SCULPTING
Sculpting means we go back to Zbrush to add and adjust our details.
The first thing I had to do was re-define the shapes and proportions of my character. One of the main things I learnt from Peter Adamson’s demonstrations was that capturing volume and form is the most important to sculpting appealing characters. The best way to do this was to gather as many references as possible from as many angles as possible and in order to do this I used pictures of my dog to help me built up the facial structure of a canine, things like building up the brow bone and the bump under the eye.
Once this main form was done I could start building up fur, just like I had practiced before using the clay build up and my custom alphas. As mentioned in a previous post I was really inspired by Beth Cavener’s work and the main thing I pulled from her work was to pay attention to where the fur flows, and it will naturally guide your eye. I liked how she doesn’t try to recreate all the fur, just simplifies it and puts texture where it is needed so that there is an implication of fur, so I tried a similar approach and I think it worked quite well.
When it came to the tail I looked to simplify the clumps further and try to create some winding layers and I really like how this turned out.
Then I also defined the muscles, bone groups and the shape of the eyes and nose. I added fur to help define the shape of the muscles and at the end I added in those asymmetrical scars across his face and chest, what I liked about these is that they contrast with the smoothness of the fur and go against the direction they flow.
Sculpting cloth I found was quite fun. Watching a live demonstration from Peter Adamson I was able to understand how to approach fabric. Gathering reference particular to the type of fabric and how it lays is crucial and really helped me recreate tension in the wrappings on his arm.
I found the pants a bit more difficult to form because of how baggy they were, but I tried to follow the S curves from my references and indicate where the cloth folded in on itself.
For the leather, I decided to flatten out the edges and use the stitches to sell the material at this stage. I defined the creases between strips with the damped standard brush and then used my stitch alphas with lazy mouse active and increased spacing. For the straps, I found that using the rounded alpha point worked to recreate the reference I was using. Then I broke up the symmetry by scrapping an edge out on one side.
The shoulder guards I wanted to be really dented and scratched. So I went with the trim dynamic brush and started defining planes at different angles as If they had been hammered or struck. Then I went and used the damped standard to start chipping out scratches of different depth and directions. I used a similar approach for the symbol, but the main goal for this was to create that custom design and convey that it is metal.
And here was my final Sculpt.
PROPS
I approached my props the same as my character, trying to make them look damaged and roughly repaired with some cloth.
The knot of this was pretty strange, it took me a while to understand how it worked from the reference and I’m not entirely happy with how it turned out. I do like how the embroidered flower and the stitches between the fabric looked.
Here is how I learnt how to create nice Turntables in Zbrush:
#AskZBrush: “Is there a way I can create and export a Turntable Movie of my Model?”
UV Issues And Fixes
Then when I exported my high/ lowpoly meshes to Substance I realised that for whatever reason, some of my UVs didn’t export to Zbrush correctly. I worked with Henry to figure out how to fix this and I discovered that it was probably some loose geometry that Blender wasn’t displaying. To fix this I had to export my initial low poly meshes in .obj format and then unify them in Zbrush and Project all my detail back onto the low mesh. This took a bit of time and was quite annoying but I have learnt the important lesson of checking my UVs before I start sculpting to avoid the stress that this gave me.
Then I imported these meshes back into Blender and named both low and high poly meshes the same so that I could have Substance Painter bake them based on names, in-case they didn’t line up perfectly. I also took this time to check how each of my meshes were displaying texture, since I had changed a couple silhouettes pretty dramatically. I also decided after unwrapping to give some more resolution to my props, so I added another UV tile. I think in future Projects I will change my workflow instead of unwrapping right after retopology, I will finish sculpting my high poly mesh and then export the low poly and unwrap. This change of pipeline will also let me separate more of my meshes out, things like the patch on my characters pants and the cloth wrappings on the props would have worked better if I created them from multiple meshes. I also think that while my ropes look nice, for things like games I would just create these from a cylinder and then sculpt the appearance of detail on, as they are a pretty dense mesh.
Texturing
Starting into substance I ran into some issues with baking. I was noticing that my normals were baking with some pixilation and stretching on my props, so I went and adjusted the UVS to give them some more room, separating them from one tile to two.
Then I had some weird lines and objects baking onto each-other, and this is where I learnt about how to adjust the baking settings in substance. From last year we just baked our normals in Blender so I hadn’t seen this menu before, and it was quite confusing. Henry helped me to understand how to navigate this menu for my current issues and I can say that I am a lot more confident in the character modelling pipeline than I was in past weeks.
I am a big fan of stylised textures so I knew I was going to have a hand painted model. Initially I had planned to use a technique I used last year (using light generators and filters to create the appearance of hand painted models without spending too much time on this), but because I was going to be importing this to unreal and then setting up my scene and lights, the shadows on my textures could end up not matching my environment.
I decided to approach texturing like I would a digital drawing, so I started with colour picking from my concept reference and adjusting the roughness/metallic for these elements. Then I actually removed the AO baked from the model and instead used it to apply some quick highlights. For painting I mainly used the artistic sponge and the wide soft fur brushes built into Substance.
Then I had to apply some variety in the fur shades to imply the layering. I also created some shades to blend between the different coloured fur and define the muscles and fur clumps, just to push the volumes out a bit better. For the white I used some blue shadows, and on the white I highlighted with some warm maroon-y colours. The eyes were fun to create, I started with an off-white and some red to create the sclera and then I layered on blues and whites to create that blinded eye and layered warm browns for the other eye. I decided to make his teeth yellow to push forward this idea of him being poor and not having great oral hygiene.
For the leather I defined the creases and tried to get that variation of tones across it, like in my references, and defined the creases between materials. On the belt I made the carved out piece rougher since it is a different type of material and I wanted to distinguish that, and added some small dips in the leather. I definitely could have added more scratches and dirt to show off its use looking at this now, but I was worried that all of the texture would get too much on my model.
I tried to copy a similar style to the stylised metal references I was using, but I did find this a bit difficult, because of the shapes in my metal. I used some shades to break up the blandness of the sheet and then defined the creases and cuts with same shadows and highlights, I think this worked well on the hand armour best, I’m not certain if it particularly works for shoulder pieces. I think my rust turned out pretty well here too.
Then I hand painted in the shadows and highlights for any cloth to help bring out the layering and creasing and I found this a bit harder with the coloured cloth pieces. I hand painted on the dirt and dried blood as well, just using black masks on multiply layers.
For consistency and time reasons, I converted my stylised materials from my character into smart materials and just transferred them on and painted them onto my props. I used some height to create some definition on the wood grain on the katana and the stitching on the charm to give them a bit more texture. I found it a bit hard setting up this wood grain in a stylised way so I asked seem help from a peer [Jessica Cunningham] and she helped explain how she approaches that type of material which helped me greatly.
I was pretty happy with how a lot of these textures turned out. I think in particular the cloth wrap and the fur works really well, I definitely learnt to really think about each material and it’s properties a lot more than I did last year.