Sculpting Ears With Blender - Basic Anatomy and Sculpting Tutorial

hi guys in this tutorial we will be sculpting in ears for our character now before we go ahead and sculpt in ears we probably need to look a little bit at the topology of ears it just sort of helps to give us an idea of what an actual ear looks like so if i go from google images we can see some ear references over here so for the actual shape of the ear you can sort of visualize this as a simple d kind of a shape so the letter d so it has this kind of a shape over here and inside the ear there's this little y that you can see over here so it's like a a y that sort of bends around the ear even over here it's like a a y shape that bends over here even here as well so overall the shape of the ear can be simplified down to the letter d so this is like a d shape or from this view it's like a backwards d shape to simplify it even further you can actually think of this more like an e letter shape so the the ear comes around like here and then wraps around and then goes around like this same in this way as well like a backwards e and then you've got this little bump over here in the ear and that's pretty much the shape of the ear so this little thing that hangs down is actually called the ear lobe so some people have it and some people don't and it's completely up to you whether you want to add that to your character or not okay so now that we have an idea of what the overall shape of the ear is so from doing further research what i tend to find is from the front view the ear does it has this kind of a shape so oops it starts from the eyes all the way to the lips but from the front you you might be a little bit higher than that because of the perspective like as it goes around so it might be a little bit higher the ears tend to have this kind of a shape so it goes up then it goes down and then it sort of like if you have an earlobe you can see that a little bit over here and it goes like sort of that kind of a shape so that's just the basic yeah so it's also like the letter d so for the top view the ear is sort of like this in this kind of an angle okay so it's not it's not like sticking out like this because that's not right at all it is actually starting from here and then going back like that from the side view the ear is not like yeah as we imagine like the letter d for example it's not like that it's actually on an angle and the angle is actually like that and then it goes like that you know i mean it's like it's not like a straight line like this okay so with that information in mind let's go ahead and get started with sculpting so let's get out of this mode hide this one i'm going to select this a character go into sculpt mode all right so let's get started with sculpting the ears okay so the first thing i'm going to do is i'm going to side view and i'm just going to mask out the area where i want the ears to grow out from so i'm going to just go to the mask tool and let's just uh note where we want this so to make the brush a little small the ears actually start from the eye level and they end at around about the mouth but we did nudge the mouth a little bit lower and we also have this chin line over here so it'll actually be around over here so the ears will be around at that eye level over here and we'll uh end over here around about that mouth level where the lips were so it'll be like this area over here so we just give it a little bit of roundedness over here so just to mark out where the ears will be so once you've done that go to mask and then hit invert mask so you just have this area only okay oops i'll also go ahead and hide this grease pencil object so it doesn't clutter our view then i'll go to the snake hook tool brush and we're just simply going to drag out this form so let me just increase the brush size and from this view i'll just drag it out like so and try to create that ear shape so let's move it up a little from the front view let's try and create that shape like i described move this down oops move this out okay don't worry about being perfect just try and get that rough shape so from the top view we'll have to move it back oops something like that put this back as well it's too far forward so maybe make it smaller and we'll move it higher so well so we we sort of have something that looks like that so so let me just pull this down a little okay so once you have this kind of a shape i know it looks horrible but that's pretty much what i've noticed out using this makeup tool for the mask i'm just going to go ahead and hold down control just to remove some of that masking effect same with the back as well just so that i can sculpt a bit more freely for the ears okay so once you've done that i'm just going to go ahead now and try and create that d kind of a shape so we can go to the grab brush and just try and give that shape for this one i highly recommend you make use of your reference images just so that it makes it a whole lot easier okay so and whether you want an earlobe it's up to you for in my case i might just drag in a little earlobe i do feel the ear is a little bit too high up so i might have to quickly fix that so maybe you might just go to grab and then move this one down quite a bit okay all right sticking out a little too fast so i might just push it back just a tad all right so once we've done that we then want to go ahead and from the side view will go and fix up the shape over here okay so we have the basic shape like so now we'll go to the clay strips brush and start to actually draw in that e shape so here we have dynamic toluene so and also for the diatom i might change this detail size to be maybe nine so that means there's a lot more detail that will be added to our dynamic sculpt and also change uh turn off smooth shading for this one so we can sort of see what's happening to our topology so i'll make it a little bigger and just give that nice e kind of a shape to this in this case a backwards e kind of a shape there might just be a little bit more over here okay and when you have that e shape there is a hollow area over here so hold down control and cut away at this area so this part is even more hollow so go a little crazier in this area over here and this is where the hole of the ear is and then we will have this little area over here with a little pump okay now we have the e shape over here so e standing for ear from the front view actually this sticks out a little bit more like that so try and make this bit stick out quite a bit even this bit it actually sticks out and then everything else goes in okay here i might just go to the s brush to smooth it just smooth out this area i'm not really too concerned with what happens in the back but we don't want it to be too messy okay so once we have that shape over there all we need to do then do is we can now start to sculpt in the y shape so for the y shape let's go back to the clay strips brush make the brush even smaller so this is why we need the detail size and just start to sculpt in that y shape so the y shape starts thin and then it actually gets fatter over here [Music] same over here it's actually quite fat over here and then it thins out and this one wraps around like this this wife wraps all the way around the ear like so okay so that's from the side view we have this nice little y shape okay so once you have that shape next thing you'll notice from the front view is this y will stick further out so if you check out the reference images you'll know what i mean some this part of the wire will stick further out sometimes even past this point so to accentuate that all i'm going to do is just use the inflate brush or you can even use the draw brush so let's just inflate this bit over here actually i might go to the draw brush and then just draw in this area over here so from the front view it starts to stick out a little which is good but let's go to this smooth brush just to smooth it out over here just gonna draw brush and draw it out further cool so now we've got a shift c and just adding a crease over here and also crease it inwards over here make the crease brush a little bigger something like that and then it's going to go to clay strips again and then just draw this area smooth it out just smooth this area as well if an okay from the right here it's looking a little bit weird so i may actually have to fix that up later i might re-mirror that so for now let's just ignore that and just focus on this ear so let me just add a little bit more detail here okay unless it's s to smooth let's smooth this area out [Music] i just got closer to brush again and then adding a little bit of a crevice over here and hold down control on your keyboard and just remove some of this area so that the y is a lot more the y ladder is a lot more accentuated go ahead and hit s to smooth this area also go ahead and smooth this area a little bit a little bit same on this side okay we'll also smooth this area and i think i'll go ahead and hit alt m now to clear out the mask and just smooth out this entire area over here so that it blends in with the rest of the face same over here just smooth these bits out over here i think we're starting to get a nice looking ear because this ear looks like it's stuffed up i'm just going to quickly go ahead and re-symmetrize it so under dyna chopper just go from minus x to x uh is it minus x to x or x to minus x let's quickly try this no sorry it's stuffed up on this side so ctrl z it's x to minus x so symmetrize and yeah i think that's a lot better now all right so that's about it that's the basics of the ears so again with the ears we can keep going again over and over until the ears look dead perfect like on the references so over here if you notice if you look at reference images like there's lots of reference images that you can rely on there is actually another sort of like a divot over here so actually i can use a grab brush for this one make it bigger and actually drag this bit out and then drag drag this bit up [Music] i might actually make this part a little bigger and here i might go to shift c and make this part a little sharper hit this [Music] let's go to the clay brush and let's repaint all this okay if you actually notice that this part of the ear actually folds in so it's like skin that actually folds in so if you want to get that fold folding in effect maybe we can actually use a clay strip brush and strip away at this part so make our brush size quite small and then just strip away this bit over here and do that all the way throughout it's going to be relatively deep [Music] okay so once you've cut into it you can go and hit s to smooth it like so okay and then now we can just quickly lightly go and and inflate this part just to increase that curl effect [Music] okay so quite simple just cut it in the mesh and then inflate it out to give that sort of curl effect shift c and then we'll crease this in just to enhance the effect even more actually we're going to shift c we'll just do the draw brush and make the brush quite small and then just cut away even more okay and then maybe we'll just hit s to smooth everything also in the clay strips i will just cut away at this area so increase the brush size okay and then hit s and then so let me smooth this bit out uh it's looking a little flat so let's just go to the inflate and just make this entire area quite thick quite full and i think that will complete our ear okay so that's the basics of creating the er so to create this curling effect all you need to do is go to the clay strips brush hold down control on your keyboard and cut away at this bit over here and then just use the inflate brush at the ends and then just inflate this to create a sort of curling around color effect cool so if i look at that in smooth shading now we have what is our final kind of ear well actually doesn't look quite right so let me just go to the s brush smooth bits out just to make it look right i mean it should also look right in this view as well oh we also need a little bit of a form going on over here and then it's smooth i'll just use a grab brush real quick and just connect it up yeah that's nothing right just ctrl shift c and then oops shift c and then just cut down a crease over here and then just hit s and smooth this entire area okay and i'll just quickly go around the ear and then just smooth out this these areas over here lightly pat it down same over here don't be too worried about the ears once you have the general shapes down you can actually get away with making your ears look a little bit messy sometimes i create even simplified ears than what we see over here so the most important thing to get right is really the major shapes every other detail you can sort of get away with even if it doesn't look right i will sort of make it go in to the mesh sort of last minute thing and then this smooth smooth smooth and then we can pretty much call this one good i'll also move this one a little back but from the front view maintain this sort of bump out so after doing a lot of tweaking i pretty much want to call it good here for the ears so this is what looks after the side view and this is what it looks like from the front view it does look a little bit odd with the anatomy of the head so i think i need to fix up the uh proportion of the head a little so let's go ahead the grab tool let's expand this out and just move the head back a little i think the ears are a little bit too too back anatomically speaking the ears needs to be closer to the center so i'm just going to go ahead and pull the ear a little closer to the center so just getting the anatomy right all right i think that's looking good i think it's also not blending in that well over here with the skin so yeah that's i think that's better now maybe make it a little bigger push it in grab this out i might also just cut out a little bit of the clay strips over here the back of the ears is not so important but i'm just trying to make the ears a little the earlobes are a lot more thinner in this area and we should get something that looks like this so let's also shift c and crease this area over here let's move this bit over here over here whoops uh this one's looking a little odd so let's move smooth the forehead is also looking a little odd so let me just clean up some bits over here all right so from the back view it's looking good the side view i think it looks good and from the front view that looks great as well all right so that's the basics of sculpting ears using blender 2.8 yes it is a little messy compared to sculpting the other features of the face but once you get those components down uh you don't really need to worry too much about the details of how deep this is or anything like that they should look generally good enough so it really takes the guesswork out of creating ears and i do agree they are the weirdest looking part of the human body i don't really understand why god created ears in this kind of shape maybe there is some important function to it but i i haven't really researched too much into that so that's basically how you create ears so in the next tutorial we will look at giving the neck a much more realistic shape right now this is not a realistic shape so we'll give it a much more realistic shape and then we'll also go and give our us a little nice little torso and the shoulders just to finish off the sculpt and then our realistic looking character sculpt is almost close to completion all right so i hope to see you in the next video thanks for watching

Channel: Thilakanathan Studios

Views: 505

Keywords: blender ear sculpting, ear sculpting blender, ear 3d sculp, ear anatomy, ear anatomy 3d, sculpting tutorial, blender sculpting, ear sculpting, sculpt an ear

Id: uvc2OJbV3DU

Length: 33min 6sec (1986 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 11 2020