Creature Development

Moghr Bugbear

Combining the two mythical creatures Bugbear and Mohgr, I intend on creating an undead/hosted creature with a controlling being within it. Originally, I was going to be a mix of the ghouls and bugbear, but that would be rather difficult to create since both of these creatures look too similar as it is. Thinking about how I would change it, I opted for removing aspects of the body from each of those creatures and replace it with new aspects of design. For example, by removing the chest regions of this combined creature, I would replace it with rotten entrails and viscera. After a bit of research, I found that even with the combination of the ghoul and bugbear, having an undead varient of the two had already been created. Trying to keep my design original, I decided to implement the entrails as a living, controlling parasite-like creature. Much like the Mohgr.

After research of this strange combination, I couldn't find any attempts of this design. As a result of this, I am firm with my design choice, but still open for changes and suggestions this early in its design phase - but wish to still alter it to keep/enhance the originality of it. An example of this would be ensuring the possessed creature, although still resembling a bugbear, strays away in small aspects, such as bodily remains still attched to the skeleton - and also heavily catered to be a fallen warrior, a berserker, or barbarian. As a result of this, the creature (although perished) will be wielding with rudimentary armour and weaponary.

The fictional theme of this creature would be fantasy (RPG fantasy), and so the weaponary and armour would be medieval. Such examples of weapons could be claymours, swords, bows and arrows etc. The armour could range from mithril to studded leather.

A thick tangle of discoloured entrails clings to this lurching skeleton's torso and winds upwards to loll from its jaw like a clawed tongue

Those who kill many over the course of their lifetimes, whether mass-murderers, warmongering soldiers, or battle-driven berserkers, become manifested and tainted by the sheer weight of their murderous actions. When such beings are brought to justice in the field of combat, the remains sometimes return continue their dark work.

Undead things caring less for life then they did before their own deaths, this creature exist solely to wreak havoc on the living. Sometimes mistaken for skeletons or zombies, the are far more dangerous then those mindless abominations, retaining some semblance of their own memories - and delight they once took in hearing the screams of the dying.

This specific creature was a warring bugbear, a being driven to wake every day and slaughter whatever was in its path for reasons unknown, other than for the sheer joy of it. In one fateful ambush of militia within the swamplands, this berserker bugbear was inevitably slain by the trained soldiers. The body slumped in the waters of the bog was left to decay for several weeks, until eventually from the dark mysterious powers of the swamp and the sheer hatred the bugbear once had joined to bring this beast back to it's feet. Half decayed, a humanoid embodiment of the dank and disgusting swamp keeping the carcass together in its shambling form rises from the waters ready to return to the land of the living to continue its reign of terror amongst the people who reside there.

Specifics:

From being in the water of the swamps to decay over several weeks, this creature will show signs of damp decay - such as any fur left on the body to be in wet rot, along with any non-furred regions to have extreme water damage/to be extremely porous. The clothing worn by the creature will be matted and torn to show the occurance of the fight which brought the beast down originally but to also have this already mentioned water damage.

As mentioned, the creature will be half decay - to show this, half of the out appearance of the beast will be removed, showing the skeleton and driving form within it.

This driving force within the creature will be a myterious set of entrails and viscera which once belonged to the bugbear, now controlling the corpse as a host - and developed features of thier own - such as the intenstines hanging out from the jaw of the skull, exposed to the outside - but with a jaw of its own which widly snaps at anything brave enough to get close to it (much like the symbionts from Alien Versus Predator).

From the feedback given by colleagues during my initial character design concept stage, It was made clear that there are a few aspects on design which are regarded as very important. Such aspects are as followed:

• Anatomy
  • Muscular Positioning and Composition
  • Centre of Gravity/Posture
• Idea Finalising
• Effeciency with design

Regarding these into my design, I felt the need to redesign my character from an undead bugbear to better suit the needs of the assessment criteria. Firstly, what I had choosen to do was to analyse the muscular positions and compositions of the human body, then started to create more over exaggerated versions to add to the fantasy elements my character will be designed along.

1)

The first design was that of a slender, slouched posture. The main aspect in this design was to emphasize the leaning nature of the spine and the head lurched forward. Along with this though, to compensate for the sudden increase of weight ahead of the original centre of gravity, the back must seem to bend a lot more, along with the leaning forward of the legs, with acute bending at the knees (refer to images below)

2)

The second design was to show the muscle composition of what is known typically as "average" amongst adult men - a mix of both very well built with detailed toning, along with the subtle lesser build of someone who isnt muscluarly trained. Again, as seen by the design, the muscles (bisceps, laterals, and pectorals especially) are exaggerated to meet the criteria I have set for my character to be well built since he will be equipped with heavier attire and weapons than what is commonly expected.

3)

Looking at design 3, this was depict the compositions of an individual who is very well built and toned. Seeing regions like the pectorals and hamstrings being extruded from the body in extreme proportions and this the rest of the body must both compensate for this build (affecting the posture), and more imprtantly it must all match that quality of build - otherwise the character will look disproportional due to a misaligned muscular structure - resulting in very strange results.

it was mentioned that having effeciency with the design would be benefical with expediency. With this taken into consideration, i started to look into the software ZBrush which was being used to model our designs, and the methods which are commonly used to achieve the results we wish for.

Looking that these videos, it was clear that the designers were fans of using the symmetry tool to quickly sculpt their concepts. With this taken into consideration into my initial design, I decided to abandon the asymmetrical aspects such as the exposed ribcage, and half the skull exposed to instead rapidly create a full head and body. Along with this, the videos started showing features like horns into their designs, a choice which will not only aid me with supplied tutorials, but may look good on my model and so I started to edit the concepts to meet this. This continued with additional features.

Looking at these videos, it was clear that the designers were fans of using the symmetry tool to quickly sculpt their concepts. With this taken into consideration into my initial design, I decided to abandon the asymmetrical aspects such as the exposed ribcage, and half the skull exposed to instead rapidly create a full head and body. Along with this, the videos started showing features like horns into their designs, a choice which will not only aid me with supplied tutorials, but may look good on my model and so I started to edit the concepts to meet this. This continued with additional features.

To ensure that the process of development for this character is up to date and retains a smooth development pipeline, I am dictating a strict plan for me to stick to. This plan should outline major aspects of which I should of completed/started on the specified days stated. If at any point I find myself falling behind or speeding ahead of the plan, I should then adapt the plan in such a way which makes the most sense to ensure the development is smooth and still complete a full sculpt for the end of the module.

To begin the sculpting process of the model, I will be required to first create a base mesh to sculpt off. To achieve this, I decided to take the ZSpheres approach within Zbrush. Using the reference images I had created to be the intended design of my creature, I utilised the ZSpheres in such a way to mask out the base shape/posture - extruding from the origin torso area to create the limbs and shaping the spheres as I go to ensure I have the right sizes for each joint/muscle group, until finally I had a very basic representation of the Orc's anatomy.

Once I was happy with the basic layout of the creature's posture, I previewed the adaptive skin created by the ZSpheres to look for any potential issues with the smoothing of this new mesh, and to return to the ZSpheres to fix it, if at all present.

With the adaptive skin set, I started to add more definition to the areas of which were lacking. The majority of this was muscle mass, to define and emphasize areas of which muscle should be present, such as the biceps and the abdominal region. This would further aid with shaping out the creature to a higher detail of which would not of been possible with ZSpheres alone.

With the basic muscle definitions in place, I started to visit the head of the Orc. Using the Clay build Up Brush, I started to etch in the main features of the face. Sockets for the eyes with accompanying sunken surrounding muscles around the eye region (orbicularis oculi). I have chosen this concave feature to the head due to the fact that this creature strays a little away from basic human anatomy, and instead will inherit Orcish features, such as large a bulbous nose, sunken eyes and an underjaw.

Keeping to human anatomy, I started to create the nose muscles (nasalis) between the eyes, this way a viewer can clearly associate this region as the Orc's nose - but keeping the Orc's exaggerated features by having the nose very large and bolbous. With the basic shape of the nose complete, I added nasal cavities to add further detail to it's shape. Finally, knowing that this Orc will have an underjaw, I extended it's lower jaw region out past the nose to prepare the model for detailing this underbite. It was at this point I had to pay a lot of attention to the neck as it seemlessly blended itself to the upperchest, which appeared very unnatrual even to an Orc's standard. To ammend this, I simply removed the combining mesh between the chest and the lower jaw to create this defining edge between the two.

Paying more attention to the head, I started to add basic additional features to bring the Orc to life. Firstly, using the geometry sphere brush, I added two spheres within the eye sockets, and inflated them until they filled the sockets. This gave the head the impression that it had eyes. This method was chosen as opposed to simply sculpting the eyes in from the adaptive skin without the addition of spheres, since that way would of been time consuming, along with rather difficult to achieve the same level of detail this method had easily accomplished.

Continuing on geometry sphere brushes, I created an additional sphere at the top of the cranium. Using this new shape, I used the clay build up brush and sculpted into the skull to house this sphere, then followed up with lips to surround it, and to give the mesh the impression that this sphere was inside the head, extruding outward. Using the move topological brush, I extruded the sphere into a curved pointed shape to resemble a horn. Once I was happy with this design, I duplicated it and placed it further down the head of the Orc's spine.

Continuing on with this approach, I started to add more horns to the sculpture around the arm and shoulder regions, resizing and resculpting them appropriately to match that of my design. It was brought to my attention at this point that within my design, the Orc had a bandolier resting on the Orc's right shoulder, with the uppermost horn keeping it from sliding off - so to appropriately place the horn, I created a temprorary Bandolier mesh by selecting the faces of the Orc across it's chest in a downward fashion towards it's left hip, and likewise on it's back - them simply inflated this region into a seperate mesh and shaped it into psotion. With this as a base reference within a 3D space as to where this item of clothing was, I continued on with the lips of the skin towards the horns, along with correct horn placement.

Once I was happy with this, I started to expirement with a variety of clothing and techniques in doing so along the legs and waist of the orc.

Once I had added the clothing to the sculpture as reference, I started to think more about the bone structure of the Orc as it was critical that I get this correct in this early stage, as it may cause problems later on if incorrect. Analysing this, it was very clear that it's posture was extremely bad - especially due to the fact that I wanted this Orc to be militaristic, and thus must have a military ready posture, being straight up. Going through my reference images however, the orcs tend to have a hunch to a degree, so to satisfy the need for a better, upright posture, yet still have a small hunched head - I selected the head and neck regions of the orc, and moved them entirely to a better, more suitable location to resemble good spinal positioning, as originally, the spine curved downward from the back to meet the head which is not at all natrual (as seen via the images below).

Moving the head to a better position, it had malformed all of the surroundinng muscles, and created new unused space where the head once was. With this being an issue, I started to resculpt these areas to match the original design and muscular structure to the new upright posture. This allowed me to add more detail to the body composition, as I had more space to work with in the pectoral regions. Blending, and reshaping the back of the head/neck, I was happy with the current body's form in it's new position.

At this point I started to look more into the form of the Orc. Knowing that at a later stage we would be positioning the Orc into a pose, I noticed that having the form in an A-Pose would be easy to work with, as opposed to the posture I originally had. Changing the arms to the desired location, I had noticed that the arms were very wide apart from the torso, to ammend this, I moved the shoulders and arms into the centre a little more and started to fix the changed muscle anatomy, whislt temporarly removing the spikes and horns for now to add them once the posture is in it's correct position

With the arms now in position, I started to focus on the model's digits. Adding a finger model using the add Sphere Brush, then moving it into position with the topological brush; I sculpted it into the shape of a finger. Using the inflate tool, I started to add more mass to where the knuckles would be, in both the seperate fingers and palms and positioned the model to the thumb location. To add more detail to the finger, I used the chisel brush to create a nail, to later revisit it to add futher detail. Duplicating this model, I transformed and scaled these digits to the remaining positions on the palm to create the rest of the fingers.

it was at this point I started to look into clothing for the Orc, since he was militaristic, I had to go down a armoured approach. Looking at references and keeping to the general design of my drawn out image, I created garments such as Breastplates and Gauntlets on the Orc's Body using the masking tool and extracting them to various thickness's. These new meshes would act as a temporary piece to show the general sizes and appearance of such garments.

With the additional polys, and the sculpture remeshed, I cant start to add a variety of detail to the model. Starting with the Damein Standard Brush, I made very basic groove in areas which the skin would fold or strecth, creating wrinkles. Most of this detail was made to the face of the model. Using these newly formed lines, I can start to use them as reference to wrinkles and strecthmarks to add further detailed wrinkles later on in development.

Along with this, I started to add skin imperfections. Using the Surface function, I created "noise" to the skin and applied it which gave it the illusion of having pores - making it already more realistic. Combing with skin blemishes, the face really started to the detail I wanted at a base level.

With some basic detail complete, I started to think more about the design I was intending for, being a "War-torn" Orc. With this said, the war-torn aspect implies this character had been through a lot of wars, and thus should be on the older side - but his current appearance made him look young (due to the rounded head).

After sharpening the jaw by bringing it closer to the centre of the head, and bringing the neck up towards the bottom jaw, it already had significant better looking shape. To further enhance this look, I brought the muscles above the eyes forward over the sunken eyes, to both further sink them (as Orcs have this feature), and to create more of an "arrow" head shape, making it appear sharper. Immediately, it looked a lot better, and so I started to re-position the wrinkles where they would form with this new shape.

Following on with the garments, the Arm bracers were next. Using the same principle and techniques from the Breastplate, I textured the bracers to appear metallic, with leather straps. Whilst expirementing however, I came across a brush which adds the appearance of tears and rips. Since this was a war-torn orc, it seemed appropriate for some of his clothing be torn, much like the metal brandished - so I started to revist the breastplate to add the tears where i thought were appropriate.

To finish off the bracers, I added a fur top as intended from my design.

Using the stated methods, I started to visit the remaining items of clothing to texture them appropriately, adsing additional details such as fur for the cape, and spikes for the arm bands when needed, until all clothing was complete for this level of detail.

Continuing on with the shading and texturing of the materials within this composition, I started to emphasize the texture imperfections which I wished to be clearly present. Utilizing the previous blemishes added to the skin, and the damage to the garments, I focused within these regions due to their chnage of mesh from around them, and discoloured them to draw attention to the damaged aspect.

With the main colours decided for each of the items of clothing and materials, I continued using the three primary colours to highlight, darken and emphasize regions of the skin. This also continued onto the materials, but rather than using the primary colours, I instead utilized the opposite colour on the colour wheel for the major discolouring regions, and a darkened colour of the base material for crevises and divets present.

Since the Orc, being an older figure, along with being rather muscular - he has a lot of areas of deformation within the body. Such examples being the regions of joints, such as the pits, and arm - and also a lot of wrinkles and folds of skin, especially around the neck and forehead of the Orc. With these being carved from the Damien Standard Brush, they were left from a distance, quite unnoticed due to their subtle nature. I however wished for these to be more clear on the model, but increasing the intensity of the Damien Standard Brush resulted in unrealistic, and unfavourable looks. To counter this, I instead selected the colour which was a tone darker than the skin. Using an RGB Brush with a feathered Alpha, I started to paint onto the skin in the areas of these wrinkles/folds. Though the change may appear subtly, it is infact paramount in showing age to the Orc, which I believe was successful.

At this point within the design process, I mainly used symmetry to quickly detail the mesh on both sides of the body. This has it's useful since I only need to draw my attention to one side, for it to be automatically duplicated onto the other side - effectively halving the development time. As it comes natrually though, blemishes on the skin are not a mirrored feature on anyone's body - so turning off the symmetry tool on the body, I started to create a series of textures and malforming the mesh to create these odd, and minor features. To the left (below), shows a small vein, dotted all over the body and was created by using a very small brush with low intensity and alpha. Whereas on the right (below) is an example of a spot/pimple - created by inflating a small area, then simply texuring it all with red, then highlighting the tip of the spot with yellow and white. These small features, really added to the realism to the mesh, along with making the character break up visually.

Once I was happy with the textured state of the Orc, it was time to think about poses on which I wanted him to be in for the rendering process. I started ot draw attention to a series of existing examples of Orcs, and it was very clear that the vast majority of them would have a weapon equipped something I would very much like to replicate - especially due to the fact that this Orc was a soldier.

Since weapon drawn Orcs were close to an A-Pose, it was rather difficult to show a mass change in the mesh's original pose, to the new pose. Originally I had moved the limbs of the orc in an exaggerated degree, but left the areas of deformation in a poor, strecthed state, if not tearing the mesh, though this was also mainly due to the nature of the mesh's size (large arms, disollowing larger movements, due to clipping and tearing). To counter this, I decided to move on of the arms forward, and transformed the fingers on this move hand into a clenched position, so that later a weapon may be placed there. To also add more change to the mesh, I straightened the back of the Orc, so he was more upright, along with also rotating the head so that it was looking more into the direction of the raised hand.

This was done via using the TPoseMesh Tool. Ensuring that the Body Subtool was on it's lowest subdivision level, I turned on the TPoseMesh tool, which combined all of the subtools and allowed my to transpose elements as I wished. To move the aformentioned body parts, I masked them using the MaskLasso Tool, then finely feathered the selection off with the MaskPen. It was critical that when masking and moving elements of the mesh, that the mask is feathered, so the movements appeared more natural to the surrounding skin - since I sharp stop to the mask will deform the skin to have an equally sharp edge, which isn't evident on skin.

Inversing the mask to the remainder of the body, I was able to the use the gizmo tool to create to the rotations I wanted - I ensured that these drawn gizmo tools always originated and ended on joints before rotating, that way the movements were as natrual as possible.

Once I was happy with how the new form was, I selected TPose|SubT Option which set the mesh back to how it was by divinding up the subtools, and moving them into their new positions whislt still retaining all informatiob carried such as materials and mesh deformations.

These lights, each having different settings, all had a different purpose for lighting the model. The lights are as followed:

With each successful PBR Render within ZBrush, I saved the produced images into their own files, seperated by what lighting type they belonged to. With these newly produced images, I'm able to edit them together to create a scene, and complete render for the Orc.

To start off, I imported each of the images of each shot into Krita. Selecting the appropriate blending type (Multiply for the Ambient Occlusion, and Shadows - Screen for the three different lighting types), then followed by adding a series of layer filters, such as a gaussian blur to a duplicate of the Rim Light, and an altered Hue and Saturation to the shadows - with an appropriate mask to hide the borders.

Since the lighting implemented into the Orc had originated from the panaroma shot, I decided to add it to the background, as the backdrop. This however left the orc in the foreground seeming out of place due to it's difference in saturation. To ammend this issue, I started to darken the backdrop significantly, then followed by amplifying the colours of the lighting of the HDRI. Along with this, I added more detail to the orc by creating an iris for the orcs eyes.

Looking back onto the project, I believe that finished work, and the process leading to it was rather sucessful.

Firstly, I have learned a great deal about the knowledge of digital sculpting, and it's development pipeline to end up with a fully rendered image, from it's processes both in and out of ZBrush. This includes how artists are capable of creating such complex meshes and characters through a rather simplistic method involving the intricacy of sculpting into and over a dynamic mesh to being able to work within lighting with a 3D space to add to a character's definitions, and presentation of characters via a set of PBR Rendered images for further development.

If I were to continue this project further, there are a few things I would adopt into my development and planning to achieve better results than what I have now. Such things would be learning how to model more accurately to the human anatomy, and straying a little away from the more exaggerated/fictional muscular structures and forms from monsters and other creatures alike - since normal human sculpting is a huge skill to have within itself. Another thing I would change would be the overall complexity of the creature. This is because, coming into the project I was unfamiliar with the process involved with 3D Sculpting, not to mention never having heard of the software. But since now I have had experience with the software, and I understand the pipeline, I feel like I would be more capable of creating a character more complicated and ambitious, from having a more interesting form to work with, garments, fibres and lighting for a render. One thing which I particularly I wish I had improved on in this current project was that of manipulating the mesh into a pose. Despite the fact that I was able to successfully pose the mesh, my desired form was simply too close to the original A-Pose, so going back into this, having a more interesting pose could further add character to my Orc, and also improve the renders as it may cause a sense of movement within the pose, showing action. Another thing would be to work with props for my character. In this instance, it would be better for the model should within the Orc's grasp, it held a weapon of some description. This was not done due to the time remaining nearing the end of the project, but would definitely rather have it as it really takes away from the current renders since the hands are empty.

With the improvements stated, I personally believe that skin perfections implemented into the model was one of it's highlights - this is because it forced to me explore a whole variety of brush types and a series of Alphas, all to achieve different results. This showed me that for something as generally simple as skin imperfections, has hundreds of ways to create the detail, and so other aspects of mesh editing/creation would also have just as many ways of achieving detail, thus lots of different types of characters can be created.

In conclusion, using the knowledge gained from this project, I will definitely try to implement Digital Sculpting into my work, both in and out of univeristy to further create that level of detail in meshes that woud otherwise be difficult in other software. Furthermore, when concepting characters and creatures, to follow a basic sculpting pipeline, since the results can be high detail, despite a basic design stage. Further skills, such as texturing and lighting within ZBrush and Illustration software will definitely be utilised agian within my work as it really aids with bringing a scene to life.

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