Sculpting - Blender Master Class: A Hands-on Guide to Modeling, Sculpting, Materials, and Rendering - page 78

Figure 6-17: The planes of the head. You don't need to
define planes to this extent, but keep them in mind.

Figure 6-18: Fine details can be dealt with once the
major forms are in place.

that can add a lot of character to a model. One
thing to note at this stage is that, particularly
with organic characters that aren't heavily
muscled, much of the anatomical detail you
may have added will need to be toned down.
You can either omit these details earlier in the
sculpting process (but consider where they will
be under the surface nonetheless) or smooth
them away in areas where you need a subtler
effect. Finally, you can start adding smaller
details, like wrinkles, pores, scars, and so on. We
can start smoothing and polishing out any arti-
facts we have created earlier while sculpting and
then add more deliberate fine details.

Sculpting the Bat Creature
For the Bat Creature, I began with a couple of simple
base meshes that had topology to support most of
the features I needed (though nothing for the face).
Then I could begin developing the forms of the Bat
Creature into something more interesting and add
further details, such as some musculature and facial
features.
To begin, I took the base mesh and added a
Multires modifier and a few subdivisions. The ini-
tial aim was to add enough resolution to allow me
to begin refining the volumes and defining basic
planes and landmarks—but not so much that I
would get sucked into adding details too early.
When sculpting, try to make the most out of each
level of subdivision before adding the next level.

These are the general stages that one goes
through when sculpting. They take you from a
rough overall shape to something with the key fea-
tures you are trying to create and then allow you
to re-create the finer details. Now let's apply these
stages to sculpting the Bat Creature and Spider Bot.