Sculpting by eyeballing from just a single image

posted to: Sculpting a Shark

Wonderful course! May I ask you, whether it's possible to make a course on a certainly much more advanced sculpting like the lady on this painting: https://collections.mfa.org/objects/34466

What about animating such a character?  How do I have to deal with the clothes? It's certainly far from being easy, but I'm wondering how to best train eyeballing on the basis of just a single  image?


PS: I've already modeled heads using just the subsurface modifier and especially had problems dealing with the lips,  mouth corners, nostrils and eyelids.

  • Kent Trammell replied

    I'm glad you liked the course! The next step I'd recommend in your journey to sculpting the lady from the painting would be Gestural Sculpting practice. Once you spend some time "sketching" human bodies in 3D, you'll be more apt to sculpt from a 2D image and adequately fill in the gaps from all angles.

    As for animation, @waylow is currently working on new animation courses but his current character animation training is worth a watch.


  • Tomas Plasil(tomasplasil) replied

    You dont have to eyeball things from a single image, even if you want to replicate it perfectly. I think you should collect way more reference pictures and use those.

    So if you want to create this painting in 3d, you should collect loads of reference for human anatomy, proportion, expression, hair etc...they dont have to be the same as in this painting just kind of similar and you can use them to fill the gaps which you cant see on the painting. For the cloth, collect a lot of reference pictures of folded fabric, have another reference for the flowers, walls, floor and so on.

    The best way to do the cloth would probably be Marvelous Designer, I didnt try it myself yet but it looks pretty amazing from what I saw about it.

  • Ingmar Franz(duerer) replied

    Thanks a lot for your answer and for your encouraging way of teaching ! It helps me a lot and it's for me at least as much important as the pure technical information. May I ask you, how you achieved the transition effect with adding more and more detail to the rotating shark in your teaser video?

  • Kent Trammell replied

    Thanks for the positive feedback. It means a lot that you found the teaching encouraging :)

    The transition was a simple wipe transition in a video editor. But the shading and lighting of the shark scene...I'll just say, you might want to watch the livestream tomorrow to learn about that 😉

  • Ingmar Franz(duerer) replied

    Thanks a lot for your many tips!


  • Ingmar Franz(duerer) replied

    I've already reserved my seat for tomorrow ;) !