Today we learnt how to recover and create more detail on top of a retopologised model, while keeping our poly count low.
We do this by using the Multi-res modifier, this allows you to add surface level detail at a higher resolution and project this detail onto the lower poly model by baking this new information into a normal map. In this case I continued with the elephant model and aimed to create an undead look like in the example.
So, the first thing I did was check the model was unwrapped, then I went and added the multi-res modifier and subdivided the model 5 times. I then went into sculpt mode and added some texture, quick wrinkles, carved out wounds, puss and defined the ears. I also went and created a quick brush using a reptile skin alpha I found online and using the anchored setting I dragged some texture over the model (looking back now I went a little overboard with this but it was very cool too see how quick i could apply texture to a model).
With this done, I went and changed the viewport level to 1 and then created an image texture node in my shader editor and created a new image. I opened this in the image editor window and changed my render engine to cycles and went to back my normal map of my elephant (the first time I did this I didn’t set my viewport level to 1 and ended up missing a lot of my details so I quickly deleted it and redid it). This thoroughly impressed me, the idea that you can project detail onto a low poly model is such a cool thing to me and I am genuinely excited to see what I can do for my assignment model with this as well as future models I make.
Then I went ahead and baked an ambient occlusion map too, in almost the same way as my normal map. These maps are honestly terrifying to look at, but it does give me nice shadows that I can import into substance painter.
I then brought both these maps and the model into substance painter, importing the model as a .fbx, and importing the maps into the materials tab as texture maps. I then brought the maps into the correct tabs on the left and also added the ambient occlusion to a layer, changing it to soft light, adding a levels modifier and adjusting the opacity.
I then went and baked my model, excluding the ambient occlusion and normal map. I then added textures to the model. I decided to have a grey-green base colour and a slightly different hue on the ears (separating these with black masks on my fill layers). I then added a calfskin material to the skin to get some more of that elephant wrinkly-ness. I added some dirt using a smart mask and desaturated this to fit with the washed out zombie style I was going for. Then I wanted to try painting certain areas, so I added some blood to the eye sockets and the gouge in the mouth, I attempted to make the red paint look like blood by increasing the metallic quality and lowering the opacity of the layer to make it a bit see through and I added some height to it. For some more variation ,I added these puss spots on the bumps I sculpted, using a pastel yellow with some wet shine and a more muted lighter pink to imply irritation. To finish I got a frog skin alpha texture online and used it as a stencil to add some green areas to the skin, it isn’t entirely noticeable but it does break the skin up subtly.
I went and exported these new texture maps and brought them back into Blender. I went and coloured the eye to match what I had going for the rest of the model and you can see this is really quite effective.
I went and added a light, camera, and a simple backdrop to render this out quickly (using cycles). I decided to take this angle to show that head on this projection works really well, but it doesn’t actually add to the silhouette (comparing the puss bumps height). I am still majorly impressed that you can achieve something with this level of detail with a low poly base and I can’t wait to bring what I learnt here to my own model.
