Massimiliano Calò: UK

[maxink]

I take the plunge, my first challenge. It's about a year that I'm using Zbrush and I feel ready to get into a WIP challenge. Concept firmly within my head for now, will post it soon.

[Jago75]

Hi Maxink, good luck.

[ashras99]

any update on the concept sketch?

[maxink]

Here's the concept, it's about a blind man that touches a voluptuous woman's leg and finds her beautiful. Obviously as he's blind he can only rely on feel.
We can't see her face either, she has a paperbag over the head. Maybe she's ugly but maybe she isn't. Like the blind man we're unable to know what she looks like. We only know that through his eyes she's beautiful.

[ashras99]

Excellent concept, full of humor. Like to see good progress in 3d soon.

[maxink]

Finally managed to do some work on this.
I created the basic models in Zbrush using Zspheres, I first created a basic symmetric character and once I placed all 5 fingers I moved out of symetry and posed it.
Then I dupricated the Zsphere model and reposed it for the other character.
I then added the basic shape for the sofa's cushions using a Zprimitive to see that they sit right.
Since they are not supposed to move and the Zspheres gave me enough geometry for what I need I don't think that I'll need to retopolgize the characters later.

[silvaticus]

Cool idea and sketch and nice start in ZBrush.
You will sculpt without symmetry all the way? Interesting.
I think you will have a few problems with the topology being so messed up in some areas, especially the arms and hands. If you have a super computer, forget my remark, you can make the whole scene from a cube if your PC can subdivide to 50 million polys.

Interesting thread, I`ll be watching this one for sure.

[ArTooRo]

The concept rocks!
I think it's my favourite one

Let's see how the modelling progresses...

[maxink]

Thanks guys, I'm very glad you like the concept.
I'm not worried about the imperfect geometry, it isn't actually that bad for sculpting purposes, I already used a similar solution for the hands of another character and it worked ok, I did retopologize in the end, but only because I wanted different poses and this shouldn't be the case.
That's why I wanted to pose the characters with Zspheres, to have a good starting point for the sculpt. I decided that I preferred that to having a symmetrical model that would have made the sculpt faster only to see it destroyed when posing the characters. A conscious trade off.

[maxink]

I've been working flat out on it all weekend so here's another update.
I first sculpted the characters and worked further on the posing. No clothes yet but don't worry, they will come soon.
I created the elements of decor either using the primitives of Zbrush or retopologizing, this was the case of the frame of the sofa that I did by retopolgizing the sofa's cushion. I then added the armrests by sculpting deformed cube primitives.
I did the stool also using a Sphereinder primitive and then masking and deforming.
Same for the glasses. I first used a Sphereinder primitive that I initialized making it into a disc, I then masked it using topological masking from the centre out and there I created different Polygroups to separate the frame from the glasses.
When I decided that the woman needed to show her toes I created them with edge loops, extruding twice on each toe. Not too hard.
On the floor there is a jewel case. I thought that she could have looked at it instead of smoking but then I checked the rules and found out that I cannot change the concept so the jewel case ended up on the floor. It's also modeled out of a Sphereinder primitive with a 240 degrees coverage.

[tonyclifton]

When I decided that the woman needed to show her toes I created them with edge loops, extruding twice on each toe. Not too hard.

First of all, awesome idea and great humor, maxink!!!

Could you please explain what you mean with extruding and creating with edge loops?! Is this possible in ZBrush?! How does this work?

[umerov]

Well done, I like it. Good luck to you.

[prashantsuyal]

very cool concept and modeling..

[maxink]

Thank you all.

Tony, to give yourself new geometry in Zbrush you must be in the lowest level of subdivision and that could mean deleting lower levels that don't have the polygons that you need as a starting platform for the extrusion.
Then you isolate the polygon (or polygons) that you want to extrude by hiding all else using shift + control + drag around the polygons.
Once you have only those polygons visible you go in the Geometry Palette of the Tools Palette and you click Edge Loop. That does what's written and creates an edge loop and you end up with 5 polygons where there was only one (or 8 polys if you were extruding two, 10 if you were extruding 3...).
For the toes I did this procedure twice for each toe, a first push first and then isolating the central polygon I pushed another loop.
I did the legs of the sofa in the same way.

[tonyclifton]

Thank you very much, maxink! I did not know that!