Final Render:
two extra renders:
Concept and 3D turn around:
Month: December 2024
Reflection: on the learning and final outcome:
In general, there are a lot of things I would do differently now that I’ve gotten slightly used to Zbrush for example, I know I can go about it faster this time and be less afraid of the steps that come next. I am still unhappy with the way the cloth looks and I wish I had done the arms and hands slightly better on the character, without having to turn them awkwardly so they would face the right way. Although there are still a lot of things such as unreal engine and the nodes on there that I still feel clumsy, especially remember the shortcuts for the nodes or generally which is for what and it was confusing after memorising how some things are done in blender and wanting to get the similar results I knew how to achieve on there. Although, with a clearer mind I feel like I should detach myself from it and instead of wanting the same result, try and achieve better with the new software. I should continue practicing it and playing around to better understand it at least at the level I understand zbrush now.
But overall, I did get the idea that I had in my head into a picture, of a sluggish minotaur who really enjoys his midday naps and I’m happy I achieved that, I’m also glad he looks like his concept and the minor alterations were just translating 2d into 3d. I’m unsure if in the end result was right but it worked for me.
Unreal engine:
I had a few projects saved into my library since we did the class exercise with the small oasis, I focused on one mainly which was an Australian themed (RuralAustralia) and some western ones (OldWest) and finally an animal one (AnimalVarietyPack) I tried a few other ones but ended up settling for these because the others didn’t fit right.
A lot of my references were from some western films, red dead redemption, anything that had the background overpowering the cowboy, with orange tones and dust, seen in the PureRef below. This was similar to the texturing; I gradually built it starting with landscaping following alongside the class recording as a refresher and guide and some YouTube videos if I came across an issue I didn’t manage to solve myself or something I wanted to add and didn’t know how.
example:
- using Niagara for some dust particles, which didn’t show up in the final render but was still a nice touch YouTube.
- using this fog tutorial to create my dust cloud YouTube.
I used a camera angle to my advantage in my layout, with spaces out cliffs to give the elusion there was a mountain range and a depth of field.
Here is an ariel view of the scene:
Problem solving:
- I just had a little struggle with the hair and asked for some feedback from my lecturer, though I still had to in the end separate fibres into different groups and assign the fur different colour according to where they were on his body, I don’t know if there was a better approach, but it worked for me.
I played around with the camera settings, I wanted flare in the renders, because that’s the first thing I think of when its sunny and hot. I think, I manage to make the idea that its sandy and mid-day with a beaming sun and my character is resting in the middle of his job.
Posing:
I decided to go for a rig, because I found the weight painting to be an easier approach at controlling how much his body would fold and to be able to freely play around with his pose.
Problem solving:
- It went well for the body itself, but the fibres, I’m not sure if there was a better way to go about this, but this worked for me. I weight painted them and assigned them to the closest bone they could follow, I had some issues with the fibres stretching and remembered a similar issue I had last year, it was assigned to several other bones, I found it easy to solve this by selection the vertices in the weight painting and applying the value zero to the fibres in relation to the bone I didn’t want them to interact with.
- When it comes to the cloth, the threads of fabric I had done, like I mentioned previously, were slowing down my program to a non-functioning stage, so I opted to remove them and simulate my cloth on its own and left those details to the texturing stage.
I relied on my previous knowledge using the cloth simulation last year on the curtains of our project, and this YouTube video for the hiccups I was having, such as part of the cloth that wasn’t attached slipping off. I used his method of pinning vertices to stop the bottom of the cloth from slipping away.
screenshot from the part of the video I used:
- For the body it was a matter of what felt natural, and what didn’t hide all the work I had done. That pose made him look a lot like a cow-boy. And it just felt natural to build his environment using references from red dead redemption 2.
Texturing:
When it comes to texturing my references were mostly my concept, and the references used for that concept such as the cows, I had an idea of what I wanted to do. It felt slightly overwhelming in my head, so I took the same approach of starting off with a block out. I blocked out my colours to get a first glance at what my model would look like, to get the right colour match and I started adding details
I used the smart materials and took some elements I liked from them and mixed them together to get the result I did, like the veins and pores, I took those textures and added them onto another kind of skin smart material.
I thought of adding a branding on his arms to symbolise the fact that he is own by the family on the farm. The initial one I did, looked way too fresh for it to be a scar, and my lecturer suggested to make my own alpha instead of using what was available on substance.
The alpha I made:
I simply switched from dark red to a light pink and inverted the height instead of going into the body, rather go out of the body.
Reference for the better brand:
Before:
after:
I continued to alter the textures even until I was almost done with unreal engine, it was simple to replace them, so I felt comfortable to go back and forth and adjust the roughness according to the environment, change some colours and add more dirt.
Mud clumps:
-I textured it on its own with more dirt built up on his foot, which I did after some feedback from my lecturer because I was a bit lost on what else I could do for the model.
here are some of my notes on my feedback.
I kept it simple with the mud clumps on his legs.
I reworked on the cloth:
UV mapping:
I utilised the class demonstration on UDIM workflow to get and even amount of details on my body parts. It organised my uv map as which helped when masking on substance painter.
problem solving:
- Because I made some mistakes initially with my UV mapping my lecturer suggested I continued with my detailing, take the low poly version of it and use it for the UV mapping. My mistakes were because I didn’t want the textured to stretch on the model, I did a lot of cuts in unnecessary areas, an even forgot to do one on the finger which made the uv map overlap itself on that area.
I looked at a lot of online references seen in the PureRef below, on how other people did their uv mapping, and the suggestion of our lecturer to hide these cuts and think of them like the seams on clothing. The only problematic part was the head because of how the Uvs stretched on the nose, I did my best to cut the uvs using animals with long snouts like dogs as a reference here as well.
But it eventually was not an issue in substance painter.
this is how I generally cut the uvs
this is the final result.
I didn’t change the cloth yet at this stage, but I separated with another element that is currently non-existent at this stage( the lumps of mud on his feet).
Detailing:
The detailing stage was more of a learning process of slowly understanding the brushes settings that worked best for me, it helped watching the Friday demonstration of someone who is much more professional than I am in the field show us how she went about, it was encouraging.
The brushes I used the most were: the clay tubes, damped track and move tool often.
I relied on my concept art, the detailed version of the obese man and pictures of sumo’s for the chest area, my lecturer recommended I had a look at how the folds of fat connect around the body.
This is the model in zbrush with divisions before adding those details back in.
this is after, with the addition of fibre mesh: to get look of peach fuzz and hide which helped differentiate the human skin and cow hide.
The body was a simple but long process of slowly building through different subdivisions the details back in. the hooves however, I wanted to get more details in because it felt very smooth, I looked at some references of cracked cow hooves and added in a little detail of dirt stuck on it as well, I repeated a similar process for the horns but with some cracks and no dirt bumps.
problem solving:
-The nails, my lecturer suggested I cut them with the tool in zbrush, which was a bit buggy, but it eventually worked. Although if I wanted to fix the topology and remesh it created a lot of holes in the model and I reached a point where I worked too much on such a small part of his body, so I took for reference what I did with the damped track and the ears and slowly carved into them, getting the same effect I wanted in a shorter amount of time.
-The cloth I feel like I spent too much time on, more than needed, but I was trying to perfect it. I wish I had simulated cloth sooner, because the cloth looked great as soon as I did.
My first style, was missing the rips
I liked the rips on the second cloth a lot more, but the wrinkling was out of place and didn’t make sense.
My lecturer suggested, at an earlier stage, that I try using the fabric tear plugin in zbrush but I ended up not using it in the posing stage because it slowed down my computer and blender was stuck at 0.05 fps which wasn’t working for me.
I eventually went back to my concept and built the cloth from there and reattached it to the original cloth. Which looked better after I simulated the cloth on blender, which my lecturer recommended after I voiced my concern about not liking the end result.
-For the Fiber mesh, I followed the video done in class and used an online image of a hair alpha initially but later switched to this current one whish was used in the class exercise, did it section by section with different lengths and amounts of fibres depending on which body part it was on.
Retopology:
For the retopology stage, I was intimidated to start it because it almost looked like an impossible task, but I took our lecturers’ advice and started off with the loops on the elbow, knees, belly, shoulders, thighs and all the little holes on the face and gradually built around it section by section.
The face was a bit easier than the rest, because I relied on the class exercise we did and took some inspiration from how I did my fox model’s snout last year.
these are the references of retopology I used in the PureRef’s bellow:
This is how I used my references specially when all the polygons were all over the place, I used the marker in blender to draw the paths out for myself to make it easier for my eyes to follow the flow, I gradually adjusted them and went back with the loop cut to make sure I got it right. I wanted to make sure I had some muscle shape and fat into my retopology, to help push details out of my model, especially for the fat folds on his back, I wanted them to keep their shape and also have a nice silhouette when I got to the posing. I also used the same idea for the bumps on his ears to keep their shape and not have a stretch in the topology.
Problem solving:
- I was able to fix the diamond shape I was getting with the chest, which was an easy fix, instead of meeting at one point, it was more of a lattice.
- I had a long issue with the hands, I was unable to get them to connect with the rest of the body while still having enough polygons to get the shape that I wanted, my first attempt wasn’t right my lecturer pointed out how I was using later stages of a hand retopology as a reference trying to get the same loops but it messed up the topology of the hands. I used simpler references and went about it patiently. I still had a problem with the vertices count but I manages to work my way around using what I learned in the topology puzzle exercise.
Before:
After:
I added nails and a demo of the cloth which I later went back and altered multiple, times to get the look I wanted, which best matched my concept.
Modelling:
I used a lot of the references I had previously saved for the concept art in the PureRef below, but the most used reference was the obese man turn around I found, it was great help to understand how the skin would fold due to the fat roles. I also used a minotaur leg study to help me through modelling the legs so it would make sense for his weight and get the anatomy right.
This is the model after remeshing it and I started getting some details in and general wrinkles that were important to the silhouette. In this model I did do the mistake of having the palms face forward rather than the thighs, after the lecturer pointed it out, I turned the hands, and in the retopology stage made sure the flow of the polygons was smooth and not stretched.
some feedback to adjust the arm:
Problem solving:
- I worked out a way to get the cuts I had in the ears of my concept, with my lecturer’s suggestion and after some demonstrations he did I used the damped track and topology move tool to get the little bumps seen at the retopology stage.
- I struggled with the knees and calf a little, I was unsure how to get the idea of my 2d into 3d, my problem is that I was relying heavily on the drawing, by moving away from it and adjusting the lower leg what was logical according to the thigh and body and in a 3D space it was much easier.
Block out:
At this stage I was relying mostly on my own drawing as a reference and getting inspiration from the quadruped block out class exercise.
After having done the exercises, I had an idea of how I wanted to do my block out. I felt I could also get some more details in the block out to already start getting a silhouette of the character. It also helped in the detailing process.
This is my block out stage.