Introduction

“Punk” is a character inspired from one of the models of 3d.sk. The intention was to make a character aesthetically pleasing, stands out from the rest and has a unique design. After some research I found out that, there were not many models of punk type characters, so I decided to go in that direction. In this article, I will try to explain the process I followed to create the character. I collected as many punk references as possible from the internet, and started out the modeling process. My base mesh was Nick Zuccarello’s free ztool model available in his blogspot http://nickzucc.blogspot.com/. This base mesh is constructed of all quads, and is relatively dense. So, it serves as a good starting point. My work speed is fairly faster in zbrush compared to max. So, I prefer making most of the organic modeling in Zbrush.

Sculpting

One of the most interesting parts of character modelling is sculpting. To flesh out a character I use the clay brush or the claytubes brush most of the time. Somehow, I cannot get around using the standard brush, it seems to be destructive in a certain way, and if used with too much depth, it tends to take away the control from the artist. Claytubes brush, on the other hand has an additive way of adding detail. It adds flat details to a surface, so it works like traditional media. During sculpting, the most important thing to do in my opinion is to keep turning the model and viewing it from all directions. This is most important during the fleshing out process because; here is where the silhouette and proportions of the character is resolved. Once I was happy with the detail in the character, and it’s overall proportions, I went on to model the character’s attire.

Clothing

I created a mask for the vest, and used the extract option under the subtool palette, to create a new subtool. I retopologized the extracted subtool, to get a desired polyflow, deleted higher subd levels, and started to sculpt it into a vest. I use the lazy mouse, along with the gravity feature under the brush settings to make a fold flow with gravity.

This is a multi-part tutorial on creating a Demon-like ‘Lok Warrior’ with realistic muscle anatomy. In the first day of this tutorial we will create a base mesh for our character using poly modeling. In day two we will take this mesh into ZBrush and sculpt intricate muscle anatomy. On day three we will texture the creature and add the finishing touches to the artwork.

Let’s begin day 1 of this tutorial.

Step 1

I used two images from 3d.sk to model the base mesh more accurately. I drew 2 planes, one from the frontal view-point and one from the left view-point. With the exact same length and width as the original photos, I applied the photos as their textures, and then used the Move tool to view our image plane as seen below.

Step 2

Start with a cylinder with 5 height segments.

Step 3

From the front viewport delete the half side of your model so that you can add a symmetry modifier. Click on ‘Editable Poly Vertex Level’ and now we are ready to use some very handy tools: move-scale-rotate, and make the shape of the cylinder fit the image body. Press Ctrl+E and then you need to delete the four polygons. Your final result will be similar to image below.

Step 4

Now select and extrude that front edge using Shift + Move; as you can see on below image, in blue color, try to work in both the front and left viewport. When you are near to back part edge, use ‘Bridge’ to connect the edges when both are selected.

Step 5

Now for the leg. Extrude the selected edges by holding the Shift key down on your keyboard and use the move tool as show in the image below. To help them stand out, I colored them in blue. When you are done, try to form the leg from front and left viewports using the vertex sub-object level and like before, move-scale-rotate them.

Step 6

For the arms, use the same method as the leg in the above instruction.

About the image

There are many rendered portraits in a lot of galleries. I was always impressed by the high quality of the MentalRay FastSkin shader and how easy it was to set it up once you understood the basic concept of how skin works. But as I ‘only’ have Cinema 4D, MentalRay is not an option for me. But isn’t it possible to render realistic skin in Cinema 4D? I wanted to find out with this project.

The modeling

I usually start my 3d models with a simple cube (box modeling). I know that many prefer point-by-point modeling (or poly-by-poly) but I like using a cube and ‘cutting’ the detail in, step-by-step. Box modeling allows me to quickly block out the basic shape of the figure and thus to have a better feeling for the proportions of the model. But because I am using good references, any modeling technique would have worked.


The face finished, I began laying out the UVs (maybe the most annoying part of this job). Fortunately I found UVLayout (by Headus), a free program that flattens 3D geometry automatically. [link]

The textures

I took the model into ZBrush to add a texture to the face. Every inch of the texture comes from high-resolution photos which where projected onto the model with the ZBrush tools. Wesclei Barbosa has written a tutorial about how to do that. All my reference photos as well as the texture references are from www.3d.sk. [link]

This is how the final head texture looks:

I used this same texture to create the skin details. I turned it into a black & white image and created a mask of it in ZBrush. Now I was able to use the Inflate brush and sculpt all the little skin details. This technique is explained in this video tutorial. I also included some volume for the hair with a custom brush. Finally I created and extracted a displacement map of the head.

The target of this project was to create a rigged character as real as possible and with all the clothes layers. This has been the first time I do something like this, and also the first time I tried to do a full human character, so I also used it to learn a lot.

Modeling

There’s really not too much to explain about the modeling. It’s all always the same tools: extruding edges and polys, cutting edges, moving vertexes… These are the basics that everybody can learn from the famous Joan of Arc tutorial. Once you have that basics, I think what is more useful to learn is to see the wires, so here you have mine. You can see some parts have more edges than the normal, but that’s cause all the rigging stuff I wanted to add. For example, if you look at the hips, I added some edges just to make the flesh deform correctly when she’s wearing the underwear, or if you look at the ribs I added edges to create them but in the modeling pose they are not visible, I just make them visible when she’s bending back. That’s, imo, probably the hardest part about modeling, knowing where you have to put the edgeloops and knowing what you will need when rigging. It’s just planning it before start to model.

During the wip of this project, some people asked me how I model the clothes. Once you have the body it’s easier. For example, to create her shirt I first duplicated the body mesh and added a bit of push. Then I deleted all the parts I don’t needed (legs, hands, head…) and tried to reduce the quantity of edges, trying to preserve the body’s shape. It’s just deleting edgeloops till you have it as simple as you can. Then I add the cloth parts, so for example, with the shirt, I added the seams on the lower part, where the body and the arms come together and all the neck zone, creating the shape and adding the rope. But still all as simple as you can, the less polys the better it will be. So I had something like in the image. Finally I added all the wrinkles. For me it’s useful to have references even of an irregular think as the wrinkles, not to exactly copy them, but to have an idea of where will them appear and how. Creating them it’s easy but boring for me. It’s just selecting some edges you have (or creating new edges cutting them) and extruding them (with a 0 height) so you finish with a triple parallel edgeloop, and then you just have to move up or down the middle edges to create the wrinkle, move the vertexes to make it more irregular and weld target the vertexes on the ends of the wrinkle. And repeat this process with different shapes and directions till you’re happy with the result.

Rigging

In this project I did my own rigging instead of using character studio, cause this way I had more control about it, and it had been better for me to learn, that was really the purpose of this project. I learned a lot from this two guys, www.keesrijnen.com and www.paulneale.com, so I think I have to mention them.Really there’s not too much I can say in a tutorial like this. I’ve done IK legs, a spline IK for the spine and IK-FK arms (the way to do this is to create 3 arms for each, one working in IK, other working in FK and the third one, that is the real arm, takes the position from one or from the other depending on a value of a spinner I have). For the facial rigging I also used bones and some morphers, but I didn’t liked the result so the next time I will do it a bit different (with bones and morphers too, but in a different way).

I think the strangest think I’ve done in this rigging are the breast bones. I was trying to simulate the real breast movement, so when she’s looking down they tend to center and fall, when she’s looking up they tend to separate and flatten and when she moves an arm up they have to stretch too. I used a combination of morphers and this bones, that where rotated inside or outside depending on the body’s position.

Skinning