What have you been up to the last few months?

I have been hard at work trying to create my first figure. The render is of my 30th or so attempt. It was frustrating but I kept at it. A lot of the characters I created were not fit to be viewed by mere mortals...
I still don't have a name for her, but I am leaning toward "Amanda". Maybe I will have a contest of sorts to name her when she is finished.

She is still very poly heavy. I did her base in Wings, and I am now working in Sculptris, ZBrush's baby brother. I still have a lot of sculpting left to do, especially her hands and forearms. I am also tweaking a few different things and working out how to do eyelashes, nails, etc.

The current textures on her is a quick texture map done in Sculptris. I got to a point where I wanted to see if I was on the right track, so I painted her and brought her into Poser. I borrowed a couple things from Alyson, Miki and Jessi to make her as complete as I could. The eyes are Izumi, the eyelashes are
Miki 4 and the hair is Jessi's. The rest, like the tacky eyebrows are just painted on using Sculptris.
 
Her breasts are going to remain small like they are now. I don't know how to do a morph anyhow, so I won't be putting that in. The final topology won't be there to make them larger.

Here is a view of her backside. Literally. I am still working on it, but I am getting really close to what I wanted. You can see from this render how much work I still have to do on her hands. Her feet are almost done, but her knees need work, and her ankles are still kind of fat. No woman wants that, right? I am still tweaking her genitals, and I have given her an anus.

Here is a close up look at her face. I was stunned after I rendered her face at how it turned out. I didn't expect her to look like this. I think I will keep the mole too, and give it a bump map. I still have to make her inner mouth, teeth, gums, tongue and eyes. You can see in the render that Miki's eyelashes don't quite fit. When I finally get around to creating hers, I think she will have a very exotic look to her.

So, how am I doing? I am figuring this out as I go, and so far I think I am getting pretty lucky. I am still trying to figure out Blender and I am close to being able to use it, because I don't think I am going to get much further with Wings. 

Any tips or tricks you could offer would be awesome, especially from those who have already created Poser characters. I am still not convinced I will even release this one. I have to see if I can complete it first. I am still very early in the development of her. I have a long road to finish this.

Here is one final render with textures I painted a couple days ago. I also touched up a lot of her mesh. I am going to start the hands in a day or two...

lookin good  so far

Thanks. But this mesh is super polygon heavy. I mean like 400,000+ heavy. Wings choked on it when I attempted to bring it in there to do some work. Blender doesn't have any issues with it, but the mesh is dense and hard to see when I tried to practice retopologizing the mesh. 

 first things first ,could ya do ya signature like this ? any color will do.as long as it's not white

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 
The way I see it, the biggest problem facing the world today is smart phones in the hands of stupid people.

the forums have been missed up so this will be in pieces

it's a game mesh all the detail is normal maps. 

I strongly recommend starting with low polycount characters.

so I would sculpt what details ya want on the 400,000 mesh ya posted.

I would keep her mouth shut n forget mouth n teeth and just have textured eyes modeled in to her face forget eye lashes.
then retopology a low polycount mesh & use normal for details. 

A low polycount character is a lot easier to learn with. 

ya will see best topology for rigging n not half to re work a lot this way.

human characters are the hardest thing to make in 3D most of all a pretty female.

your off to a great start just don't give up :) 

If I could figure out how to remove my signature, I would.

I am thinking along the same lines that you suggested, which is to get the details in the heavy mesh, and then get proper edge flow with the retopo. I know this character won't be popular because I made her breasts small and there won't be a way to enlarge them. As I said, I may not even release her. I am doing this one because she represents what I want in a character. I will eventually start making clothing and hair props for her, provided I get her finished.

Thanks for looking. If you can tell me how to get rid of my signature line, I will. 

go to the top where it reads forums / the drop down my forum options .

if her names not vicky she won't be popular .I still think they should have called daz studio vicky's app .LOL 

ya you go making your own characters your see new worlds that ya never knew existed.

just don't give up and don't get stuck on things. if something gets ya hung up do something else

and remember ya always improve as long as ya trying :) 

Looking good, Rokket, she definitely looks Asian to me.  My main two criticisms (if you're after any) are the fingers look a bit thick and I would have given her a longer ass-crack cause it seems to blend out far too low down the body - looks a bit too smoothed out at the base of the back.

But great work, and you're gonna love it even more when it comes to rigging her ;-)

Hey! I never received a notification anyone else had replied to this thread....

@RorrKonn: thanks for the encouragement. I think you are right about V4. I may release her just to see what happens. I imagine someone will use the morph brush on her at some point.... I won't give up. As I stated in my original post, she is version 30. I literally have 29 other meshes in a folder that represent improvement with each successive attempt. I am getting better as I go. Human characters are hard, not just because of topology for animation, but also in the all the muscle groups and everything that goes into making a realistic body.

@pumeco: I am looking for criticism. I have a thick skin, so anything you have to offer is fine with me. As for her fingers, I know my posts were long and drawn out, so you may have missed that I stated I am still sculpting her hands, feet and a few other things, including her butt. I am still not happy with how that looks from a profile either, so still working it. I took another look at what you are talking about, and I am thinking that if I extend her "crack" up a little bit that might take care of 80% of the issues I am having with it. Thank you. 

I did one last render after I worked on her hands a little. I am still not done with them, but doing these renders keeps me going. I tend to get excited when I see her whole, and I also see things I didn't see when I was working on the mesh in Sculptris. It's too bad you can't click on the pic to enlarge it any longer. There are a lot of details that look really good up close, like the fact that I finally got Miki's eyelashes to fit her somewhat. I will be offline for a few weeks starting tomorrow. I have to cross the Pacific, so I will have very limited internet access. I will be able to check this thread, but won't be able to post any pics as updates. By the time I get to where I am going, I may be well into the retopology. I hope. 

Crap, I forgot the nudity tag and now I can't put it in there.....

One really important question:

For those who have dealt with this before, where do you start on a retopology? The torso and work from there? The feet? Head? I don't have the bandwidth to search for any good videos, so I will need to just get a few pointers. As I said, I will have 3 weeks on the open ocean to figure it out... 

I like the skin colour better now, but that's the only improvement I noticed since the last one, the hands still look too angular to me.  And something I should have pointed out before is that the hip area looks too flat.  I get that she's Asian and a lot of those girls are petite, but even so, I think there needs to be some hint of the hip bones.  The area between the top of the thighs and the hips has no definition at all - so it's making the top of her legs look like one solid piece attached to her hips.

Can't offer any advice on the retopology, but RorrKonn has a great figure in his gallery so I'm gonna chicken-out, he and others can advise better on that.
But yup, as with the ass, there definitely needs to be some definition or 'shape' between the top of the thighs and the hips.

Yeah, I didn't do too much with the hands. I was having trouble getting Sculptris to do what I wanted to do so I gave up for awhile. If something frustrates me I walk away from it so that I don't lose interest.

Are you talking about the area in the front of her legs or the sides? I am assuming the sides. I can definitely do something about that. When you are working off reference pictures sometimes things end up too boxy. I tried to overcome that, but perhaps I erred on the side of caution. I'll rework her hips and thighs and see if I can fix that. What you can't see is the really bad knees she has currently.

The hands are going to be my first priority, and then I will work my way down to her hips and then her thighs and knees. By the time I can post another render, things will look much different. I am going to stop messing with her face before I screw it up and can't get it back to what I want.

Thanks for the look and the honest critiques. I appreciate it. 

Bit of both really, maybe a soft indentation along the sides and a sharper more definded shape just below the hip from the front.

Hi Rokket

Nice work! I've been gone for awhile myself.

Hey, thanks!

 Yeah, I have the sculpting done, but it's going to be a couple weeks until I can post any update pictures. I just hope this thread stays alive that long.

she looks amazing.  I think you should make her breasts a tiny bit higher since they are small. ie move them up towards her head slightly.]

A good name would be Amy

Love esther

Hmmm. I'll experiment with her breasts and see how they look a bit higher. I think she looks amazing too. I am very happy with how she is turning out. I wish I could post the new renders. She is starting to really take shape.

I will be taking the mesh into Blender in a couple days and decimating it down as far as I can before I lose too much of the detail. I have to figure out how I am going to start the retopology. 

I like the name Amy. But I also like Amanda. I was thinking I would lean toward an Asian name, but I can't figure out a good one for her. I was going for a Cambodian or Thai female when I started her, but she didn't end up looking like either, so I am still trying to figure out who she is.

I messed around with the mesh a little more. I brought it into Blender and decimated it. I didn't lose any detail, so that was cool. I am about to try my first ever retopo, so that will be interesting.

I came across the name Teiomi (pronounced TAY-OH-ME). I like it. Any thoughts on that?

 Here is the final renders with the heavy mesh. The front...

 The back....

 And here is the decimated mesh. It's only around 35K. I did lose the epicanthic fold, but I can put it back when I start the retopology. I am still figuring that out.

I'd put her in the runtime along with the other actresses...>!

I think this is remarkable work.  Most of all, Welcome back!!

 Thanks! I am in that time of year where I am at sea more often than not. We have internet out here, but we are not allowed to connect thumb drives or any other external devices to these computers. So I can check the forums, reply to threads, but can't upload anything.

Rokket Wrote:
"I came across the name Teiomi (pronounced TAY-OH-ME). I like it. Any thoughts on that?"

Sounds good for a figure, I like it, in fact it's very similar to the Japanese name Tomie, pronounced TOW-ME-EH.
Regards the figure, I think she still looks a bit smooth in areas, but like you said, you have to do retopology yet so maybe that will bring detail.

 The retopology will bring more details because the edge flow will be correct, and therefore I can do a lot more with it (like fix her fat, short fingers). I will be using Blender for this part, so it will take longer because I am still learning the UI.