3D Toolkit - Base Mesh Creation ( 28/10/24)

Building a Base Mesh

Base Mesh

The base mesh is the starting point of everything you develop in 3D. We should be trying to capture the silhouette of whatever it is you are creating. We want to make sure the base mesh has refined anatomy and proportions before moving on to the next stage.

Concept

For the purposes of this exercise, we will need the use of 2D concept artwork and the focus of today will be on anatomy and readability. Understanding design principles and fundamentals is valuable for this because it is ultimately your mindset that will allow you to create the characters.

Face Structure

Structure of a Human Face

You can think of the human face as a set face and a front face. When you are sculpting out a face, you can define a plane. Planes are what we use in order to understand shape. We don't understand the shape with remembering the arcs but rather a bunch of different planes that wrap around geometry to understand a bigger picture of that geometry.

Use the HPolish brush to establish these planes.

Each plane that defines the faces will then need to be smoothed out to form arcs.

Drawing Details Before Sculpting

You can use DamStandard to define the corner of the jaw.

DamStandard is helpful for drawing out details of different shapes and forms. This can be smoothed out but it carves a path for areas that will bulge out

Structure of Face

The human face can be split up into 3 chunks. 

The position of the eye should match your ears. The eyebrow bone will typically line up with the height of your ear.

There are eight points that are important landmarks for the face as it relates to the areas of the skull which your skin lays on. Eyes, nose, mouths are not as important as these points. These points are the foundation of your model and will help guide your sculpt in relation to your reference photo.

Sculpting Out Face

You can use the move tool or claybuildup (subtract) to create the eye sockets.

Claybuildup can be used to draw out the volume of the nose. Use the move brush to drag the geometry and reposition and tweak it. This should be done in the side view to ensure it looks like a nose. Adding nostrils is done using the same method.

The mouth can be created by dragging out some of the geometry with the move brush. You can then use claybuildup to add volume. The volume of the mouth is pretty spherical so bear this in mind. Next, you can use DamStandard to draw out the seam between the lips.

Use claybuildup to bring out the upper lip after establishing the seam. Use the move brush to refine this. you can use Hpolish to define the contour. Do the same method with the bottom lip.

Big Shapes and Smaller Details

Focus on the bigger shapes before adding details. Make sure to check that the geometry looks good from all angles and don't neglect any of your orthographic views.

 

Inserting References

To import an image

Texture > Import > Add To Spotlight 

Here is a link to the base mesh I created

https://damianstreetgamesartsecondyear.blogspot.com/2024/11/3d-toolkit-base-mesh-021124.html