Roman part 8 - high detail sculpt

Making Of / 18 November 2020

Hi,


A small update.  For anyone who follows me they would already see I posted on my Roman yesterday with the complete high poly sculpt. 

Here is a image of the sculpt, the rest are on the portfolio page.


To explain, the fur is placeholder and will be swapped out before baking.  Its just to show what it will look like, and would be used for clients especially, being replaced by cards when the time comes.  The clothing elements were created in marvellous designer.  There are plenty of tutorials out there on how to prep clothing, but my usual method is to duplicate, zremesh, add sub ds to both versions of the clothing, project once, then add thickness, usually with panel loops, do the same with the old, and project again.  But this method varies dependant on what I want to achieve at the time.


The gif below shows the general method of construction, I could have gone back and rendered off various stages on my incremental saves, but felt it wasn’t too necessary when you can see a rough process on the chest piece anyway.  Other methods ive used usually involve methods ive shown on my backpack I created for my hiker, that there is a breakdown on in my portfolio.  If anyone is curious about the entire construction, I could render off each incremental save of the ztl, and post this also as a gif.  Just drop a comment. 


Apart from that, the only unusual method I’ve used that I hadn’t really used before is making a displacement for the shoulder armour. This was done by quickly sculpting a shoulder piece, dropping to the lowest sub d, exporting this, fixing the uvs so that the elements I wanted to use had a large uv ratio, the rest scaled down and placed in a corner, and then after creating a basic shape in zbrush and layerin this in maya to form a repeating pattern, moving onto substance painter for the final repeating pattern placed onto the shoulder pads.  After this I went back to zbrush, added a layer, added a morph, and applied the texture to the displacement, adjusting the values with the layers, and morphing out the edges which was quite easy due to the poly groups.  If anyone wants to see this method in detail I can do a blog post on it with the varying stages, just drop me a comment on it. 


Anyway thank you again.  There has been a few requests for me to record some sessions.  Sadly im very shy, and if recording I make a lot of mistakes, however perhaps during the texturing process, after retopo (I cant imagine you want to see ten hours of quad draw) I could record using substance painter and the dropping back and fourth to the final presentation software of marmoset.  This and I can imagine the baking process might be handy for all, so will do something for them anyway. 


Thank you


Adam

Dan Crosslands anatomy Course

General / 24 October 2020

Ive began David Crosslands anatomy course from Mold 3D the last few weeks.  This week i began working on the first element of the outer body, the arms.  Here is my sculpts so far which i will build on through the course.  Based on Bernini's David.  

   



Roman Part 7 - chest armour breakdown

General / 17 October 2020












Roman part 6 - test hair

Tutorial / 10 October 2020

Hi all,


                I created this hair using Mayas Xgen.  The eyelashes, eyebrows and short hair sections I will use for the low poly later.  But the long hair on the top of the head I will delete later and recreate using hair cards.  Which will also be textured to look even better.


                After the hair creation i import to zbrush, polygroup it into around 4 rough sections per hair subtool.  This I will later colour as shown below to be varying base colours, which will allow the use of varying hair strand colour and rough values on the low polygon. 



                I was aiming for a quite stark, worn, soldier look, who has seen many things and is tired of war.  Hopefully that aspect of the character im managing to convey even though I feel it could benefit from a small pass at retexturing later in substance when low poly.





                For now, here is the head in the base.  Note I feel the long top hair cards will need to be removable to allow for the helmet, but it isn’t that much of an issue and also allows the character to walk around helmet free if needed.


                Thank you, I hope so far you are learning a little of my process for AAA game characters. 

Roman part 5 - creating a head

Tutorial / 10 October 2020

Hi,

                Todays blog goes a little more technical into the process of head creation. 


                To begin I extract the head shape from the body blockout, and, choosing suitable reference, a combination of thin faced muscley men and worn torn soldiers, I firstly created a base ref to create from that I can set up on the floor planes, then sculpted the forms, until I was happy. 


                After I copied the mesh at lowest sub, uved, and used that as the base to place some texture xyz textures and displacements.  Below is a link to a full tutorial explaining the process.


texture xyz zwrap tutorial


                The texture edit software i used was substance painter, therefore allowing cloning of the base color, then the displacment and utility maps with the same setttings by dropping in the map to the base channel.  


Interesting to note, i made a morph of the face for the texture projection with mouth closed and eyes closed, which i opened again after.  I will in the end close the mouth after retopo, or high poly posing, but it simplifies the bake process.


I then polypainted the rest of the face and used pour alphas and micromaps (bought from texture xyz) to create and edit out the hair texture and add the neck details.  Added slight variations of color to the eyes and sculpting in more finer details.


                I did a similar process for the eyes, again using texture xyz maps, but extracting the pupil area as a mask then texture, that I used in photoshop to place the maps, which I imported back into zbrush for displacement and conversion to polypaint.


                These renders I created in keyshot. 

The next step is hair, as you can see hes very bald, even his eyelashes.  For this step I will use xgen and again will either give breakdowns of the process or show where I learnt the process myself, as above. 

               

Roman part 4 - finishing the full character blockout

Tutorial / 05 October 2020

Hi,


                I did a few hours on my Roman tonight, adding simple blockout geo to the model to highlight the general shape and form. 


                I was slightly concerned I had created him too bulky, however I felt it led to the idea of a powerful Roman.  Perhaps this is questionable if its historically accurate, im unsure, but it certainly lends to the aesthetic I wanted. 


                Most parts were created by duplicating the main mesh, clay tubes an area out to give it the same form as I wanted, then masking, polygroups, and deleting the unneeded areas and then some zremesh.  Later I can sculpt into these forms more and push the detail until im happy.


                At this stage it could be tested by the whole team, concept artists, art directors and even in game to make sure it works in situ, and could even be sent to rigging to begin testing the various elements.



                I think the next stage I would like to work on is to create the face for the model and begin adding more life to the project!  For that stage I will endeavour to add a breakdown and short tutorial of the facial sculpt and construction.    

Roman part 3 - finalising the blockout

Tutorial / 02 October 2020

HI,

                I got a few more hours done today, only about 2 but it was enough to finalise the base mesh to a stage im happy to begin blocking out the rest of the structure to the character.

                I could detail the whole body, but at this stage there is no point when most will be covered by clothing.  Therefore to save time have opted to block out to a stage the shapes are pretty much defined, then begin building the main shapes.  This way I can ascertain if the model works, the silhouette is decent enough, and the forms themselves play against each other aesthetically. 





                Later, when refining the body after the main forms have been decided upon, I will detail up each area needed, and build upon the form.  But only in areas that will be exposed in the final character.


                For the next few days I am doing a reinstall of my pc, so won’t be posting any new updates for a few days.   


Thank you, i hope you are enjoying this series of breakdowns in the series of the creation of a AAA roman soldier.  

Roman part 2 - Building a base mesh

Tutorial / 01 October 2020

Today I spent about 4 hours on the sculpt.  I could have started with a old base mesh but I wanted to start from scratch to show the full process.

I used reference from 3D.SK as well as a two anatomy figures from 3D Total of the male figure which I bought from the Kickstarter when they were first published.  I have a solid understanding of anatomy, however  I refer to the anatomy figures or reference to help create my own base.  In the end reference will help create more realistic work.

Here below you can see i began initially with a 3d.sk model in zbrush in the back and side view, and drew a zsphere skeleton, which I converted to polys to shape more, divided, and sculpted away more until I felt the general proportions were working.

I have used this method many times in studios when they need a fast output of characters, producing with Zspheres anything required in the concept and can test the scale and proportions before creating the smaller details.  it also allows the concept artists and Leads to check the work throughout to be sure you can nail the concept quickly.  



I feel there is still some areas of improvement, and I want to reduce the cavitys in areas when adding the smaller details, but for tonight im happy with the progress. 

Roman part 1 - the idea

Tutorial / 30 September 2020

I want to try something new, that I feel could be beneficial for other artists interested in character creation for games.  So from tonight I’m aiming to create a Roman character, and will blog about the process, showing breakdowns at stages throughout.  It might be a long process I also work full time.  But will devote my spare time to it and detail the creative process so others may learn some techniques in character creation.  At some point through the next few months also I hope to begin a youtube channel with short tutorials on the creative process, to again help, with bitesize tips that will help the reader/viewer also grow as artists as well as myself through this journey. 


So to begin - 


Last night I spent about 3 hours researching what I was after in my character, using google image search and Artstation.  I have been quite inspired by Ryse, as well as other unique roman soldier characters found on Artstation, and the uniforms typically shown on image searches.    


I use PURE REF, for my reference hunt.  I can happily copy and paste images into it, organise them, and zoom in and out into the various images.


Initially I was imagining a roman riding a chariot however I also want to really go a little wild with the detail, which would be lost if you never get to see the character up close.  So cut down my vision to a soldier again.  Which this morning I went back to, and selected the images that pleased me the most, that I could be inspired for in the creation process. 




That's it for today, more over the next few days.... 

WIp new character

General / 17 May 2020

I just wanted to show this new character but not publish as yet, since its without a body!  Its the beginning of a new piece following a concept, with approval from the original artist.  Im taking this one in sections to isolate and work slowly through the piece for the quality im after, a near photo real yet real time.  I hope im being successfully so far!


This is rendered in marmoset, firstly created in zbrush, as a sculpt from a sphere, then texture xyz maps added, and finally retopo in maya before texturing in sub painter while rendering in Marmoset.  


Hope you like it so far, next step, the body!