MatrixNAN Posted March 31, 2006 Author Share Posted March 31, 2006 Hey Stu, Your work is amazing by the way. I think my jaw drops everytime I see it. Basically I start off with a low poly model of about 7,000 polys that I made in XSI. I made it in XSI because I can do it faster in that package and XSI handles polys by being very light and fast. I also own a commerical copy of XSI too so that is a part of the reason too. I make an organized mesh in XSI because although ZSpheres are cool they do not give you an organized mesh. I have also learned the hard way not to do detailed organised meshes because then you lose flexibility which is reall important in modeling and I also can't reuse the model as much or as easily. Then I export it to ZBrush and double my ZBrush Document size and then AAHalf it then zoom it. I load the character tool and go into the edit mode and just start dividing the model up to about 5 or 6 times. I tend to use the standard and smooth brushes the most, then the inflate and pinch brushes next. For more of the art side I have been studying Anatomy for the last 3 months like crazy. I am drooling over this particular model and I plan to get one in the near future. Muscle Bone Model Also I bought 16 figure drawing books for reference plus I already had the Primal Pictures CD set which is excellent and I use it on a regular basis, and I highly recommend it. These prices are based on Amazon. 1 An Atlas of Anatomy for Artis $10.36 1 1 Drawing the Human Head $13.57 1 1 Dynamic Anatomy $15.72 1 1 Dynamic Figure Drawing $13.57 1 1 Dynamic Wrinkles and Drapery $15.30 1 1 The Figure in Motion $13.57 1 1 Artistic Anatomy $15.72 1 1 Drawing Dynamic Hands $13.57 1 1 The Artist's Complete Guide t $22.05 1 Also Some Good Links with This Regard: http://www.artnatomia.net/uk/index.html http://www.reybustos.com/04er/er.html http://www.reybustos.com/03ra/ra.htm Basically I work on the Torso first particularly the back and then the Chest. I think I start of the back first because it always gives me more trouble than the chest and stomach. Well everything branches off of the chest and the back so I just kind of bounce around between the legs, arms, and the neck shoulders and head. I do the hands and feet last because they have the least overall impact on the model as a whole but make a big difference with the arms and legs for everything being layed out right and weighted properly. Then once I have all of the forms layed out I do fine etchings with a very small brush and set the strength of the brush pretty low. I go back along the edges between the masses and cut in lines along the form and then go back and smooth over them. This allows me to basically highlight these forms in the modeling process long before I ever get to the actual shading. After I get all of these masses properly layed out then I go back and detail. I make the model then not quite symmetrical and I add veins and skin pores and such things like that. I don't use projection master for this detailing stage. I like having that fine control right in my hands to define exactly what I want it to look like. I do skin pores by changing the edit curve so that it has noise in my brush and I set this value fairly low. I change this value based on where the skin pores lie because skin pores vary based on the various areas of the body. To be honest I will probably ditch XSI for most of my modeling when ZBrush 2.5 comes out because I can then make organized meshes very quickly that I can then load into Houdini. Where I use Houdini for modeling will be for the procedural aspect of modeling so that I can quickly alter forms and rig and animated based on presetup digital assets so that I can get a fast turn around. Basically the XSI and ZBrush are just building Blocks for Houdini. I can gernerally create the forms faster in other packages but once I have these basic forms I can manipulate them far better and faster in Houdini so that is my preference. I will still keep XSI around when ZBrush 2.5 comes out for Mental Ray, Game Real Time Shaders and some other aspects. More and more of my pipeline however in the near future will be ZBrush and Houdini. In a couple of months I am going to post a Zscript that will show my modeling process because several people have asked for it on the ZBrush Forums. I am just going to model the patella which is a small bone but it will show my workflow which will probably be useful to some people. So if people want I will post it here also. I hope I answered your question if not feel free to ask away if I glossed over anything. Again I love your work man. Cheers, Nate Nesler Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MatrixNAN Posted April 4, 2006 Author Share Posted April 4, 2006 Hey Guys N Gals, Well I am still refining the form. The arms are getting a massive overhall and they are defantly still in Work In Progress. I think my biggest problem with the arms is the radial bracialis. I am sure I butchered the spelling of that but that muscle running along the forearm is giving me a lot of trouble. I moved the elbow back came to the conclusion that the elbow is not in the center of the arm because the forearm is actually longer than the bicep. Ugh that was defantly throwing off the placement of the forearm muscles. I think I made the radial bracialis too large and I need to shorten its width. The underside of the arm is pretty good along with one side of it. The top and the side facing the front of the character needs a lot of work still. I did a massive overhaul of the legs and now they are looking a lot better. I also reworked the neck and it still needs some more touch ups. I still have not made it to the hands and feet. I think this is just going to take me awhile to get it right. I fixed the shoulders on the back some more also. Whatever help you guys can give me on nailing down those arms better would be of a great help. They are very frustrating to nail down. Comments but mainly Crits are very welcome. Please rip me apart. Cheers, Nate Nesler Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MatrixNAN Posted April 11, 2006 Author Share Posted April 11, 2006 Hey Guys N Gals, I want to give a special thanks to Chris Volion for his help and illustrating where I was making my mistakes. His help made major improvements in my work on my characters arm. I had the misunderstanding that the muscles wrapped underneath the arm well they don't the kind of wrap on the side of it and the arm is not flat on the bottom its rounded and that roundness is do to the placement of these muscles. Those references were great chris they made all the difference. I have the book you were refering to, and I just pulled up the pages with regards to the arm and oh man did micheangelo nail it. Dang it I am studing him even more for now on for the human form. I know he exaggerated the form on purpose but I prefer it to see the muscle systems. I am currently working on the hands. They are far from done. I have done nothing more than the inital rough in and the large placement of forms. I have also started to do detailed sculpting of the muscles and tendons in the underside of the hand as a first rough pass. Generally I end up modeling the same forms many times before I get the surface built up the way I like and smoothing it out over and over again. It really helps me define the surface and get those shapes going and nail down my placement and forms. I also reworked the head a bit and the back got some touch ups. I have not touched the feet at all so they look pretty bad right now. I guess the question I have for the community is whether or not I should cut in the detail form on the arms the way I did the legs? The head needs more work, the nose needs more work, etc. If you guys see anything that is off please shout it out because I am getting closer and closer to the detail stage. Eventually I will sculpt in a lot of the veins and their placement. I have not decided if I am going to use projection master to stroke them on from the brushes or if I can just going to sculpt them the way I have been doing the rest of the model. I don't have enough divisions to do texturing or skin pores. I need at least 1 to 2 more divisions to get good detail on the character. I think I will wait until ZBrush 2.5 comes out for that. Thanks to everyone you guys have been a big help. I plan to rig this character among other things in Houdini. Cheers, Nate Nesler Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MatrixNAN Posted June 8, 2006 Author Share Posted June 8, 2006 ZBrush 2 Houdini =P Hey Guys N Gals, I have been asked how to get the Bump Map / Normal Maps to work in Houdini in a private email. Well I figured it would help the community more if I just posted it for everyone to read. Ok So here a model that I did the base modeling in XSI, Unwrapped the UVs in 3DS Max, then Sculpted up in ZBrush, and then Rendered in Houdini. Note if you have a commerical version of Houdini then do the unwrap in Houdini and import it into ZBrush. If you have XSI there is a Peltmap add on tool that is in Beta that you can do an attribute transfer on from the flattened surface back to your model during the pelting operation. Understand Houdini has the best Peltmapping tool they invented it. Also Maya has a pelt mapping tool now too if you are coming from maya. Lightwave people as far as I know you are screwed. lol OK now use ZMapper in ZBrush and setup your Normal Maps along with your Cavity maps the way you want. Now export your Image Map that is generated in ZBrush to Tif for Houdini. Ok for the options for exporting an obj under the fly out under the Tool Pallete sub section Export: Set the following on Obj, Qud, Txr, Flp, Mrg, and Grp. Click the Export button and now save it as an OBJ. Ok one problem is that Houdini for whatever reason does not like the capital letters in the extension of OBJ so you have to make them lower case obj. After you do this throw down a file SOP and load in your OBJ. Great now slap down a Shader SOP node and connect the file node into the Shader node. Ok now go to VOPS and lay down a displacement shader. Dive into the Displacement Shader with i and lay down this network. Ok the uv comes from the a special variable, speical thanks to Brain Goodwin for reminding me about it, called uv in lowercase letters. Replace all of the names for the parameter with uv lowercase and set the type to vector. Ok good in the uvxform1 set the scale in the 2nd column to -1 this will flip the UVs along the V axis. I prefer to do my manipulations in the end program in the pipeline because I might be using the ZBrush files with multiple programs and this generally just saves headaches because you only need one set of files from ZBrush instead of a set for every program you are exporting. I went ahead and did the same thing for the surface shader and all I did was changed the Bump Map VOP node to a Texture VOP Node and piped that into my light model's amb and diffuse. This is great if you need to put a surface texture for the color channels on your model. Here I just used the same Normal Map to show that this works properly with the UVs and that there is not surface cracking at the Texture Seams in Houdini when you render for all areas of Houdini which is totally awesome and is a major problem in some other 3D Apps. Cough Max Cough 3DS Max. lol Alright Final Result. Things to come because I know I don't post that much. I kind of stay low more now it seems due to lack of time more than anything. Here is things to come from me something I am moving towards soon. The Concept Art is going to a remodel of my male character that I am finishing up and then texture painted, displaced, and then exported and rendered in Houdini. Have fun guys and gals. I hope this helps some people. Cheers, Nate Nesler Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheUsualAlex Posted June 8, 2006 Share Posted June 8, 2006 Nice! I haven't done any modeling stuff myself for 3 or 4 years now... Looks fun tho. : ) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MatrixNAN Posted June 11, 2006 Author Share Posted June 11, 2006 Hey Guys, Did anyone find this tutorial interesting because it seems not many people looked at it? I was wondering if it was just a select few of us that are interested in having ZBrush work with Houdini. I can think of several people off the top of my head that are interested in this subject matter, but I didn't know how many people are interested in ZBrush to Houdini period. I am thinking we could just make an OTL that is for Skin and one that is for everything else that goes from ZBrush to Houdini. I could wip out the one for everything else but I am not familar with the SSS Shader in Houdini. I am familar with it in several other packages but I was thinking that is was different worked off of sampling from Point Clouds. Cheers, Nate Nesler Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GaijinYakuza Posted June 11, 2006 Share Posted June 11, 2006 Sorry, I've been keeping up with this post but I appologise for not making any comments earlier. I am interested in what you are developing and I'd like to get more invloved if I could. I've got some experience with both ZBrush and Houdini and I think that at tighter integration between the two will be a real plus. Thanks for the hard work you've already put in. GY Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MatrixNAN Posted July 17, 2006 Author Share Posted July 17, 2006 Hey Guys N Gals, Well I updated the face quite a bit fixed the nasal lavial fold. I also fixed the nose and the ears. Then I reworked the forearms and also detailed etched all of the muscles on the body. I still have to do the hands up and do a final detail pass on the feet then I can do the vein sculpts. Its starting to look pretty descent but the forearms need a lot of work. I saw a bunch of my mistakes when I was visiting with Bill where he had the Freedom of Teach Medical Model. I am seriously jealous man seriously jealous. I hope you guys like Comments but even more so crits welcome. Cheers, Nate Nesler Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LEO-oo- Posted July 18, 2006 Share Posted July 18, 2006 The new details are great! Keep up the good work! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jjstanley Posted July 18, 2006 Share Posted July 18, 2006 Your work is amazing Nate! I have not had a chance to use Zbrush much but would like to and I think that integrating them is a great idea. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MatrixNAN Posted July 20, 2006 Author Share Posted July 20, 2006 Hey Guys N Gals, Yeah I think the combo is great. Houdini has the fast rendering of displacements with Mantra but with the procedural touch too it. This great particularly for L-Systems are now quad in Houdini so that saves soooooo much time because to do that in ZBrush is very very very time consuming. So I am thinking L-Systems in Houdini and then Import them into ZBrush detail the full system and then save out the displacement map and then you could animate up the L-System tree fully textured. I think for prcedural modeling Houdini is the way to go. For non-precedural modeling I think ZBrush is a better solution. I would rather though use the two together because I would find that to be much more effective. Oh and thanks for the comments. I am going to try and finish him up this weekend. Try is the key word. lol Cheers, Nate Nesler Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MatrixNAN Posted July 31, 2006 Author Share Posted July 31, 2006 Hey Guys N Gals, Hand reworked well one of them is done, and I am finishing the other hand. Hopefully I can put the final touches on the rest of the model like the lower eyelid and the veins. Cheers, Nate Nesler Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MatrixNAN Posted August 1, 2006 Author Share Posted August 1, 2006 Hello Guys N Gals, I have finished sculpting in the gross anatomy and now I am sculpting in the Veins. Cheers, Nate Nesler Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MatrixNAN Posted August 11, 2006 Author Share Posted August 11, 2006 Hey Guys N Gals, I need your help and advice. I am still not totally happy with the back and shoulders on my character. I did a character sculpt of the back of a character about a year ago, and I just ran across it and I was thinking I liked it maybe more than what I currently have on my character. In this sculpt I showed the muscles below the lats etc but I am more interested in the shoulders. The shape for the major forms of the shoulder is not rounded out from the Scapula like it should be but I was more looking at the way the muscles flowed and how they connected togther. Tell me what you guys think. Cheers, Nate Nesler edit (marc) : fixed exceedingly large image. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
paint Posted August 12, 2006 Share Posted August 12, 2006 Hey Guys N Gals, I need your help and advice. I am still not totally happy with the back and shoulders on my character. I did a character sculpt of the back of a character about a year ago, and I just ran across it and I was thinking I liked it maybe more than what I currently have on my character. In this sculpt I showed the muscles below the lats etc but I am more interested in the shoulders. The shape for the major forms of the shoulder is not rounded out from the Scapula like it should be but I was more looking at the way the muscles flowed and how they connected togther. Tell me what you guys think. Cheers, Nate Nesler edit (marc) : fixed exceedingly large image. http://www.human-anatomy-for-artist.com/fr...ree_samples.htm Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Andz Posted August 14, 2006 Share Posted August 14, 2006 some cg anatomy guides: PDF 1 PDF 2 PDF 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ahmedyounis75_3d Posted January 27, 2008 Share Posted January 27, 2008 (edited) hey MatrixNAN in fact am see ur work in anatomy very nice work i working in this field about 10 months in modeling bons , muscles , organs , blood vessels , veins and nervs ok my notes in ur wip about scapula and head of humerus am see more roughness details on it am upload video 2 showing u part of uper limp bons http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1GnGWjIlpuo thanx Edited January 29, 2008 by ahmedyounis75_3d Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MatrixNAN Posted March 30, 2008 Author Share Posted March 30, 2008 Thanks So Much ahmedyounis75_3d, I think I am jealous. lol I love anatomy and I have been wanting to work on bones and muscles, veins etc. I think I will be hoping back onto the bones and muscles again soon. I have more updates than these for the character work but I am not allowed to show them. lol So sorry I am afraid thats the way it is for now. I might get to show them in the future. Nice video I love the detail on the bones. My scapula certainly needs some real work. I am having a lot of trouble getting a good clear idea of what real bones look like up close. So that video helps so much. I am going to have to learn all over again how to get ZBrush 3 into Houdini 9. Houdini 9 is so different from 8 and fluids are so very different than Maya fluids when I first learned them when Maya first released them. Houdini's fluids are much better of course, but having a hard time wrapping my brain around them plus on top of all of the major interface changes in 9. I love 9 though I think its good they did all of the changes and very needed. Normal Map Test: Cheers, Nate Nesler Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MatrixNAN Posted April 2, 2008 Author Share Posted April 2, 2008 Hey Guys, Thought I would post some of the armor I made for him awhile back. Cheers, Nate Nesler Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cellchuk Posted April 5, 2008 Share Posted April 5, 2008 nice stuff man good job. :thumbsup: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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