesive and more part of the same,

especially when you had lots of different sub tools and then you just try to merge it.

So I did spend a bit of time like figuring out the head part.

So I wanted something pretty clean here for the back.

That doesn't mean that we cannot just go on heaps of details all around if you need to,

but I just wanted to concentrate.

Let me just actually give you

a very rough idea of what I was seeing in my head when I was playing around with these.

So visually I kind of like want it to divide the face in two, this area.

There's going to be relatively plain in terms of like wrinkles and things like that.

And I'm just, you know imagine this to be more of our of our cranium,

you know, bony areas, whereas this the at the bottom it has more, you know, more flesh and fat and wrinkles.

So I just want to create that that bit of contrast as well here with the neck.

But that doesn't mean that I cannot go and add a few details.

So I'm just envisioning having some wrinkles around here as well and,

you know, a few bumps and interesting patterns around here that I can play around with.

And then extend throughout the rest of the face.

How are we going to get to that later on?

I just want to give you an idea of why

I decided to focus on certain areas more than the than others alrighty.

So that is about it.

Let's go ahead and maybe use the gloves as an example, because they very sketchy as well.

Yeah, let's use this one.

What I can do though, is I want to delete oops, sorry about that.

Delete this left one.

Make sure that symmetries of delete hidden.

And I'm just going to focus on this one and then I could just mirror and weld.

So when it comes to the transition

with a volume like this that it's a is less organic like let's say there's going to be less,

you know, fleshy bits or folds, even though there's wrinkles and folds as well in here.

What I would concentrate on doing is on refining things like these section right here.

So let me just show you, you know, the topology is not great, but because we're just

defining these and playing around with the transitions, I can just go ahead and divide this one more time.

So I have 3 million polygons just in the hand,

which is, you know, is is not bad, but it's maybe a little bit too high.

So you can decide whether or not you want to do it this way.

But I'm just going to do it like that.

And again, it's not going to be the final anyway.

So this area right here looks very lumpy and bumpy.

So I'm going to start with a clay brush

just adding volume around this area and then with a smooth brush, just refine that.

So that's another way of playing around with the transitions.

Just think about the material as well, right?

Something like that.

Maybe in here I will add a bit more volume and that sort of tightens these this crevices a bit more.

There we go.

And another thing that you can do is whenever you want to, you know, tighten in the area,

you can either use the inflamed brush or you can also use something like the pinch brush.

So if I use a pinch, yeah, you can sort of refine very quickly this,

you know, these areas, this seems basically all day over the globe.

And if you want to maintain a little bit more of the volume as you do this, as you refine it

and sort of tight in these areas, you can totally go for a, you know, inflate.

So let's say around this area, instead of using this to, you know, sharpen these

and make it like really, really close together, I can use the inflate, which is going to

do something very similar, but it's going to maintain the volume.

So a little bit more I just going to bring those two edges closer to each other.

All right.

Let's go back with the clay again, because, for instance, this area, when I isolate it,

I remember that I have like some problems for the fingers.

I'm just going to add volume around these this pad.

So I'm thinking that this area right here could be like a protective rubber or something for the glove.

So that sort of stuff.

All right.

And you'll see it will be kind of like the same thing that I would have to do all around here

just to make sure that it's nicely transitioning between one shape and the other.

So it's cleaning this up.

Really the difference between cleaning things up or polishing,

you'll see later on when we get to polishing the sketch.

But the main difference, I would say when you're working with the transition,

if you want to think about this process as cleaning up things is that you're cleaning up

as you sculpt, so you're cleaning up things, with sculpting, brushes.

So that is roughly what I would do.

Also, if you see like very prominent sort of strokes like these, maybe

when I change the material so that you can see it a little bit better.

So I have some strokes that I did just to indicate maybe some folds or some wrinkles,

but they're pretty sharp.

So at this stage I would also go with a smooth brush and because I have heaps of topology

or heaps of resolution, I will just use the the smooth stronger

just to make sure that I integrate these nicely with the rest.

Alright, so I think that's it.

Maybe let's go ahead and use the standard brush to add a bit of bumpiness here.

Just a another definition of this edge.

There we go.

And then we can go back with the clay brush and these this is precisely what I used a clay brush for.

So we have this stroke and then we have the rest.

We just need to integrate it with the rest.

So I just do a couple of these and then smooth that out and that is pretty cool.

All right, so that's it.

Remember for the gloves, I also have this other part or this other section that is a separate mesh.

And in theory, if you wanted to, you could just split the gloves in on all these pieces

and then just, you know, refine them separately.

But I'm just going to keep it simple for now.

And, you know, you can have as many tools or as many sub tools as you need to

since at the end, which is going to combine everything and, you know, do a retopology

or fixing things up, you know, in a very cool way with some techniques that I'm going to show you later

on, of course.

But for now, just concentrate on this, on just playing around with the transitions, making sure

the whatever you added before, whatever those markings are,

is, you know, they're working fine and the transition is also working.

So just a quick recap/wrapping up this lesson here is a very good example of what the sketch definition is.

So the sketch definition is cutting through the model, adding little bumps

and volumes to essentially define certain areas.

And then, let’s turn this off I will go with these markings

or these sections that I created in the previous lesson with the clay brush

and the smooth brush and refine it just to make sure the transitions are working.

Remember this the previous markings are not

details are just references for ourselves to create something else.

The details, if you actually wanted to have let's you know let's do something like this.

So if you actually wanted to have a a protrusion here that is a detail or

something along the seam like this, you can do that afterwards

or we'll do that afterwards when we get to detailing.

But if you have something like this in the marking that is more about refining and polishing that area.

All right.

Another thing that you can do at this stage as well is just go over certain, you know, markings that you had.

I think I've already done this, but let me just reset this.

Let's say

you have just got to do something quick in Sphere just to show you one more thing before we wrap up.

So let's subdivide this.

Let's say during the sketching definition you did something like this,

just a bunch of wrinkles around the neck or behind whatever part of the body.

Right? And you have these nicely done.

And then you can just go with a smooth brush and start blending things a little bit.

It is also a very good idea to obviously go with the clay brush

and add a little bit of volume as you transitioning to those folds or into those wrinkles.

Right.

But also going with the standard brush and just add some little bit of just a bit of fat.

I guess, if it is going to be an organic thing.

And again, this is nothing.

This is just a sphere, but you see that just adding a tiny bit of volume between those

crevices with the standard brush really helps to sell the effect, right.

So you see that sort of bumpiness.

So if you have that in your character, you know, try to do that.

Just double check. This is the

yeah, this is the one that I've been working on. Cool.

So what I'll do is I want to select the globe again.

I'm going to solo mode

and I'm going to switch to the previous resolution and you see there's not a big difference.

I just use the larger resolution to be able to polish things a bit more.

But there's not a huge difference.

I can just go ahead and delete higher so I don't have that many polygons and mirrors and weld,

so that we have both our hands back in play.

And that's how I would refine the rest of the, you know, the rest of the character.

One more thing is if you do things like this, let's say you did some strong markings

around your jacket or a fabric like these, This seam might be a little bit

too strong.

You can go with the same technique that I just show you with a pinching brush and then just go over it.

And that also helps you to refine and polish that that seam or that crevice.

Okay.

I think that is looking pretty good.

All right.

So that brings this lesson to an end.

Hopefully, you can see how much progress we've made in just a few lessons from the blocking

that we had something extremely rough, very sketchy, too.

Something that is is still a very sketchy thing,

but it's a it's a lot more powerful in terms of the visual light.

You can already see the complexity of the character.

So remember a couple of things.

If you want to build complexity and build

something that is that looks really, really cool, you know, with a lot of details is not about

finding the, you know, specific alpha or specific brush that is going to do that for you

is just taking the time of finding the major forms, the big shapes,

set that up and then take the steps, you know, bit by bit and building things up.

So, you know, if you have three layers like I have like the shirt or the jacket,

then a vest on top and then the pads on top that sort of like builds that complexity.

But it's all done very methodical bit by bit layering it up.

So hopefully you can see the value of this approach.

In the next lesson, we're going to take things a little bit further

and start tweaking things and just polishing the sketch a little bit more before we finalize our sketch

and jump into rendering.