Sculpting Progression
I think I went back to a previous blender file in this screenshot as the larger capybara has been un-joined and hasn’t yet been sculpted. I think I wasn’t happy with how the earlier sculpt was going, since I grouped everything together as one all at once so when I remeshed, it wasn’t enough res for smaller areas of the model (ears, leg joints, etc) while it was ok for something like the main body.
Going back and working on parts of the sculpt in chunks, then combining + remeshing all of the parts together later really helped in improving how it was looking.
I modelled the wooden bucket in Maya then brought it into Blender to sculpt.
I was having a lot of trouble with sculpting fur and I kept going back and forth with it, I tried building it up with clay strips then using the crease and pinch tools to sharpen it up, but it just never looked quite right. They just looked like weird lumps, I guess they could’ve worked? But I wasn’t really happy with them. I did some research into sculpting fur in blender, a lot of the videos I found were people using custom brushes with alphas so I downloaded a few brush packs that contained fur alphas that I could use. I ended up using the fur alphas from this pack:
I thought this was a good investment since it has such a large variety of alpha types aside from just fur, like buttons, bolts, wood, metal, etc. I only used the fur and rock alphas in this project though.
A free brush pack that I also looked at: https://academy.cgboost.com/courses/resources/lectures/31160801
At this point in the sculpt I asked Mike for some feedback and I tried to write/summarise as much down as I could remember:
Changes made after feedback:
I decided to give the capybara some leaves to eat, I did try to sculpt a half eaten orange but it looked weird. I also puffed up his cheeks to make him look more like he was eating. I also decided to re-do the rocks I had sculpted for the background. I did some research on youtube into how to actually approach sculpting rocks. I think the second video was the most helpful in how to make sharper edges and intersections. So I went into Maya and made some blockouts for the rocks, intersecting them like how the video did.
I was going to re-do the base as well but for the sake of time, I thought I should just move on to retopologising so I kept the old one. I also added a bit more fur per Mike’s feedback, I didn’t want to add a whole lot of fur since I thought it being subtle looked a lot better.
I used masks then inverted the selection to mark out the feet pads on the big capybara:
I also tried making some claws but I don’t think they fit very well so I later removed them. This video was really helpful in learning how to use masks:
Final High Poly:
Inspiration/reference for capybara eating:
My full PureRef board:
Retopology Process
These were my retopology references, I also used the dog model from Zbrush as a reference that Henry provided me with.
I think the retopology went ok, though it was a bit of a struggle to be honest, there’s some areas of the two capybaras that I’m not entirely happy with, especially the feet pads and where the ears connected to the fur tufts beside them. Although the earlier retopo I did for the fur tufts was a lot worse and in comparison to that, I’m much happier with the current version. I also managed to achieve a lower poly count than I expected. The entire scene came to around 30k. I don’t think anything in particular needs to have a higher poly count than I gave it and later on, mostly everything baked correctly. I did use Maya’s remesh, reduce and auto retopo tools for the rocks and base to save time.
Test bakes using automatic UVs + some test textures
Texturing Tests + Progression
In Sketchfab, in the materials settings I liked how adding a sheen looked which adds a bit of a rim/bounce light effect.
There was a bake issue with the bamboo spouts, I forgot to add them to the high poly fbx model so they baked incorrectly. I fixed this in Maya and went back to texturing.
I liked the idea of having light rays/floating fireflies, inspired by this image and also this model on sketchfab:
It didn’t really work out, so I ended up removing the sunlight rays but kept the floating fireflies.
https://www.pinterest.co.uk/pin/414471971930277962/
For nose texture + added as an alpha to substance painter.
Finished Textures in Substance Painter
For the water ripple texture I used this model on sketchfab as reference:
Posing
There wasn’t too much too pose with my sculpt, just the legs on the big capybara. I wasn’t able to get the pose tool in Blender to work as intended, so I had to rig the model in Maya and I just used the bones to move the legs around.
Final Posed Model in Sketchfab:
Final Sketchfab Link in this post.