1: Head Sculpting
Timelapse: Sculpting Rain's Head
Julien Kaspar
Publisher
With all the major lessons out of the way I will start going over the timelapse recordings on the creation process of Rain. In this commentated timelapse video I will explain the process of sculpting Rain's first head design, my workflow and mistakes.
Links mentioned in the video:
16:30- My Gradient Matcap
Other helpful links:
- Rain - File 1: Head Sculpting: File of all the conceptual head sculpts of Rain, including the polished version.
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84 comments
That is a classic piece of advice right there: There will be a time when your sculpt doesn't look good. Just keep going and refining and it will turn out good. I had the hardest time with this when I started sculpting. To a certain extent, I still get discouraged at some point and I want to discard sculpts before I finish. You just have to push through that and realize that it's a part of the process.
@Brian Smith perfect piece of advice, I've been on the same sculpt for about 20 hours total, just making mistakes, restarting and learning and I've finally got it to where I think it should be.
Hmm, I thought by paying for this subscription the tutorials would be easier to follow along with. I can't keep up with the timelapses. Figured this was going to be different. Good stuff but not for me.
*@mrjessecunningham* I'd love to hear more feedback. It's true that the course is not very targeted towards blender beginners but I tried to ease viewers into each topic with the step-by-step lessons in the beginning. The timelapses are meant to build on that by giving a direct example on how I approach the process in my own time & speed while providing additional techniques, tips & commentary. The timelapses are not really meant as a step-by-step follow along tutorial, but if there's something you want to know more about just ask ;)
*@Julien Kaspar* Thanks for the reply. I don't think I am totally intimidated, I will probably stick around to learn how to do a clean retopology. No need to slow things down for me but it would just be nice to get to learn things at a not so excelerated pace. I have already created meshes and a few pretty good sculpts but they are bumpy and not as clean as yours. Maybe do a section on your settings or did I miss that already in the hyper speed of your videos lol. I'll try to stick around tho. Thanks!
*@mrjessecunningham* ye the word beginner is kinda confusing sometimes, you can be a complete beginner in blender vs you used blender for animation but not modeling vs you used blender for modeling objects but not human. I'm learning blender for two years now but mostly for animation and this character creation is too fast for me LOL.
Hi there, are you using a stylus to sculpt and if so can you talk about how you set it up, thanks
*@michaelakinfenwa* Yes I am using a pen tablet and have been using many variations over the past years. Currently I am working with a Wacom Cintiq 16 but it's not easy to set up to work on it comfortably. I can recommend to go for an Intuos S or M and keep it in front or side by side with your keyboard. I don't recommend sculpting with a mouse ;)
*@Julien Kaspar* thanks I am using a intuos M also, what I wanted to know is how you mapped the buttons on it or etc,thanks
*@michaelakinfenwa* The cintiq has no buttons unfortunately so I am using the keyboard. Blenders keymap is too big for just the tablet buttons anyway.
You are so great!Thanks for the tutorial!But my English is poor, so I need to follow it more times
Hi, Julien Kaspar,. your tutorial is good, but there something that don't like,...the videos are more fast,..i believe that could be more slow...to follow better the course.
*@MARCOS ISMAEL MAIA JUNIOR* There is an option to slow the video down as much as .25x speed. It's also possible to pause the video at any time. These are valuable tools when one wishes to get a better look at a certain part of the process during a timelapse video.
Hey Julian, thanks a lot for such an instructive tutorial. I am delighted about all the new things I'm learnig with you. I'm also very curious about your naming convention. What does GEO-... stand for when you name the objects in the scene?
*@Pedro Nataniel* Thanks! Glad you like it :D I try to make it clear in the naming what type of object it is. GEO stands for geometry (Usually meshes to sculpt on), HLP for helper and sometimes I use LOC for locator (Objects that are used for modifiers, constraints & parenting), CRV for curves, etc.
*@Julien Kaspar* Fine. I got it! Have a nice weekend 🤜
Do you think that making a 3d model of a planer head and using it on every character and changing a little bit the face for every character is a good thing to do? or should I make a planer head for every character?
*@Daniel Popel* Reusing basemeshes for different projects is a very common practice and I can highly recommend it. Most artists do it to save a lot of time during productions so save your models and import them whenever you need a base to start from :)
Hello teacher, I have questions. 00:33 when you use mask function to create a nose, mine is not dark like yours but painted lightly. 00:36 your nose is very round and soft, mine is angled and rough. I use Elastic Hook like you. What should I do? I did everything that you told me. Did you do Dyntopo during that process? plus, my brush shape is not like yours. Your brush cursor is just one circle, but mine is 2 layers circle and it sticks to the mesh surface.
*@Minkyung Park*
Hi @Julien I am following this series and it's great, I'm currently try to sculpt a different character with this workflow, but my character needs a spikey type of hair, ahm wonder if you have tutorial for spikey hair :) Thanks
*@jayson* Maybe this tutorial I did a while ago helps. The general principles should still work. Look up some references on how the hair should look specifically and try sculpting it. https://cloud.blender.org/p/speed-sculpting/5cb8879fd6963c01ab9b0fe2
*@Julien Kaspar* wow! thanks a lot.
Hello there Trying to sculpt a different character using your excellent workflow but need to load a background image to sculpt off of. Tried loading the image several time into your template but only the image's bounding box would be visible. pls help
*@S.S* In the overlays settings in the 3d viewport header: Check "extras" and it will be visible. Other overlays like bones, origins & the 3D cursor were disabled as well for sculpting workspaces since they are often just in the way and too distracting. You can toggle them back on if you like of course.
*@Julien Kaspar* Yes, Thanks man!
Hello there. Managed to finish sculpting rains head, closed for the day and went home. The following morning i opened blender and suddenly the sculpting tools are laggy except for a few of them. YES some tools like the snake hook respond well while others like the grab tool are laggy. I then opened a new sculpting file and tried the tools on the default mesh just to be sure and they all work well but still wont work in my rains head file! ? Any thoughts on that? Thanks!
*@Sosa* Is dyntopo enabled? Are there any modifiers active on the object? Are any extra shading optiosn enabled like Cavity or Shadow that could slow down the viewport?
*@Julien Kaspar* There is none, actually bcos i have successfully done the Boolean operations and the mesh is now one. What baffles me is that snake hook brush works perfectly but not the grab brush: it lags terribly. I also noticed that pen pressure is also erratic could it my stylus? I use veikk tablet A15 version 2.00.3
*@Sosa* Sorry I don't know an answer to this. It could also be a hardware issue.
Hi, why my blender doesn't have the Sculpt Sidebar Panel like in 14:21 ?
*@Mohamad Amirul Hakim* It's an addon called Mask Tools. By now it's almost completely outdated and I can recommend to just use the default masking features in Blender.
Hopefully I'll make an update to the lessons soon to include them.
Starting with sculpting a sphere VS editing and merging separate primitives (sphere+cylinders..): What would you recommend and why? Thank you!
*@andbia* It's a lot easier to get the forms right if you do it with lots of separate primitives. If you are more advanced at sculpting then you can just sculpt everything from a sphere, which can also be faster sometimes.
Hi, I've been loving this course so far and it has helped me progress so much already! When it comes to sculpting how do you do hard edges like the lip crease and eyelids? I find that if I try and keep each side of the edge smooth I end up losing the hard edge every time, the alternative is that I end up with bumpy geometry on each side.
*@zokuro* Thanks! And that is a really good question!! I think these sculpting fundamentals need their own tutorials but the short answer is unfortunately to use the right tools at the right time.
The pinch, crease, draw sharp and multi-plane scrape brushes are all useful but get you slightly different results. One tip would be to use masks way more often. Use the mask brush or lasso mask the hard edge, then smooth the mask a bit with the A pie menu and then you can smooth he surfaces nearby without destroying the hard edge.
what was the voxel size in remash when you first started sculpting the head???
*@Peter Yoon* I can't tell because the voxel size is based on the real world scale. It might be very different every time. But try to keep it only as high as necessary and increase it slowly over time to get more detailed later.
I'm stuck with the masking tools. I use Blender 2.9 and despite pressing "N" while in sculpt mode with the mask tool selected, I cannot see any of the settings, or similar settings, for the mask tool's more indepth functions that you're using.
@phunky.doodle If you are using nay version of Blender past 2.81 I cannot recommend the mask tools addon anymore. Use the official masking features instead. Most things should be included by now :)
Hi, thanks for the tutorial, love the way your sculpt still always smooth !
Hi there! I'm new to a teaching style like this, so my apologies for asking so many questions. Do you happen to have the sculpting videos of rain in real-time as well (no commentary needed) that you'd be willing to share? To be honest, the time lapses are nice, but a little hard to keep up with since there's so much jumping. I know a video in real-time would probably hours longer than this, but I wouldn't mind. If it costs extra to pay for, I don't mind paying for it as well. If not please do not worry about it. Slowing it down by speed has been my solution so far, so I can keep doing it!
@Aly It is possible for every video here to slow the speed down to half. For most timelapse videos this will be a bit choppy as a result but easier to follow.
@Julien Kaspar No worries! I assumed so, I'll keep doing that then. Thank you for the quick response and for making the course! :)
QUESTIONS: When you boolean objects together in your sculpts, if there is an area where you want to keep a hard crease, you can just leave it, right? You don't HAVE to smooth all transitions, do you? Or would you recommend to smooth it and add a crease with the crease brush?
*@Brian Smith* You CAN keep it if you want to, but it's usually best to remesh and smooth it a little bit since it will usually look terrible once you use smooth shading.
@Julien Kaspar, Just wanted to say that if this was it's own paid for content that actually allowed the user to follow you step by step instead of the way it is presented here, many of us would easily paid $100 dollars for that. Since we pay a membership, we don't know what to expect and a lot of the content on this site is not geared toward anyone trying to learn to build a nice character model in 2.8. While I am enjoying this very much, I feel you kind of dropped the ball and could've made yourself a nice penny with a real Gumroad tutorial or something like that to really help all levels of your audience. I hope I do not sound negative. Thanks!
*@mrjessecunningham* Thanks for the feedback, but I don't think I really understand. How is the way the course is presented here not step by step?
Hello there Trying to sculpt a different character using your excellent workflow but need to load a background image. Tried loading the image several time into your template but only the image's bounding box would be visible. pls help
Hi! I was going through your tutorials and really love your content and workflow. I was adding the ears and neck cylinders and not sure if I pressed something. It is not allowing me to sculpt anything except for the forehead and when I do it comes out really weird. I deleted the cylinders and still doesn't work. Don't really want to start over if I don't have to. Thanks!
*@Ryan Clouse* HAHA!!! Nevermind I found it out. xP Still, Thanks for the great videos!
will i need to watch the rain videos or they are something Extra
*@ammar mohammed* They usually have a lot of extra tips and techniques, especially for production. But the main lessons are more important.
Hi, I had problem when I use mask tool for drawing eyebrow and doing outline relax I got en error which said ,,Traceback (most recent call last)? could you help me, please
*@Abdullah khalid* In the more recent versions of Blender I cannot recommend the mask tools addon anymore. All the necessary features are now in Blender by default.
*@Julien Kaspar* ok thanks, but how I can make eyebrow easy way by making new object or draw it on the head ?
*@Abdullah khalid* You can paint a mask and then use the "Mask Extract" option in the Mask menu of the header.
*@Julien Kaspar* would be good if you update the videos. I was wondering how to use that addon, until I saw this mention. Cheers.
Hi. I'm having trouble keeping my overall mesh clean and smooth. It is full of bumps here and there. Any advice on how to keep the meshes topology generally clean.
*@Jonathan Mbau* You will only be able to reliably keep the surface smooth if the resolution is even throughout the surface.
So if you use dyntopo, use the simplify brush with a bit of autosmooth in the brush settings and sculpt over the surfaces.
Or use the voxel remesher, which will make it a lot easier to smooth your model.
Mask tools you mentioned is a paid Addon?
*@Abhirama Gopala Dasa* No but in the recent versions of Blender you don't need it anymore ;)
Hey this might be a dumb question, but when you start the video your sphere is smooth and it seems like it has a lot of geometry to work with, but the only option I see in blender is the UV sphere which doesn't give me a lot of geometry to work with so everything looks kinda blocky. How do I add the smooth sphere?
I am so confused. Why dont u just upload this video without 4x speed.(tried 0.5x cant see anything) You teaching and doing differend things...
I have some weird things going on with the surface of my charcater after applying the boolean union. Can anybody help?
I have some weird things going on with the surface of my sculpt after apllying the boolean union modifier. Can anybody help?
@christinaw90 Try using the voxel remesher instead. Or watch this bonus video: https://cloud.blender.org/training/stylized-character-workflow/5d3a1d3afa5e1feb5a307840
I don't have "Mask Tools" on the right~
@garyyang4019 It's an old addon. If you are using any Blender version newer than 2.80 then you won't need it. Just look up the same functionality in the pie menu on the shortcut A or in the header under the menu "Mask".
Hello Julien. Excuse me for asking a hundred questions... I'm learning how to sculpt for the first time thanks to you. I looked up your note in one of the previous videos where you talked about a new method to merge and remesh multiple objects in the newer versions, and I tried joining the head objects with each method (Ctrl + J and Boolean) but I still get this empty head mesh in wireframe mode. Also when I voxel remesh after joining the objects, the sculpt tools work way too slow with dyntopo. If I don't remesh with high resolution the mesh will lose all the detail. I'd really appreciate your help. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1m1TFX9vHPrS5HCxzMQ7N5A5GZEsoUSiE/view?usp=sharing
@Ceren Erdoğan I have it planned to make an update to the course with a bonus video on the general sculpting workflow. The idea is that the voxel remesher, dyntopo and the multiresolution modifier are all individual stages in the sculpting process. Dyntopo will not work on higher resolutions because its too slow. It's only really useful for the initial shape exploration. The voxel remesher can then combine everything easily but cannot get you to a very high detail level either but you can get most of the definition you need. It's important not to merge everything and to take the polycount only as high as you need. Then once you need to get to a very high detail level and the general shape of the objects are not going to change anymore you can remesh the object either manually or with the quad remesher and continue with the subdivision based multires modifier. It's a lot to explain but the general tip I would give you is to not expect to get to a very high resolution detail level with the voxel remesher and especially not with dyntopo.
@Julien Kaspar So my understanding is that I should keep the polycount adequate and only subdivide later at the end for the details. "It's important not to merge everything" So I'm not going to merge any facial objects yet and now skipping to the hair tutorial before I start to vertex paint. Hope it's okay to work that way.
Great tutorial. I can't see mask less option or the sculpt tab in side bar. Please help!
@Archit Gupta It's an old addon. Just use the A pie menu in the latest releases for the official features.
I do not understand how to get good results out of snake hook. All it ever gives me is tortured geometry.
@John Desmond Not sure what you mean. Are you sure you enabled Dyntopo with enough resolution?
HI, I have two problems when I first tried to script the face. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ledANZQlzRiHskiN1QBkZeqbxnHJBmni/view?usp=sharing The first question is the white circle when I smooth the skin near the eye or nose ( such high detail parts), its always smoothed with a cease or a high vertex pole, neither smooth with or without dyntopo can solve the problem. The second question is the red circle, when I first script the nose with dyntopo, the head turn to lower level with obvious pixel entirely which can still script detail on the surface, however, it turned out to the red circle result like a mix level of smooth scripture.
@fu233 Sorry I'm not sure I understand. Can you maybe send a video or even the .blend file so I can have a closer look. My first thought is that dyntopo might be disabled or has some settings that are not idea. Make sure that dyntopo is set to "relative detail" and "subdivide collapse".
@JulienKasper - this may be a little off topic, but is your initial sculpting really the only "conceptual" work for the start of the character? What I mean is I find myself - in my work and practices - leaning more to traditional model sheet development first. Then I will do a low-poly box model of the head based on my drawings, and then bring it in to sculpt. Is there any set backs to my methods or do you think it's more just personal preference? (By the way - I really love your work!)
@Simon Lovell I think it's very much down to personal preference. Personally I often like to first start from a concept drawing and very simple turnaround sheets or expression sheets. I did a bit of this myself for the second character "Snow". There's also a quick summary video of the creation of that character.
I know a lot of people that also like to skip sculpting and just model their characters. Some have a very strict workflow of including a sculpt of the bone structure. It all depends on what helps you figure out design questions as you go.
@Julien Kaspar Thanks for the reply. Yes, figuring out design questions is paramount. I tend to sketch my characters in a definitive action pose. This really helps me define their personality too. From there, I will then develop a model sheet.
Found the Mask Tools add-on and it doesn't function in 3.5. Neat idea.
I've saw the single UV sphere into a head before. This process helps the stylized version more than the 1:4 Primitive Head process. My head turned out more realistic than stylized like this. Although, I'd like to learn this method a little more since it's become more popular.