Judge feedback

Judge feedback is anonymous and shown in a random order.

• Pros: + Very good use of referencing throughout the documentation. + Very good use of Marvelous Designer, looking into cloth patterning and shoe making, although do not rely so much on it for cloth simulation, learning how to sculpt cloth folds is an essential skill for any character artist. + Good attempt at creating hair with haircards, although the technique can be significantly improved. I recommend using the Maya plugin called GS Curves Tools instead of deformers. (https://www.artstation.com/marketplace/p/zzR2/gs-curvetools-v1-3-maya-plug-in-curve-controlled-hair-cards-pipes-and-more ) Also, the haircards seem placed in one layer, excluding the haircap. You ideally want thick/thin variants of haircards and have them structured in layers. One course I highly recommend, which I myself benefited a lot from, is Maria Puchkova’s Real Time Hair Tutorial (https://www.artstation.com/marketplace/p/p835o/real-time-hair-tutorial?utm_source=artstation&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=homepage&utm_term=marketplace ) Cons: - It’s good to try and sculpt the base mesh from zero but focus on the big shapes and their flow first before trying to sculpt the muscles since your sculpt is looking very stiff at the moment. One book I highly recommend is Anatomy for Sculptors (https://anatomy4sculptors.com/understanding-the-human-figure/). Also, don’t forget to practise anatomy through drawing since a lot of the observations you make in 2D can easily be transferred to 3D. For this I highly recommend drawing quick poses (1-2 min) which force you to find the main lines of action and learn how dynamic the human body is. - Good source for retopology references but in your character the polygon density/distribution varies quite a lot (eg. gloves compared to arms, pleats of dress). You would ideally want evenly spaced rows that flow from one piece of geometry to another for the best deformation results. For example, legs and boots may be two different meshes but you want the same number of vertical rows to flow from one to another as if they were one mesh. Also, the final polycount of 313k tris is way too high for this type of character considering the hair only accounts for 18k . Try to reduce polycount in areas that won’t be looked at as much like the boots or the trim of the gloves and waistcoat which look very dense for no reason. - Good UV map packing but I noticed there is a very high difference in texel density between the trims of the gloves/waistcoat, buttons and the rest of the character. Make sure to check differences in texel density and UV warping using a checker board texture when making your UVs. - The style of the character is unclear, I think more research could have been done on that since you are using a realistic method for texturing but a stylised approach to sculpting. - Final presentation is can be improved, mainly in terms of posing which looks very stiff and doesn’t bring out the character’s personality or different emotive states. I recommend taking more time when posing and possibly sketching out the scene to find an expressive pose (life drawing experience is very useful here). For rigging, I recommend using the free version of Accurig (https://actorcore.reallusion.com/auto-rig/accurig ) which yields better results than Mixamo, with individual finger bones among others. - Lighting can be much improved since the scene seems to be using only a sky light which makes the character look flat. Ideally you want to layer your lights and assign different intensities based on where you want to draw the focus of the viewer. Overall, you’ve done a lot of research beforehand which is good, but you need more time to put that research in practice and learn from it. I think you are on a good track and if you continue to ask for and apply the feedback you get from your peers and tutors you will improve in no time. Just be patient with yourself and you will achieve great things! Feel free to reach me at: verisof08 on Discord or via LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/mihaiandrusandu/
• Student: Mariam Sayeed Challenge Tier: Search For A Star Assessor: Jessie Chan Hi Mariam! Excellent work on this project, it’s clear in your documentation that you tried every tool available to you and did a lot of learning throughout the character from start to finish. Following the order of your documentation, I think the base anatomy could have been pushed to be a little more stylised based on your semi-realism references. The torso is slightly too long (aiming for around 2 heads tall) which leaves the legs and feet looking a little short (for this style, aim for 5 - 5.5 heads). I found that looking at “Proportions of the Figure by Loomis” helped me understand how much I can push a character’s anatomy without looking alien-like. Also, I think that her trapezius muscle comes out slightly too far back compared to the position of the shoulder - this impacts the fit of the jacket later on in production. Great job on those shoes in MD, I’ll be taking that tip with using 3 planes to create the shape of the sole, that’s awesome! You’ll find with more experience that you can take the highpoly stage quite far through MD. For this character, you could have taken the clothing to about 85% detail (think internal lines, detailing for seamlines, exact folds or creases, folds to support buttons etc) and then completed the last bits of polish in ZBrush. You may have noticed that MD exports triangulated meshes which makes them difficult to sculpt on at high subdivisions in ZBrush. Luckily there are a few methods to resolve this, I’d really recommend checking out the MD to Maya workflow through Transfer Attributes: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/zZOOL . It’s a tedious step, but well worth the result you get. I appreciate that you researched the main loops of the face and I think because of this the loops of the base mesh are fairly well done! It’s important to note that everything on a character is subject to deforming, so topology needs to be carefully considered just the same. There are a couple of polls on your jacket and shirt that don’t have the best edge flow and will deform unexpectedly, you can use the multi-cut tool to test if the edge flow is working as expected, and if there are specific folds that you want to define with geometry then you can go in with extra cuts afterwards. As a general rule of thumb, try to keep your quads as square as possible too and everything should have a similar level of topology density. Nice work on the UVs! They are very well packed and are separated into sensible materials. To level up your workflow even more, I would look at straightening islands to pack them even more efficiently. For texturing in future, I would recommend going back and forth between Substance Painter and your render engine to view how textures are looking. This helps you to tweak/boost contrast in areas that may get lost in the engine's lighting. I noticed that you have some marmoset renders too, which is great! I think this character would look awesome in a more bespoke lighting scenario (perhaps the lamp is creating the light source?) which you should be able to set up in Marmo. Keep pushing yourself to improve Mariam, I hope you’ve found this feedback helpful and I really look forward to seeing what you create next. Feel free to reach out if you have any questions! °˖✧◝(⁰▿⁰)◜✧˖°