Hi Kent,
first of all, congrats for the course, awesome as usual, you are one the best teacher on internet teaching sculpting in blender, I've learned a lot with your courses here in CGcookie.
I have a question about how to deal with the blockout (and even all the sculpting process) at the moment of having a 2d image reference that is in 3/4 side.
I don't know if I'm missing something but I find very difficult to work in 3/4 instead of frontal or even side view. The symmetrize and the axis aren't precise even working in local coordinates and at the moment of moving or mirror something, it is very complicated.
What do you recommend?. I know that you always repeat in your tutorial about how a 3d image that comes from 2d, it isn't necessary to match the 2d image and also that as an artist we need to create our work in a 3d environment that looks awesome in any side or view.
So do we sculpt in 3/4 or in front view?.
Regards.
Hi valbuenajotace! First off, I sincerely appreciate your kind feedback 🙏
You ask a good question. In a practical sense, 3/4 views are always going to be less precise than orthographic views (front, side, top). As you say, chances are very low that symmetry will be perfect in 3/4 view art. While it would be convenient to sculpt in only ortho views, unfortunately "orthographic" is not how our human eyes see. So whenever we lean too heavily on orthos, the "perspective" view (how our human eyes see) the model / sculpture tends to look off.
Therefore I highly recommend leaning more on perspective view over orthographic. IN the end it's always going to be viewed this way (never, or at least very rarely in orthographic). Unfortunately this is a more uncomfortable approach than ortho-centric modeling. Over time you will get more comfortable though. Most often I will sculpt "by eye" more than using modeling sheets. The goal being to get it close, not perfect most of the time. Very much like the shark sculpt in this course.
However the situation can be different depending on the project. Sometimes you only have a 3/4 view piece of concept art (common for characters). In this case I will set up a camera in a similar position as the art, set the render resolution to match the art, then set the art as the background of the camera. Here's a couple courses where I use that approach:
In those courses you'll see me deal with inconsistencies in the art, namely by just getting it close enough. It's all part of developing visually interpretive skills.
Sometimes we need to perfectly match 2D art to 3D. Or at least match it as close as possible. For example if Warner Brothers commissions me to create a 3D verison of Bugs Bunny, I can't just get it close enough. Such an iconic character needs a *perfect* match in 3D. I call this "xeroxing" and there's a chapter in the Art of Sculpting course about thatt: