Anime Shading Topology (Guidelines)

so we have just about finished covering everything regarding shadows and normals and i know a lot of you have been asking for a facial topology video so i'm gonna do my best to try and cover that today but i am gonna be very honest about this i spent over two or three months fighting normals topology and shadows until i realized i was getting nowhere and that's when the patrons and i just decided to hire a professional to do it right so while i don't feel particularly qualified to teach this subject in depth i do feel like i know enough information to at least point you in the right direction and start you where i left off so here's what i've learned about topology and normals after hiring and talking to rookie extensively generally everything i've showed you up to this point about proxy transferring and smoothing is all you'll ever need to do regarding anime shadows the only time you actually have to dive super deep into this is if you want guilty gear style facial shadows the defining feature of guilty gear shading is the triangular cheek shadow that often shows up at a 45 degree light angle this type of cheek shading is traditionally called rembrandt's triangle it's very different from v to be shading and a lot of it really depends on your topology i did not know there was a specific topology in structure required for the rembrandt triangle so when i gave my remodel to rookie she straight up told me that unfortunately my face topology was not compatible with rembrandt so she snapped the nose snapped the mouse and smoothed the head using all the techniques from the previous videos but i couldn't get the triangle because my base topology wasn't made for it now while she didn't tell me exactly what the problems were with my original topology i'm gonna tell you what i think they were based off the changes she made and the things i've noticed comparing her models to mine the first and most obvious difference to me was the facial proportions i generally try and model faces in a more realistic proportion similar to the type of proportions that you would see in a final fantasy character but anime proportions are completely different for starters on a real face the eyes are located just above the middle line of the head but in 3d anime the forehead is over 60 the size of the entire face and the eyes are often underneath the middle line in reality the start and end of the eyebrows are usually level with the top of the ears and the bottom of the ears usually lines up with the bottom of the nose an animate the bottom of the nose and ears is more or less the same but the top of the ears lines up with the top of the eyes not the eyebrows also in anime the nose and mouth are relatively small and the eyes are relatively huge and a pattern that i see a lot in guilty gear models is the lack of poly around the mouth i believe this is to ensure that no shadows ever occur or break when the character is speaking or moving their mouth you never see shadows around here in anime so that's probably why they don't have them in 3d also if you compare the original topology i had with the new topology she created the overall poly count has almost doubled and in areas like the lips eyes and mouth the poly count nearly tripled this was kind of a big shock to me because what that means is properly done rembrandt anime shading is not a low poly art style it's a mid to high poly art style so if you were interested in doing this style because it was low poly you can kiss that dream goodbye so my recommendation is the closer you stick to anime style proportions the easier it should be to get the kind of shading you see in guilty gear the last thing i want you to take note of is the use of triangles to draw the rembrandt shadows this is what it's supposed to look like in action you can see at some point the shadows connect with the other side of the face things to notice are the triangle lines should go from the bottom edge of the eye and should go back to the bridge of the nose and you only need to make the connections for the areas you want the triangle to appear as for topology guidelines for the body again i really think the best road map you're going to find online is rookie's callisto model it doesn't use rembrandt's facial lighting but it does have fantastic smooth shadows which you can use to study the topology and the more complex areas like the knees elbows hands thighs and to be quite honest good anime body topology is generally just good standard topology as long as the deformation is smooth usually a basic proxy data transfer and some smoothing will give you great results again the only time the proxy approach isn't enough is really just for rembrandt facial shading so one last thing that i'd like to share in case you find yourself getting stuck even for people who do this at a professional level it takes a long time to get it right like even rookie took a few days to get the shading smooth and the normal snapped i've heard sometimes it can take a few weeks before you're happy with your first face so just play with it rookie really enjoys this process she's got a knack for it and she's damn good at it but for me it's really not my thing it takes way too much time for me so i just do the simple v-tube face shading for my characters and call it a day you decide whether it's worth the time and investment for you but don't get discouraged if you're having trouble because it's very niche in the future maybe someone more skilled than me will find a way to streamline this process and make it fast and easy but for now as far as the shading goes this is all the information i know i don't know how useful that was but i hope you got something productive out of it but on the contrary if you join me next video i'll show you something i'm very comfortable with that is utilizing guilty gear's square uv mapping techniques in order to create your albedo and ambient occlusion maps so in the meanwhile i hope you have a fantastic day and i'll see you around

Channel: Royal Skies

Views: 70,683

Keywords: royal, blender, blender 3d, rigging, 3d, 3d animation, animation, 3d model, character, tutorial, model, modeling, anime, shader, anime shader, anime shader tutorial, blender anime, blender tutorial, blender anime shader tutorial, anime shading, guilty, gear, genshin, impact, blender anime shader, anime tutorial, anime character, shading tutorial, 3d anime, blender anime 3d, normal, normals, shading, shade, blender shading, topology, anime topology, facial topology, shading topology, face, facial

Id: EW6GBGlPEso

Length: 5min 4sec (304 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 04 2021