Development of ideas:

We were tasked for this assignment to model, sculpt and texture an anatomically correct creature. I instantly had ideas for a dog like design but I wanted to push the boundaries with regards to its features. I looked into wolf/fox form and initially wanted to incorporate bear like legs and paws, however I went off this idea and instead looked into a maned wolf which has very thin long legs which I felt better suited the creature design I was going for. I wanted to incorporate skeletal structure to my model and some of my earlier mock sketches I looked at rib cage exposure and skull exposure. I decided to not overcomplicate the design and instead went with the snout area being worn away from skin and having the bone exposed. I also looked into kitsune designs and Ninetails from Pokémon and used the 9 tail design in my final concept piece. The design also combined 4 ears, six eyes, 4 tentacle like feelers coming from the cheek area and 9 eye-like designs on each tail.

I created a mood board on Whimsical for idea generation –

Mock design pieces:

 

The initial planning I was looking at a chunkier wolf design with more bear-like limbs and paws.

This was the first piece I drew. I knew I wanted to go along a more horror themed design – I looked at Salvador Dali’s elephant paintings and took inspiration for the legs – Until I realised that we had to be anatomically correct, so began looking into the maned wolf as it has very long spindly legs similar to the look I wanted.

 

These where just some sketches to see posture and how bulky I wanted the body to be.

 

Final concept pieces:

This was the first colour palette I looked at. At the start I wanted to go with a mossy rock-like texture for the model – However, after showing Henry he advised it was a little too bland and to look at different colours or add something to those to make it pop more.

I decided to add a bit of yellow to the breast area and tail tips

Also did a quick mock up of an environment to picture the character in the scene:

 

Experimented with colours options:

Had a play around with different colour combos.

 

Blockout:

 

I struggled a lot with probably the easiest part of this models process for some strange reason. I just couldn’t wrap my head around the block out structure and I found myself falling behind with my time as I spent far too long on this.

One of the main points of struggle was when trying to create the tails and making sure that they naturally sat on the rear of the model.

 

I attempted many different ways to get this to work, including array modifiers and following a path/curve… nothing worked! I was feeling defeated before I even truly began..

 

I eventually just did what I could with duplicating a tail and when I began to remesh the block out I found the tails were sticking together and I couldn’t push the remesh any further. This was my breaking point…

 

 

After weeks of work, I scrapped it all and started again! This time I focused more on anatomy and structural formation and I was a little happier with the block out. I kept the tails simple as I could work more on them later in Zbrush so I wasn’t too worried.

The remesh this time was a success!

 

 

I started to sculpt some basic detail and muscle form into the model before going into my retopology and finally bringing into Zbrush.

I found I struggled with the retopology more than I thought I would, as in the class exercises I found it easy and rather therapeutic. It was a LOT more time consuming too which made me fall further behind again, so I do feel this isn’t my best work on topology but it was the best I could do with the time that I had!

 

I decided to UV map prior to bringing it into Zbrush as I had recalled Henry stating that it would make the baking of the maps easier once the height maps where created when sculpting in Zbrush.

Sculpting in Zbrush:

Once the model was in Zbrush, I began looking into brush packed for fur textures and experimented with a few. Link to brushes https://www.cgtrader.com/items/3460029/download-page

Purple model Blender/Red Model Zbrush: comparing symmetry.

Before I could even begin I encountered an issue, the symmetry was off. I asked in our discord for help with this. Henry responded and the advice he gave unfortunately had already been attempted, thankfully that day I was going onto campus so was able to ask for assistance from Henry. It was not an easy fix! (kind of was but it took Henry a while to realise it would rectify!). Basically the tails where throwing Zbrush off with a point of origin to place the symmetry, to work around this, we masked the tail, hid it from viewport and then added symmetry… et voila! It worked! (Thanks Henry!!)

 

I found a good brush pack for fur textures and used this to fluff out the texture on the model. I used the clay, slice and pinch tool to create the toes on the paws and I also used some tools to pull the model and create some tufts of fur on the tip of the tails and to add claws.

 

When baking the high res onto the low res I came across an issue in the UV map. I had to go into blender to rectify this and then I struggled for ages to work out how to change the UV map on Zbrush to the updated one. I eventually came across a Youtube video that explained how to and followed this ref:

UV Map change:

Textures in Substance:

I then encountered another issue with my Student license on Adobe and was unable to open Substance. In a panic, I thought I had re-subscribed to it but had ended up entering into the yearly subscription. I was able to get this cancelled and had a week before it terminated which was useful to at least get to use the software for this project!

I have prior experience in Substance from college and I find it easy enough to navigate my way around it. I still have a lot of learning to do on it as I know the basics confidently but any additional things I will need to sit and study at it more. For my model I wanted to add a blood effect around its face and body, however, the blood brush/tool in Substance isn’t that good. So i searched on Youtube and found a tutorial on how to make a blood effect brush, ref:

I didn’t follow this exactly as it is, and tweaked a few things so that it was more applicable to what I required for my model.

I experimented with a few different colour options in Substance but ultimately decided on sticking with a green main with yellow accents as the scene he was being placed in was a dark forest scene I wanted him to camouflage into it as the empty spaces used above where going to be filled with faces in Blender and have an emission added and that is what I wanted to be the most eye catching feature.

For the empty gaps, I filled them with planes that I added a few loop cuts to, so that I could position them a bit more seamlessly into the gaps. Upon doing this, I realised my most time effective method was to have just grabbed the faces and separated them from the main mesh instead of deleting in the first place.. something for me to carry to future projects.

For the teeth, they were created with a subdivided cube. I got a little lazy with the UV on this and unwrapped as they were and imported it to Substance. It worked fine so I didn’t feel the need to make any changes to this.

 

Armature:

 

   

Once my textures where over into Blender. I began to place the armature… again with great difficulty! All the bones where extracted from each other, however the 3 spine bones didn’t stay connected. I ended up redoing the armature and following a quadruped tutorial on Youtube just to make sure it wasn’t a simple mistake. This time the armature worked and I was able to began putting my model into its pose. I had a few ideas for a pose and researched into them, eventually I decided upon a fast stalking crouch so looked at references of wolves and dogs doing this.

I had a problems with the model just not bending how I would have hoped but I tweaked it around and I ended up with the my final pose. I’m not entirely happy with it as I feel like the front legs look a bit off but I knew it would be the best I was getting from the model and armature I had and as I was fast approaching the deadline… It would have to do!

 

Unreal Engine: 

I did not have fun…

For some reason me and this software just didn’t get along.. I really struggled to navigate it (I also have UE5.5 installed so things weren’t where they should be).

I wanted to import in a pre-built environment scene and focus on the ambience more than the overall props. I found a few in Fab but I just could NOT get them to work how I wanted them to and with losing all hope… decided to make my own scene!

Above is the pre-built scene and also a screenshot of the model (without emission planes) in the scene. I just wasn’t getting along with this pre-build, I struggled with the controls, there was random lights and camera inputted everywhere. So ultimately, did my own.

I found this Youtube video on making a forest scene and as it was done on an older version of UE, I did have to re-jig some of the process, ref:

 

This tutorial was a dream! It allowed me to start getting a bit more confidence in the software and start to enjoy the process!

Adding in the model wasn’t as difficult as I thought it would be. The only thing I had to go back on was the scale. I just re-sized the model in Blender and brought it back in as an FBX, this took a few attempts to get the right scale I wanted. I imported the model and emission planes separately and lined them up in UE.

I then began looking at adding emissions. Henry went over this with me in class but I could exactly remember the process he followed. I had taken a screenshot of his nodes in class but eventually just worked with what I had and it looked good on the model in scene.

 

Render Images:

Out of them all – this one is my favourite… I just love the depth and the light shining through the treeline with the deep shadows in the foreground and silhouette of the Kitsune.

 

 

 

  

I took a few double shots in the same view but alternated between the red and green emission. I do feel the green gave off more of a pop – however the red bounced nicely off the environment so was really hard to just stick with one! Therefore I didn’t and just took my photos in both colours!

 

I also looked at moving the light behind the scene props to create shadows on the model.

Tried different colours for the ambience of the scene.

 

   

I tried several different view positions and experimented with different scene lighting and also emission lighting. Although I found that the red and green gave off the best colours in the emission so alternated between those two in different angles. If I had a bit more time I would have liked to get the images across into an editing software and adjust a few things but overall I’m still very happy with how they turned out!

I added emissions via Blender for a turntable:

 

 

Reflection:

 

This assignment certainly brought forward a lot of challenges. I unfortunately had personal issues at the start of the semester so got behind with even starting (I didn’t think id finish for deadline!) but a week of late nights, coffee and a good ol’ grind… I got it complete! I definitely feel like had I not of been set back from the start that the quality of my model would be a lot better as I am slightly disappointed with the overall outcome but I worked with what I had in the time I had and I think what I have produced is still of high enough quality, just not refined quite how id like! I have definitely struggled with every step of the process, as even in the beginning I could not wrap my head around the blocking out concept and it threw me massively, so much so, I had to scrap a model I had worked on for two weeks and restart it… setting me more behind! I found getting used to Zbrush and Unreal Engine quite stressful, and even getting used to the difference in panning controls across each software took its tole. The overall form of the model I feel lacked a little and I definitely could have spent more time cleaning it up and making the limbs a bit more realistic, this came in evident when I tried to pose the model and found the limbs a bit lack lustre. I would have liked to have completed the model entirely in Zbrush as I know this would have given me the most detail overall in sculpt textures, I knew that I didn’t have the knowledge to this, so opted to do most of the modelling in blender and then import it into zbrush to add the sculpting details. I do feel I lost a good bit of depth in the sculpt and looking back now I wish I had of extruded more fur tufts than just added fur depth onto the model with a fur brush. (I did mix a few together to try and get the right texture I wanted). For the future I want to focus and apply myself earlier on and make sure I don’t fall so behind, unfortunately this time was out of my control. I would like to keep experimenting in Zbrush and Unreal Engine as after using both software for a while I was starting to pick things up and actually enjoy using them. Overall, I’m happy with my model and scene but in future want to pace myself so that I can actually spend more time going back to correct things and refine those finer details.