The De-Spine Comedy of Dante

And here it is! This animation is the result of several months worth of work. Hopefully it will entertain you for at least 10 seconds. See you in 2013!

Animation Time!

After rigging and painting the weights on my man-guy character, it's finally time to do a bit of animation. My goal is too practice my animation skills by producing a series of 30 second shorts. For the first short, I've decided to do a parody of Auguste Rodin's THE THINKER statue. What happens when The Thinker has an idea and springs to life? I imagine that his back would be a bit sore from sitting in that position for so long.

Retopo Finished!

I have FINALLY finished retopologizing my ZBrush sculpt! These are screenshots of my new mesh, which has different topology and less polygons than my high poly sculpt, but retains most of the important details. He looks happy in his new home inside of Maya, doesn’t he? Ugh…I’m losing my mind.

The advantage to this “Sculpt first, remesh later” approach is that it allows an artist to worry less about topology and edge flow, and focus more on bringing their vision to life free from restrictions. 

For example, I gave little consideration to polycount and edge flow while while I created the initial sculpt, and instead focused solely on creating an accurate representation of male anatomy. ZBrush is such a fantastic tool because it allows an artist to build a low poly model on top of their sculpture, and then project the details onto the new mesh. Time to rig and animate this guy!

Retopologizing

The first step is to paint the new topology onto my existing sculpt. It's a time consuming process, but the extra effort will help immensely when the time comes to build the new topology.

Next, I use ZBrush's topology tools to build a low poly version of my model on top of my existing sculpt.

Here is a preview of a portion of the new model.

Some people like to create beautiful sculptures for display, but I’m more interested in seeing this thing in motion. However, because of this sculpt’s complex high poly mesh, his joints won’t deform properly if I rig and animate him. In order to repurpose him so that he will animate properly, I will need to rebuild his topology. 

This process involves recreating my sculpture as a low poly model, without losing any of the detail that I sculpted. ZBrush will actually allow me to retain all of the fine detail of my sculpt by allowing me to create a normal map containing all of my sculpture’s surface information. This normal map will then be placed on top of the low poly model.

Male Anatomy Digital Sculpture Turntable

The sculpture is nearly finished! The next step is to retopologize the mesh to allow for more realistic deformations when animated.

Almost Finished!

Here are a few shots of the near completed sculpt.

Sculpting the Torso

I've moved on to sculpting the torso and arms. Getting the proportions right can be tricky.

Finishing the Head Sculpt

After sculpting the bone and muscle, I then move onto adding the skin layer that binds it all together. Notice how certain bony landmarks such as the cheek bones are still visible even after the skin has been applied.

Sculpting Face Muscles

The next step is to sculpt the face muscles using a different colored material so that it’s easier to distinguish from the skull. I use a combination of brushes, including: move, claytubes, standard and rake.

Sculpting the Head

I made some progress on the head today. I’m sculpting the skull first, then I’ll add the musculature on top.

Sculpting Hands

I find the hands to be the most difficult part of the body to sculpt. I’m about halfway finished with them.

I’ve imported the base mesh from Maya into ZBrush and divided the geometry 4 times so that I can begin sculpting some detail. I’m blocking in the major muscle forms using a combination of brushes including: claytubes, standard, move and inflate.

I’ve decided that I need to improve at digital sculpting, so I’ve hit the books and begun working on a new project aimed at challenging both my artistic and technical skills.

If you want to render realistic humans, then you have to understand human anatomy. That being said, I’ve decided to sculpt a male human using Maya and ZBrush. The process begins by constructing a very simple and boxy human in Maya. This low poly model will be imported into ZBRush, where the geometry will be divided and increased to facilitate high poly sculpting.  This is only step one, so stay tuned for more!

New Concept Art

This is a a new character that I'll be bringing to life as a 3D animation.