Sculpting Old Man Bust in ZBrush

1. Intro: Sculpting a stylized bust in ZBrush: In this course you'll be learning how to sculpt and Old Man Bust using ZBrush. We will be starting the sculpt using something we call a base mesh. And a base mesh helps you create your sculpt faster, but it also helps you understand how to break up ahead into the element at the main elements. And also helps you understand the flow and anatomy and how to simplify your designs. And also helps you edit your character is faster so you can try different styles of facial expressions. By the end of the scores, you would have learned how to create stylised old man bust inside ZBrush, taking it from the blocking stage, too detailed, and using it for your own personal projects or client work. I really hope you find this course helpful and I can't wait to see what you come up with. 2. Lesson01: Blocking in the main shapes: So we'll start the sculpt using the base mesh that you can find in the zip file. I like using base meshes just makes the sculpt go faster, but at the same time, it just helps you visualize the, the main areas of a head or the body and just make it easier to move stuff around and tweak them to the character that you're going to be to be creating. Now, I'm starting with the forehead. My characters forehead is really shows his age and how tight or there is this character I was going for. An old man who's went through a lot are just tired. They're just going through some some, some painful emotions. And I wanted to see if I can do that. Create to character. And just that shows emotion with his eyes closed. And you'll notice with the base mesh, I decided to have the upper lids and the bottom lid separate just to make it easier to move stuff around. And you notice that I'm using the move brush just to the just to move stuff around, scale them. I'm just rotate them just to get them in the spot that I want. The other thing you'll notice that with the nose I decided to have the bridge of the nose, the tip, separate from the nostrils. If you've used base mesh as before, you'll see most of them were have the nose as one piece. What I don't like about that is the moment you start tweaking the nose, maybe having the tip a bit bigger or point here, that will affect the shape of the master as well. So then you kinda struggling of taking about keeping a balance between the nostrils not being affected this way you can make them nostrils keep them and give them their shape and have the nose separate. And once you're happy with the shape, you can merge them down and just, and you'll see when we get to that part. So for the most part of the sculpt, the most important part, I think it's just blocking the shapes out. So don't be afraid of exaggerating and moving stuff around. And just because the fact that you have everything separate just makes it way easier to try different shapes and so on. Now for the lips, I did the same thing. So the upper lip and the bottom lip are separate pieces. And again, just to have that much control, if your character has a fatter lip on the top border or a thinner lip on the bottom or so on. You do have that effect. For this guy has a small chin, like how old people, because they lose their teeth, you kinda lose a bit of a bit of that jaw. Bite. The jaw bite is a bit smaller. And here I'm just going in with the, with the clay brush and just adding a bit more meat around the cheeks under the under the jaw. And just moving stuff around and seeing what what fits and what looks good work that other character. Now, for this character, I don't have a particular drawing. I just have a couple of photos of old people that I gathered around and I'm just trying some, some stuff. So I'm kinda free styling this. I know that the character, we're going to have a Beard. And you might be asking, why am I going into the trouble of moving stuff around if the whole face is gonna be covered with the Beard, you've seen the render. The thing is, you'd have to think of your character as a living being. So maybe, maybe you want to shave his beard or anatomically speaking, you can't get those shapes if you don't have that beard and then the volume of the face and volume of it? Correct. Because then the moment you start adding a beard on top, it just going to look a bit weird. Now, you'll notice that I'm keeping stuff, really read it off. So i'm I'm not worried about how clean it is. You'll see me jumping from doing the jaw than jumping to the forehead. For the forehead, I went ahead and just add it to rough lines. Just a bit of age lines on the top just to the moment you start, here's the thing when you start adding wrinkles, the forehead or the face, always keep in mind to add volume as well. Not just go with the dam standard and just make it line. Because if you look at a face the moment, if you have a wrinkle, then around that there is meat that has wait to them. So it's really, really important. Now, here I'm going, you're gonna notice why it's really important to have for me at least to have the lips split into two parts, bottom lip and the top lip Because I can I can move it, I can try stuff and the fact that it's separate, the mean moving the bottom lip, it doesn't affect top lip, doesn't affect the bottom lipids and vice versa. And it just gives me that option of trying stuff and seeing what works. The other good thing about having them separate is the moment you start moving the upper lip, it doesn't affect the face and the mustache area, the meat underneath the nose and the bottom lip. Again, you can move it, make it thicker, not worry about that's going to affect my mind, jaw line and so on. So it's all about giving you that control over each part. Now, we're the dam standard here. I'm just going going in and just adding a bit of rough wrinkles. Again, keeping it rough. I'm not worried about anything clean. I'm just want to see if the overall look of the faces good. Now, duplicating the bottom parts of the face, I'm going to isolate it and just gonna go ahead and smooth it. So I'm going to be using the same part. You can go ahead and add a new sphere if you want to. But what I like doing that because it keeps the same shape of that face. What I have to do now is just go with the Move tool. Just have the parts that don't want to be seen. Just sync them into the face and how the parts that I want them to stick out, just move them out and you can see it as if it's as if the beard is drawing. And this way you can establish like where and how big and the volume of the shape of it and it's going to follow the shape of the phase. Because if you think about it, the Beard grows on top of the face, so it has to follow the same shapes of the face. Now with the clay brush, I love doing this because you can go in and just add volume and it just looks like it makes it look so natural. Again, don't worry about making it looking clean. Just draw lines as if the hair is growing. And then with the dam standard that you can just go in and add deeper creases. And then if you press Alt, you can get those creases reversed. And then it just going to add a nice edges on the hair. Now for the mustache, I'm going to be using curve tubes. Now, make sure to select the piece that you want the curve tubes to appear on. The curve tubes go through the face, just make sure to go to picker. And you have depth, and just make sure you have continuous Z selected, then it will, the curve is going to appear on, on top of that part. Now we'll go ahead and split that part. And then with the with the inflate tool, I'm just going to inflate that shape what I want it to be a bit thicker. You'll notice that I'm working only on the half of the face. Sometimes I'll mirror it before I start making the edits, but sometimes it's just, it just works to add, to focus on one piece. Once I'm happy with that shape, I'll just go ahead and duplicate it and just to get the overall, overall look. Now at the same as the beard, I'm just gonna go with the clay brush, just go over it like really rough and try to think of how that hair would move on the phase just to make it. So I just don't make everything vertical going down or in one direction and don't be scared to overlay it on top just because what I love about clay brush, if depending on how hard you press on it, you can get like really soft lines and it just going to add that much texture. Again with the dam standard. Just go in and just add a couple of lines. And with the Alt, you can just do have a reverse and have those lines go poke out instead of just digging in. So now I'm jumping in-between the beard and mustache. And now that I'm happy with the overall shape, I'll just go ahead and emitter it. And now I can, again, I can move on and work on the hair 3. Lesson02: Sculpting the hair: Now with the hair, I'll do it in the same thing. So I'm duplicating the head part, smoothing it, and then I'm just going to move, move the parts inside. And if you have to think about, when you're sculpting hair, thinking about the overall shape of the hair. Don't worry about hair strands, don't worry about details of the hair and so on. Just think of it as if you're squinting at a photo and you'll see the blob, which is the hair. And just move stuff around until you get the, the, the big shapes. And then once you have the big shapes and just go in with the dam standard as I shown you four with the beard, the same the same process. Again, you'll notice that I'm not even worried about having stuff poking out at the back or overlaying or anything. I'm what I'm have to be worried about when you're working, especially at this stage, is just getting that volume in, In worry about is this looking, the overall look? Is it good? And then then then we'll worry about making it to clean or making him look good and so on. You noticed I'm even using symmetrical. Now here's a strict about with hair. You can do the sides symmetrical because nobody is gonna be looking at the same two sides of the same time. Just, you know, and, but for the middle, just hit click off symmetry and just add extra lines. It just going to add, you make it look more natural. And with the dam standard where I'm going now is I'm going in and without symmetry, I'm just going to adding a couple of sharp lines just to give it that, you know, that hair look. Now. Now that I'm happy with the overall volume, I'll just go in with the curve tube. And you'll notice that I'm not even worried about, I'm not using any fancy hair brushes. I'll show you, I'll share a couple of with you that I think that I really love using in ZBrush. But for this stage and for Blocking curve tubes does a great job of doing that. Now again, if the curve tubes going through and through that, now that you have the picker set, it shouldn't. But if you close ZBrush and open it again and still going through, just make sure to have depths set to Z. Go to Picker depth and have continued Z selected. Now, once you have that initial shape of the curve, just move it around with the Move tool. And then here, what I'm going, I'm doing, I'm going to Z modular. And I'll go and delete a couple of the edges that I don't need because I want some parts of that strand to be sharp and the other parts I want it to be soft. So when I go ahead and add a dynamic subdivision to it and mix, make them smoother. It will give me that strand look and you need, you need that sharp edges soft so you can get a bit of more dynamic shapes between them. So now that I have one shape looking, okay, I go ahead and duplicate it and just move it around. This is a fast way of creating hair. Just, just seeing just seeing if it if it, how it looks, if it works, you need to add if you like the hairstyle and without worrying about use brushes, or is it looking perfect and so on. And just duplicate one of the strands and just move them around and try to try to have those shapes as different as possible, like make him fatter, wider, smaller, and then you can make. And then once you think, and I think this piece is trying, is starting to repeat itself. Just go in and just create a new curve tube, an inside Z modular. I'll, again, what I'm doing here, I'm deleting the the lines that I I don't need. And you'll notice I'm not worried about the shape breaking or anything. Just want to figure out the shape of my character and just block that and as fast as I can. And without. Because the thing is when you start putting too many hours and too much time into one detail and you either get bored with the project or if you're if you're working with the client and they asked for changes, You're not gonna be happy of doing changes when you spent like four or 5 h into it. But if you block stuff really fast and it just show it to a client, say, okay, this is the hair cutter I'm going for what do you think you liked volume and explain that this is just rough and we'll come to clean it and so on. So you'll notice here again, the same thing is I'm using curve tubes, adding the main shapes. So I'll draw the main shapes just like, I don't know, rough, like really rough like 60% there. And just then i'll, I'll split that part as its own sub tool and then using Z modular just to remove a couple of the edges that I don't want. And just to have that nice sharp shape Here I'm just metering the side one that I did. And again, you'll notice that once I duplicate that, I'll go in and just tweak it a bit so it doesn't look exactly alike that one. Now, as I said, they do look rough now. But the moment you start dynameshing them or this morning you start adding more subdivision or Dynamics subdivision. You'll see how nice though those, those trends read 3D look. So again, I'm duplicating the same strand that I did, rotating it, moving into round. I may use in-flight just to give it more volume or I made use pinch. Just to give it more. If you want the ends to be a bit more thinner, just use pinch and that should work just fine. Again here, selecting the same one. I'll just go ahead and MIT or the sub tool. And again, doing the same thing, you'll notice that I'm using the same, same tools and keeping things really, really love and 3D simple, just moving stuff around, duplicating them, creating. And always remember two steps, step back and look at the overall shape like Look, look if the volume looks good and what I love, the latest edits of updates of ZBrush. You have that small you have that small thumbnail of a silhouette in the left corner, which is really helpful to help you see the silhouette of your character and see if that looks good and if anything sticks out or maybe something that you haven't noticed, because we spent so many hours working on a piece, you stop seeing the errors. And this is why you'll hear a lot of artists say, when you're working on something, just take a break, go do something else, or come back. Or another trick that I really love is just take the same photos that I didn't flip it and do a mirror because it's kinda does like a refresh for your brain. And it's like, okay, look at, now, look at this with this angle. Now, I'll jumping into Z modular and under edges, selected edge and make sure you select crease and that what does. And also make sure you have edge loop selected. So if you go space on an edge and then crease and you have single edge loop or multiple edge loops. You just need a single edge loop. So that adds like a, a crease line on the edge that you want. And you'll see when you start doing the dynamic subdivision, you see how smooth that looks, but it keeps that nice edge. And this is why I kept those edges when creating the curve tubes. Just because because I knew that I want the top part to be soft and smooth, but I wanted the side to be, to have a nice sharpness to it with a nice edge. And this is why I left two edges on the signs and not just one. Because you have also to think about how it's going to affect when light hits that part. And you'll see that this is why some parts are rotated and just go in and it gives it a nice look. Especially when you're doing hair. And we're doing polygon hair, which is simple without worrying about doing strands or realistic hair. So now I'm going around the head and selecting each strand and adding those creases to the edges that I left in. Now you would ask why haven't added the creases before? Like, I need to keep my workflow as simple as possible and screens as possible. Because you, while working, you might move stuff around and, or skew and edge or it doesn't look where it doesn't land what you want it to. So I don't have to worry about does that Chris is gonna be effective or it's going to look good. So I'll, I'll do the main shapes first and then I'll go in with the crease edges and just add the creases, whatever whatever I need them. But you can do that. You can add the creases before or while posing it if that's easier for you. So again, here's just going, going in and moving stuff around, just tweaking them just to see if it if everything looks good. And you'll see that we're going to go back to these and in a bit now for the, using the same techniques that I used before. So curve tubes and I'm just going to lay these over the forehead. Now. When I did the first shape, I don't like how thick it was ending the ends of the curve. So to tweak that, just go into stroke. And when you open that up, you have curve modifiers. And I'm the intensity. You can select. How, you know how the side just make sure you have size selected and you can select how thick, how much it tapers down to the end or the start so you can taper it either way, right? So again, rough shape. Once I'm happy with that, I split it into its own sub tool and then I'm gonna go in with the move tool, just move stuff around. Once I'm happy with the shape Again, dam standard cut that board, going with the clay brush, add just small lines just to give it that that volume. So now I'm just going in selecting the parts that don't have any dynamics subdivision because I want to see the overall look of the entire sculpt because you'll notice that left a lot of stuff. Steels are still without any subdivision. And now you'll notice What's the benefit of having each piece separate? Because you can go in and you can tweak volume of each and every individual part if you would like to make the neck thicker, just to make it proportional to the body is not going to affect, it's not going to affect the head until you decide to merge it. You'll emerge it just to. So I'm just going in. Now one thing I highly recommend is have some anatomical reference. If you can have a structure of an anatomy male, female on your desk, that's even better. I can share a couple of things that I have and I'll show you and you can get, you can get some really, really cheap. So again, when I'm doing here is just going in selecting the years because the hair was sticking out of them. Just moving them out, making small tweaks to the strands, then jumping back to the neck. Now for the neck, I wanted to add a bit of muscle. This is why I said just keep some anatomical reference next to you. Just so you can add a bit of neck muscles. Adam's apple, just to make it look. You don't have to go into detail, even if, even if these are rough and subtle, the fact that you win in just gave them a bit of volume, just make them look more realistic and that more relatable even if you're doing something cartoony as this character is. So I'll go back to the selecting parts. Even though with the beard and mustache, I kept them as separate pieces because I wanted to have that control of moving. Maybe I want the beard to be larger or have more volume and I wanted, I wanted it to be more slang AGI and have it go over the neck more. Maybe have those, those back by candles, go into the hair or whatever you're tweak as. And here you'll notice that that I'm using transparent. So you can select a part, have transparency on and you can see how that are looking underneath. And if something is taken out and notice that the beard wasn't covering all that the underside of the of the jaw line. And just gives you that control of tweaking stuff and not affecting it. But the same time you have to keep in mind the fact that they're separate. You might end up with gaps or you might end up with something not continually looking? Correct because because they're separate, so you always have to to keep that in mind to go back and check. Okay. I move that year. The the meat connecting to it or the muscle connecting to it, that move as well. Does it look good? And you can solo each part on its own and add any, any deep wrinkles or more volume like here with inflate brush. I'm just going and giving him a bit of more of a puffy, Puffy cheek to them. And finally, what I'm doing is I'm showing the character from all sides. You can do that. We shift S so you can see the character from different parts. 4. Lesson03: Cleaning and detailing the head: This part, we're going to start Cleaning and why Cleaning? We're going to go ahead and select each part and merge stuff and clean them. And you'll notice that I'm starting to hide stuff and I'm going to keep only the stuff that what I'm doing here is actually focusing on each individual piece and how that piece is going to connect to the other sub tool. And usually I'll start with the bottom part of the face, with the lips, because these usually are the trickiest to get to get right. So I'll start by jumping between the upper lip and the bottom lip here just to get that proportions in volume, okay? With lips, it's a bit tricky and make sure you have a lot of reference of, because it really depends from a person to person, female, male, old, young. It's a lot of, lot of differences between the two. But all in all, when you're making something organic, just remember that even organic boards and especially like blips or any, any body part you'll see you'll have 3D harsh edges like edges that creases, wrinkles or the edge when some part and start some other ones. So this one you'll see I'm softening the bottom lip, but then I made sure the bottom, especially in the middle because then it tapers off on the sides, made that sure it's sharp. Now, I selected the face, added some dynamic subdivision because I wanted to see the softness and then I start by merging. So here you notice that I'm only merged the top lip with the face and then I'm softening it with holding Shift and you just soften. Then I go in and add that sharp edge just still holds the shape of the lips. You'll notice that I don't go to the end of it is because if you look at reference photos, you'll notice that it's sharp edges, sharp in the middle, but then it tapers off to the science, then have the edges underneath the nose. I don't know how that part is called. Then it's just a matter of softening using the flattened brushes. Well, just so I need that area to feel like it's with a bit of inflate. I just want that area to be to feel like it has more meat underneath it. Then I'll go in and I'll make the the wrinkles around the start under the nose. So I because initially when I sculpt with I forgot to add the line. Because usually these start at the end of the nostril and then they go down, down the face. So I made sure those are a bit deeper and I'm still going to tweak those once we start merging the nose because then we have a big gap between the, the nose and the the face. So now I'm gonna go ahead and soften dynamic, add some dynamics of the nose, and then add subdivisions. And then I'm going to merge the nodes with the nostrils. And before merging, just make sure the shapes are almost there and I don't have to be 100% there, but just make sure they're almost there because then it's a bit difficult to start moving stuff around. So then merge them, dynamesh and then I start softening. But as you notice, I don't go. I don't soften it perfectly because the nose, the more closer to the face it is. Those lines become harsher and stronger, right? And also in the front of the nose. Just to get that. Especially if you have if you have like a big round nose, then you'll, you'll see that those lines actually make the shape of that, of that nose. Then again, just jumping around from part one part to the other, just making sure it's everything just flows just flows. Next. I'm gonna go ahead and merge the forehead part with the bottom. So one thing I love about when you're working in separate pieces. I love when dynamesh, when you dynamesh two pieces and it's create like natural creases. Between the two. You'll see the line between the forehead, the top part of the head, and the bottom. That's created like a nice, nice wrinkle that I want to keep their and it has like a nice volume to it because it's between two parts and it has a nice, It's sharp are the same time just goes and soften. Here with the dam standard. I'm just going in and just adding, just making those lines a bit sharper. And as I said, whenever you add a sharp line, just go in with the in-flight brush. Just so it adds a bit of meat because if you think of those wrinkles there, they dig into the skin but the same time everything around it, it's still, still has its weight and fill. It becomes even more stronger. As you see. When I start merging stuff, some parts pop and you start tweaking and adjusting to the merge because The moment you start merging stuff, some shapes need to, you need to fill in some space or you need to remove some volume. Again here you'll see the same thing. So I'm adding a dam standard line just to make those wrinkles stronger, especially the ones on the forehead. And again, I'm on, once I do that, I'll go in with inflate Bush, especially the top line because the top, you have to think of gravity just has a weight to it and it just falls down. And then at the end, make sure you soften those. So they have like a crease that just softens out and just the merges, Merges in. One thing you can do is you can also use the pinch brush. And if you think those lines are not strong enough, you just take the pinch brush and just pinch those creases and wrinkles. Just gives you a nice it gives you a volume and it keeps that sharp cut. Next, what I'll do is I'll merge the nose. And because of the bridge here, what I've done, I could have made the nose just tape, just fade in. But I know that the moment that I start adding, what I love adding when I add with the clay brush is it makes, it feels like it's actual meat. And here, the smooth brush isn't strong enough, so I'll go into the and just choose the stronger smooth. Just makes it easier to smooth those creases. I'll add a bit of highlights, the creases that I want see here on the nose because that goes into that line. Just make sure they're connected and a bit stronger. And whenever you do that, just make sure you always go back with a inflate or the pinch. Just make sure it's not only align because it's not a cut even when you do a scar. If you notice when you do scars or stuff like that, you still because that tissue when it heal, that added like another tissue and so on. So you still have that small bumps and it just makes it more, I don't know, just adds a bit more meat to it. Now, the thing that I do is when you work on a piece and you feel that it's not there, just leave it, leave it and just jump on another piece because you'll get frustrated with like, you start moving stuff around and you go like, I'm not, I'm not getting the shape and you'll just use just frustrate yourself. If that happens, just jumped on another piece, just go. Do work with the forehead, work with the eyes, took the nose or whatever, and just come back to it because what happens is you've been staring at it for so long. You don't know what works anymore. So here you'll notice now I'm merging the bottom parts of the lip. And as I said with lips, it's a bit weird because if you don't get the proportions right, the start looking, looking a bit off, like you see, this is still here. I'm not happy with with the shapes because like every tweak you make just makes, makes or breaks the Character. Now, you might ask, why am I doing this? Because the guy has a huge beard. But again, it's one, it's an exercise for you. That's one thing too. If the client decides to not give the character beard, then you have to sculpt that beard. Or were you decide for your character, your one point, you're like, oh my, I wish, wish I wanna do this guy without a beard because I think it looks cool. And again, if you treat your character as like a living character that then you'll, you'll Design him differently, like you'll think of all these aspects. So after I've merged and softened, I'll go back with the heart branches. Because when you start smoothing stuff, you might end up smoothing those edges that you need to be sharp. You have to keep in mind everything. Everything has a contrast. Like if you look everything in our body from our fingers, face, eyes, everything has a contrast of software pieces. They, there are a lot of sharp, sharp pieces. Now, next is jumping into the ears. I'm gonna go ahead and do the same thing. I'll inflate a bit the parts that I want to be a bit bigger at some dynamics subdivisions. And then I'll merge it with the face, like with the ear. There's one trick that I learned. I don't remember what I learned that one is, if you want to Sculpting year, just use the curve, the tube, brush and just make a question mark. And then inside the question mark, just draw and a Y, like a simple why. And at the end of it, just put a small sphere and then merge all the thing together and it just comes out nice. It's not realistic. But for this one, I'm not going for realistic, but I'm going for something more stylized. But it just, it just works. So now, again, I did before. Once I'm happy with the shape, I'll merge it to the head, smoothing the parts. Sometimes you need to add a bit of more meat. Because if you look at, again, try to look as much references you can. You'll see that when you smooth it, you still have a gap. But when you add a bit of, if you need to add a bit of meat, just, just makes that line a bit the curvature just flow in a bit nicely. Now, as you see a jumping back to the eyes. Now because I added a bit of more meat between the nose and the cheeks. Then now I have to tweak the eyes, the eyelids, the upper eyelid, and the bottom eyelid just, just still have that line that starts from the move from the end of the nose to the end. And again, tweaking them slightly, moving some stuff around, adding some more subdivision. And then here I'm also tweaking and adding. I thought, well, because this guy is an old guy, I'm gonna go ahead and add just slightly a bit of wrinkle on the island just to give him that age appropriate feel to it. And you'll see, although I merge some stuff, I'm still jumping around between them and tweaking. And I'll jump back. And again, whenever you get frustrated with the piece and it's not working or it's not coming as well. Just leave it as it is and work on another piece and then come back. There's nothing wrong in coming back and just tweaking and tweaking and tweaking until, until you're happy with the result. You'll notice that when I finished working on any piece, I'll start moving the head around or zoom out and look at it overall. Because especially when you're, you've been working on small pieces you to get lost in the details. And it's a good measure to like each time you work on anything or tweak it or to add, it's just, just take a step back, just zoom out, look at the overall. And my eyes is always looking at that silhouette. Just to see if because that small size just tells me if jumped, some slumping jumps up in the flow of the shape or is the proportion of the shoulders. Working with the neck? Is the neck too long and so on. So you kinda jumping in and tweaking between between the two. Here. Again, I'm going back adding a bit of more muscle definition. I'm still, I'm still having decided is like how muscly I'm going to make this guy, this guy is old, but again, it's like he's like a strong do than or like an old fisherman or something. So I tried to imagine like a small story for my character in my head, just, I don't know, It just makes it FUN when you're working on your character to have something in your mind is just like, I don't know, your while working on it. You're trying to know who your character is and understand more about what makes them tick with the live and so on. 5. Lesson04: Cleaning and detailing the Beard: I need to worry about the beard and then I'll know if the proportion is correct. So again, what I'm trying to say, it's like don't be afraid to drop a piece that you're working in, a piece from that model and just do something else. Because you might come back to ends like, Oh yeah. Now understand the volume better because I need to figure out the how the beard is going to affect the look and so on. And you'll notice that because I merge some stuff and it adds some meat and I moved some pieces around. It. It actually just modify the shape of the face and it, the beard wasn't aligning. So you just have to go back. Because we kept all the shapes simple. They're easy to edit. Like you can easily go back and edit them and add any detailing, clean them. So now I'm doing a bit of dynamesh with polish on. And I'm going in with the dam standard. Adding more detail. Again, I'll do like a crease and then I'll make a hold Alt and just do the opposite of that, just give it. And here you see I'm now working with cemetery anymore because while in blocking stage symmetry is amazing, it's great for blocking out shapes really fast and getting your volumes and so on. When you're starting to detail, take the time to work in asymmetric will take the time to make things not look symmetrical whenever you can, like even a small tweak, move the lipid a bit upward. The the I make it a bit crooked or the nose or whatever. Because if you look at any phase, no faces, it is symmetrical. So here are just going round making some shapes. Sometimes I'll just, I'll just let the mess of the shapes that I had before guide me or when I want, what I want to add and where do I want to add that small detail and all that stuff. So it's that messy blocking that you did. My actually help you make a flow for, for the hair of the character. Go around, see if I can add or any to move any stuff. Because the moment you move the camera, you might notice that I don't know, it needs a bit of more volume or here I noticed like, oh, it's covering the lipid bit too much. Because the moment to reveal other parts, like the mustache here, I noticed like, okay, wait, the bottom lip is not showing as it's supposed to, right. So maybe I need to drop that part of the bit down. So now the next step is to take them mustaches, dynamesh them again. From that blocking that we did the same blocking that we did. I didn't do anything extra to it. The same blocking dynamesh did. Then I'll go in with the sides. As you can notice, the symmetrical now is on because I want to use, for the sides, I can use symmetrical. And you'll notice that at the end of it, I'll go, I'll turn off symmetry and just go back and just do a couple of small ones and some symmetry on the sides as good. So once you start going to the middle, it turns symmetry off because then you're viewing the character from the front, you're gonna notice what the side is not noticeable that much, right? So then you're going to notice that, oh, it's a bit too symmetrical. So then you can just go in with the dam standard, adding a bit of crease and then just alternating in-between up and down, up and down, just, just getting. And again, using the same flow over the Blocking parts that we did, that rough shapes that we did actually can guide us to know I like how that one feels. I'll just going to add a sharp line or this is gonna be my, my valley and this is gonna be my, my, my hill and so on. So I'll keep tweaking the shapes to get the look that I'm going for. Once I'm happy, I'm just gonna go in and do a dynamesh, but I'm gonna do it with bullish, with the polish is just adds a bit of softness and sharpness to the top parts. And it just blends really nicely. Again, just tweaking it. Tweaking. So you have a nice flow between the mustache and the beard. So it just doesn't feel like it's just like to parts on top of the other just makes it feel like, oh, the hair of the moustache is just flowing over the beard, right? So, you know, although they're separate parts and you want them to feel like separate parts, you just have to feel like they're pieces of the same beard. Now. See now that I have the beard and mustache settled, I'll jump back to the shoulders and neck. So now I'm ready to merge the shoulders with the neck and now I can decide, okay. Is the size or the shoulders. How how much muscle do I add? How much details do I add to the? So now just merging the two, dynameshing them and then smoothing, smoothing out the shapes, the connections to use shapes. And then with the clay brush, I'll just go in and add those muscle details. It doesn't have to be crazy details. But the, I noticed that if you start adding a bit of detail to the muscles and then soften them up. Even if they're not visible. You can actually feel them like you can actually feel that there is some, there is work done underneath because you feel the flow of the neck in the silhouette and how posture helps, helps the character cell the character even more is you can see I'm keeping a really, really simple and I'll say it again. Try to keep reference, photo reference of an anatomical body. Or if you can have a, I have two statues on my, on my desk that I just I love having them on my desk because I can just look look, look at them and know if I need to tweak that a bit, a bit and just add some muscle here. Or I need to make the neck a bit because the flow is not correct and so on. 6. Lesson05: Detailing the hair and adding final details: This is the shape that we took and duplicated the head. So now remember we added those rough lines with the clay brush. So now I'm going in and doing the same thing with the, with the Beard going go with the dam standard than just going over and adding sharp edges, a bit of creases and just going in using the same flow, I know I'm repeating myself again, but it's the same thing actually. It's like you notice like once you, once you use a technique when with one-piece, it's just reusing it again and just making sure what you're trying here, try to keep the style consistent so don't don't make him a bit too large then the beard. So try as much as you can to look at, oh, this is how I did it with the beard. I must use the same flow with the hair just so it feels like it's from the same same style and so on. Dry. I don't know. You block the beard and a polygon and then you go crazy detail with tiny hairs. The head, it's gonna look weird. I'm not, I'm not saying and doing it, try it, but it's still going to look weird. Try to stay, follow the same, the same lines. Because you'll notice once you, once you start doing it for each, each piece, you'll, you'll, you'll kinda create a workflow for yourself. You're like, oh yeah, so what I'm gonna do is I'm going to add whatever the Blocking had. I'm just going to add the crease here. You're going to add a sharp edge here. Then to soften that. Now I don't like how that looks. You'll notice that now, although I'm doing all of these, and you might say, well, they're covered with the the bottom and top hair. This is the bottom. I know, but at one point I need to merge the bottom part of the hair with the strands that I did. So it looks and if we do this, it's going to help us have a nice flow. So it's going to look way better when, because if we have left this soft and we have the strands going into that softness, it would've looked so weird. Who's going from sharp edges, strands going into the head. And then you'll have to sculpt hard edges. This way. You're preparing for that merge. Your like preparing because if you think of, as I said, you have to think of hair and hairstyles as volumes as like shapes. Because if you're making your haircut, when you're arranging your hair, you see like you have the back of your head, the sides and so on. And then you have like, I don't know, in front of the head you have one curl which goes up or over the forehead or goes back or whatever your hairstyle hairstyle are going for, right? So you have to think, okay, So this is my base body of the hair. And on top of it there is these strands that they need to flow, right? This is why I worked like this because it adds a bit of, it just makes it full. See, so now what? I'll start taking those strands and tweaking them and I'll move stuff around so I can get I don't have anything like poking through. And you'll notice because you see how those strands look weird now, right? So they just look like tentacles, to be honest, like they're sitting on top of the head and you don't want that like you can get away with it if you're just doing it on Render, you're not, you're not going to view the model from any sign. But this model, you'll see, I want to upload it to Sketchfab so you can look at it from all sides. So because I went ahead and created the bottom lines, now what I'm going to do is I'm going to take those strands and make them follow the flow of that. I'm hope, I hope I'm making sense. So I'm just moving those and making them flow. And you see like how I'm trying to align the hard edge that will go into a soft edge or I want to strand to go underneath a strand just makes it a bit more natural. And it's not as tedious as you think is. This is not fast-forward. This is like real-time. I haven't fast forwarded or anything. So you'll notice that doesn't take as much time. It just tweaking, moving stuff around, right. And just just trying to follow the lines that you had before. And again, you'll see me like now I'm jumping to the bottom part because I noticed that this part was a bit too flat. I'm gonna go in and just add an extra line. Or see just, just to have that contrast between smooth and a bit of edges, smooth and a bit of edges and so on. But you'll notice that some of the edges, I don't blend them, I keep them out because think of hair. Sometimes you'll have, I don't know, strangest, just going up that strand just it's not merging with the overall shape of your head or the overall shape of the, what's the goal to your hairstyle that you're going for? So Again, when you decide to, i'll, I'll merge these and you have to do it for all of them. Again, contrast is really important here. So merge a couple, leave a couple out. Just makes it more interesting to look at. And especially with hair because hair is messy. Like the beautiful thing about like you want to know how to make hair look natural. Don't spend too much. I'm making it look perfectly. Just block in the shapes as you've seen me to. And then just go over with a couple of strands, move them around. And you should be, you should get really good, really good hairstyle. Now I'm just going in and tweaking each hair strand and just making sure it flows nicely with the bottom sculpt that we did. Just go over each one. I know it's it might look less tedious process, but trust me, it's really, really important to get those shapes clean and nice and have a nice flow. So the merged nicely when we start, when we start merging them with the bottom part. So now what you see here, I'm taking that strand and I'm just, I want that strand to go a bit down. But also I'm looking at the lines that I sculpted and how that's gonna be, how that's going to flow with the overall, although overall shape, right? So it's just a matter of moving strands around and just making sure the, the, the harsh edges and the soft parts are looking. We have a nice balance between them. And you notice like again, when I start working on something, one part too much, I'll just switch to another view. So I can see if, if, if, if it looks good from that side. But again, I know the back of my head is like, Oh, I've been I've been working on this part. Wait too long and I need to switch it up because you'll just taking that I don't know, 10 s or 15 s from it just shows you when you come back to it, there's just you just come back to it with fresher, fresher eyes. So here That's strand. I want that strand to go to the bottom because I thought, I thought it would look like really cool. And it also has a nice merger between between the back, the back parts of the hair with that flow. And honestly, the only thing that I'm doing here is just going over each each one of them and just making sure the flow of each of each hair strand is, and you'll notice each one now it still has its own poly group and I'm still having dynamesh to any of them. So these are still in dynamic subdivision. So we can always go back to the rough. These are the same rough ones that we did at the start. So I haven't created new ones or anything. So now, once I'm happy, now that I'm happy with the shape now I can go ahead and dynamesh them. I can go in and sharpen some edges. I cannot go in and soften some edges. So these are the final tweaks that I do before I merge each strand to the hair. Now, coming from a toy designer and 3D printing. I always also have like this. I don't know. It's like a I need to make sure my models are watertight so I don't have any overlaps. And this thing can be, can be easily taken to, I can, I can 3D print this the same time. I can also render this. So for me as a toy designer, that's really important. So when I'm working on something, I have that in the back of my head is oh, I know how I need to split this, right? So what I need to make this, to print this, and I need to make sure I don't have any parts underneath that's going to cause a problem where printing and we have overlaps or we have some gaps which are not prepared. But that's not this discussion we can go over on how to prepare a model for making sure it's perfect for 3D printing. Now going back to the strand, now, I finished one strand, so that's trends is done. I might go back before I, before I merge it. So you'll see me like I'll jump to the one before. And if I notice like, Oh, that's a bit too soft. Or any the extra edge there. Or I mean, to make this a bit harsher because when you start adding, as I said before, we start adding a new stuff or make new stuff appear. Those stuff needs to, those parts, need to react or with those parts. So now I have three strands merged to the hair. And you'll see how nicely they flow. And I just need to go in now and just smooth some parts, even the front parts that it's connected to the forehead. I'll just go ahead and dynamesh them. And then I'll smooth out the, I don't know the edges that. Now you'll notice that when you, when you start merging stuff, again, The parts underneath get affected so you need to tweak those. Start to move them as one piece. Here I'm deciding, okay, so this strand is going to be overlapping with that or you want it underneath because you have to think hair is not like you do have a hairline, but it's not perfect. Like you have a couple of hairs which are to make it a bit more natural. Don't be afraid to experiment and I'll move just this one millimeters off, or I have that a bit skewed on top of the other one, right? So now I dynamesh this softened up the edges because you can see the edges look a bit harsh. As I said, I didn't spend any time making the surface smooth because I don't have to worry about that. I'll worry about it and I'll clean it when I'm getting to this point, which is now now. Now I'll spend the time Cleaning my parts, making sure they don't have to do that. What I'm blocking because what I'm blocking, I'm just figuring out that Blocking. I'm figuring out how do I make this character, how do I make to this character look cool, look sad, or emotion. I'm agreeing for how, what's, what's his body type with the proportions, how the silhouettes is going to work. That's what's important when blocking. And once we have that, the rest is just just busy work. It's just making sure everything looks clean and looks nice. But if the blocking stage isn't done properly and it's not, you didn't you didn't spend the time making sure everything looks, has a nice flow and a nice volume. No matter how many details we added, still not going to look a little, look good here. Because when you merge stuff, the poly groups, you still have them so you can select the body group. And with the in-flight brush, I can go in and I can move some stuff. As I said, I need I need those parts. Two don't have any overlapping parts just to make it easier for if I, if I decide to 3D print this guy or and just, I don't know, it makes it look cleaner if all the pieces of the, of the model are clean and you have a nice, nice flow to them. So again, here I'm just going in and just moving some some strands and just making sure the flow of each one is supposed to be. So it just flows nicely with the bottle, with the base hair that we have underneath. And that's the part where I dynamesh. And then I'll go in with a flattened brush or the dam standard. And once I'm happy with the shape, I'll just merge it to the bottom part. I went ahead and jumped a bit because as you've noticed, it's I'm doing the same thing and I don't want to bore you with that. So just moving strands around. You'll notice one thing, I forgot to record this when I add those strands, but I use the same technique, so the same tubes, just tiny tubes made a shape and then you can add them. What I love about those is they give a feeling of strands. And again, you have to go with that mess is like messy hair. There's always one or two strands which are not behaving or sitting where they should. Now that the haircuts is done, I can jump in and work on our final piece, which is the eyebrows. And you'll notice here I'm doing the same thing with the move tool. I'm just moving the eyebrows a bit because we merge some stuff and we added some move some stuff around. Just needs a bit of, a bit of tweaking. So same thing, dynameshing the parts with polish on. I'm going in with the dam standard and just adding, adding those creases and those lines using Alt and just using the, I'm using the same volume from the blocking. So this way it just gives me a nice flow. And I'll repeat that again. It's, this just shows you how helpful Blocking is. Even even when we're detailing because it helps us not have to guess what we're doing. He's like we using, oh, I really like how when we, when block that 3d fast it came out, gives us a nice shape to it and advice volume to it. And just as you notice here, I'm not using symmetry. So just because eyebrows, you mostly see them from the front. So you don't want them to be to look identical, just makes it look weird. With the dam standard just going in with the ALT. Went up, one down. Just play around with it out of an ad. Like you can add subtle ones on top of them as well. She won't like to have a nice small, tiny hair look look to it. And then once I'm happy with that, I'll just go ahead and dynamesh with polish on. And I'll just go in and I noticed I haven't added any to the top. Just makes the flow nicer because you don't want have like a super clean line when we're with the part that with the hair that connects to the flesh, just makes it look, look a bit more natural when you have that line, line break. So this is exactly what I'm doing here. I'm just going in breaking that line. So the connection with the forehead flesh, it's not it's not perfect. It, you have that. The waviness or you want to call it to the shapes. Now just zooming out, making sure everything looks well. I'll select some other parts. Sometimes I'll, I'll just go ahead and use another material shader. Just to see fine. Notice something. Here I noticed like the nose needs to be a bit, a bit like a nice curvature to the front. Moving the nostrils a bit around. I thought the hanging a bit a bit too low. And again, even at this point, I think even before I finished the model, I went in and I did a couple of extra tweaks. Because if I get to this stage once it's cleaned, I'll leave it at least one night and I'll come back the other day and see where did I mess up because you'll definitely forgot one place or you didn't clean clean it up or something came up. And again, Shift S to view it from all angles, which makes sure just like a nice ending presentation for you.