Game production

High to Low Poly Sculpting & PBR Textures

Zbrush Introduc(k)tion

Week 1

Zbrush Navigation Keys

Alt + Left Key drag - pans across screen

Left Key drag - Rotate around sculpt
Alt + Left Key hold + Release Alt whilst holding Left key - zooming into sculpt
Alt + Draw - Reverses brush function
Ctrl + Tap Off Model - inverses masked area

Brushes [B]

Clay Buildup [CB]
Dam Standard (Sharp lines!! the best) [DS]
Trim Dynamic
pinch (sharpens corners) [PI]

move [MV]

Further Notes

To get rid of the square - new document
ctrl N to clear canvas
Drag + holding shift - lock object to views
F = 'Focus' sculpt in centre of screen
hold Alt pan across screen
Ult tap = switch what you arer selecting. you can only work with
M move to your subtools
hold shift smoothens things

move [MV]
if you want to redo a good line and you want to rework that, press 1
X = symmetry
Holding Alt whilst sculpting will go into the negative.
Dynamesh - mesh things together
ZRemesher - cares about clean topology
mask {lock an area] CTRL
ctrl alt = sharpens mesh
Ctrl tap = softens mesh
geometry = dynamesh and click shift
Reference = Config - Reset UI

To grow our confidence with the new software in preparation for sculpting our chosen model next week, we were tasked to play around with Zbrush and sculpt anything we like to start getting accustomed the user interface and navigation keys

I was really stumped at the beginning of our first lesson. I couldn't even get passed dragging a cylinder onto my canvas. I have noticed I really struggle to understand new software and I often take a little longer to understand it than most, so I was happy that Will went over it with me again. Of course, I couldn't retain a lot of the information but just enough to let me access the brushes, symmetry tool, and Dynamesh to reduce distortion when building up forms.

The first thing I made was a little gremlin (after getting past disfigured blobs). It was created using the default clay brush and the pinch brush for the sharp ears. It was so satisfying to finally make something that wasn't considered an abstract collage from the depths of hell. After class had ended, I wanted to try making something else.

Derpy Donald Duck

Since I knew I could make a silly creature with a beak-like mouth (the gremlin), I decided to try sculpting a silly version of Donald Duck. I referenced from only the first few images of him on the internet to save time (and it didn't feel necessary to look further).

I thought I was only going to sculpt his head, but I was having so much fun I sculpted his entire body. I used 4 brushes; Clay Build up, Damstandard, Trim Dynamic, and the square brush. I didn't know how to add more shapes on my canvas so I built everything by layering brushstrokes, which at times felt very time consuming because Zbrush doesn't like it when you try to build from a thin area. This made it especially difficult to add the legs and arms. I tackled this by drawing out larger amounts of digital clay than I needed which I then reduced once I got the right length of the limb. I wanted to add the little ribbon that comes out from his hat but knew the software wouldn't like it if I used my method. I also still didn't know how to add more shapes to add separate eyes or the hat. I am really happy with the progress I made in this session, from being super intimidated by the software to sculpting an entire character in just a few hours.

A few things That would have definitely made this sculpt better would be to know how to move certain parts of my sculpt around. The way it is now, the head is a little too in front of his body so he looks a little unbalanced. I also could have worked into his eyes, hat, and feet further. For my next sculpt I should try utilizing the masking feature.

Questions I had when trying to sculpt for the first time:

Why does an area start to dramatically deform when the area is too thin? is there a way to prevent this? How do I add more shapes and attach it to the same mesh? This would be really helpful to quickly build limbs and the body up. I used the long way by layering brushstrokes to build up enough clay to sculpt from - which was made more difficult because Zbrush doesn't like thin areas build built upon.

To prevent this and to make the process faster you can do a few things; 'insert' a new object into your scene. From there you can choose to merge the mesh down to your main mesh or use Dynamesh OR mask the backface by going to brush > Auto masking > backface mask

Is there a way to change between the last used brush more quickly rather than having to click into the brush library? how do you search for brushes?

You can click B and then enter the first letter of that brushes' name

What happens if you zoom in too much into your model? how can you move the screen when you can't reach any of the negative space? Is there a way to go back to your sculpt when you accidentally push it off your canvas and you don't know where it went? is there a button like 'x' in 3ds Max that instantly teleports you to your model?

Press F ('focus') to return to your mesh instantly.

Is there a 'lasso tool' in Zbrush? One where you can draw around the area you wish to manipulate?

Using the masking tool! hold Ctrl whilst painting over your mesh to mask that area (there are a few different brush types for masking). the area that is masked will now not be effected by your sculpting. Then clicking 'W' to get the moving gizmo to manipulate the unmasked area however you like. You can soften the masked selection barrier by pressing ' Ctrl + Alt' or sharpen it by 'Ctrl + left click'.

Week 2 - Skull

Before I try sculpting a face, which is a little more intimmidating because we all have biases towards what a human face should look like, I decided to sculpt a human skull in the hopes of seeing my weak areas. This was also prompted by the fact I was having a little trouble drawing skulls in out trad sessions, so I wanted to continue working on my understanding of it.

Brother

To add eyeballs and ears, insert an object and mirror it by going to: Geometry > Modify topology > Mirror and Weld

Sculpting Zendaya

to separate an IMM Primatives shape from your original mesh (the eyeballs from the head in this case) , go to 'Split' and 'split unmasked points', OR you can add them simply by using 'insert' in Subtools.

To recenter the moving tool (W), Hold Alt and click on the rotating arrow and then

more resolution : Geometry > Divide

Subtool > extract > accept

make it cleaner: go to ZRemesher

Ctrl W Ctrl Shift Tap modify topoogy modify by features

I thought it would be easier to start the sculpt with the preset head given to us, but I actually found it a lot harder to build on it than the attempts I had when I had started from scratch using only a sphere.

It took me ages trying to get my sculpt to this ugly stage, trying to rework all of the pre-sculpted planes and it still lookes quite alien-like

I had taken a long break from this sculpt because we had moved onto learning how to retop and unwrapping etc. I was a lot more enthusiastic to continue it at this point.

Looking quite like a monster at the moment..

My sculpt became a darker gray and I didn't know why... it remained dark even when I scrolled through my history, I was still using MatCap Gray, and nothing was masked. (My luck since this happened five minutes after lesson). This turned out to just be the colour I changed by accident. This really shows how much I don't know about the software...

the eyelids here are good.

I then wanted to add ears but I forgot how to turn the symmetry on. to turn it on, go to Transform at the top bar, and simply click on 'Activate Symmetry'. But since I already had a rough shape down, I needed to mirror it. To mirror an existing side, go to Geometry (side bar under Subtool) > Modify Topology > Mirror And Weld

Managed to get it to a lighter colour! (this is when I found out). I used a lot of the smoothen tool (using shift) and the TrimDynamic to smoothen everything out. I also used the Move tool a lot once I was happy with the features but which still needed a bit of editing.

Did a really crude paintover in Zbrush to add the eyebrows and hairline to see if proportions where all correct. Her eyes are a little larger than Zendaya's and the top of her nose bridge could be a little more defined but apart from that, I'm happy with how it is coming together.

I added a better base for the neck here. To develop this sculpt further, I need to flatten the tip of her nose, curl her ear, and make her eyes smaller and more hooded. her eyes have been the most difficult to make look right because the majority of online photographs has her wearing very dark eyeshadow to make her eyes look bigger. Also her eyelid folds naturally change throughout the day thanks to gravity.

This is how it looked after I worked on her ears and everything else mentioned previously. Her ears stick out and look a lot more natural now! And her forehead has been brought forward so that I could make her eyes more hooded. This has also helped to bring her nose bridge to look more defined.

I wasn't sure why the ear became all fuzzy once I used the flatten tool to get rid of the extra digital clay that was inside her head, but I found out it was because the ears I had duplicated started to appear underneath the one I was editing.

The triangle at the very top chain, is used to add more segments (dots) to edit the curvature.

I only used the yellow dots and triangles to turn certain parts of her ear. This caused it to dig into her head but I will just push it out once I am happy with the overall shape.

I used ZRemesher and reduced the resolution to 110,000 ~ polygons to smoothen everything out more easily. I then used DamStandard to bring back edges. I feel like some of the character was lost in this process though.. The messy texture looked more like skin in my opinion but it does look cleaner now.

Inserted a sphere to bend it into this worm shape for hair. Of course I need to work into it a lot more to make it looking like actual hair. Give it more resolution, flatten sides, and add all the other hair pieces. But this is the result I have by the end of my session.

Continued to add a few more hair sections and starting to deform them into place using the move brush.

Retopping in 3ds Max

Week 3 - Monday & Thursday Sessions

"Retopology"

naming conventions are very important when going to bake models.

Suffixes you should use: (name of asset)_LP for 'low poly' (Name of asset)_HP for 'High Poly'

Orthographic / Axonometric trapezoid (Axo Trapezoide)

Axonometric Bisecubes

(bisect = to divide into two)

axo bicubes

Di (dichotomy = to divide into two)

Keyboard Hotkeys:

Shift + Ctrl + Alt + Click & drag = Move Vertices individually.

Eyes & Mask

Mouth & Muzzle

Just like with the eyes and mask, start with outlining the mouth so that the same amount of polys are used for the muzzle.

Nose

Only re-top half of the head so that you can use the symmetry modifier to copy it over to the other half, saving an extreme amount of time. Before doing this, however, you must make sure to center the center line at exactly 0.0

The Ear

Here I overused the relax tool so the mesh started to shrink within the ear.

Final re-top of ear. I used Shift + Ctrl + Alt to move the vertices individually to get them into place again.

The ear is a really complex area to retop but it essentially doesn't require much functionality like eyes, nose, or eyes. This means we can use triangles to allow a rapid introduction and deduction of polys in a small area.

To make it easier, start with the Antihelix and Tragus coil - which is represented in yellow and blue. This will help inform the amount of polys required to build the helix all the way to the ear lobe (represented in purple). You can then move onto retopping the concha (pink center), and of course, finally move onto the green area surrounding the ear. The final pink loop just helps to outline the ear which helps with identifying the barrier where we cut it off from the head when unwrapping.

I didn't take many process screenshots when re-topping the ear because it was quite a messy process.

Unwrapping

Week 4 - Monday Session

Cut and separate ears and head stump

Ctrl + A - select everything

Quick Planar Map

Quick Peel to flatten it.

This is the optimum form for an unwrapped face, however, we want to optimise all the space available in our UV sheet so we need to change a few things before calling it complete. Since in our case, we only have a simple head to fit into our UV sheet, this isn't necessary at all because we can easily fit the ears and stump comfortably around this organic shape. But for the sake of learning to be efficient with space, we will work on this further.

Preparing Low & High Poly Models for Export

Before uploading to Substance Painter, make sure to set material IDs for both the head and the eyes. This is the same drop down menu used for Multi textured assets from the house project. Set the entire head to one material ID, and set the eyes to another. If you don't do this, the eyes will lie on the same map as the head when baked in Substance painter, AND the separate pieces (mouth, muzzle, eyes, mask, nose, ears etc) will also be on separate layers, which would be an insane way to paint.

Also, might have to delete the rest of the unused materials that were used to colour code. Also make sure to set the entire head to 1 smoothing group.

Now we are ready to bring Sir Smirf to Substance Painter!

(Not Yettttt I had to go back to group all the faces into one smoothing group.. but he looks cooler with the sharp edges so I'm not changing this picture.)

Intro to Substance Painter

Week 4 - Thursday Session

Baking

Basic Navigation Keys

Alt + Left Mouse Button - Turn around
Alt + Middle Scroll Mouse Button - Pan across
Mouse scroll - Zoom
Alt + Rigth Mouse Button - Zoom (aswell)
Ctrl + Right Mouse Button - Moves Lighting
[ ] - Brush size

After Importing the high poly mesh, and entered the suffixes used (_LP & _HP) to match by mesh name, check the cage wireframe. This wireframe is the boundary which our low poly will receive high poly information, so anything outside of the cage wireframe will not receive high-poly information and would be displayed in red. Once happy with all the settings, click 'Bake Selected Textures'

<- Where you add your High Poly meshes

<- Choose the resolution to bake at. Higher the multiplier, longer it takes

<- Enter Suffixes used

<- Check that the high and low poly meshes are matching successfully

Texturing

PBR - Physically based rendering

Our lecture on texturing was very fast paced so I didn't get any process pictures along the way. Luckily, we worked using a nondestructive workflow with the use of layers so I can easily hide and reintroduce each one to fake the process of doing it all over again :D

Tri-planar projection in 'FILL'

There where only three types of layers we went over today: Paint, Fill, and Group layers.

Under-painting using the mold brush

skin

Lips, blush, eyebrows, and eye details

Roughness + eyes

Lighting in Unreal

Week 5 - Thursday Session

Light Channels

drag in a cube, make your wall/ floor, Alt to duplicate

Edit -> project settings to turn off Auto Exposure & set startup map as current map.press 'G' to turn light symbols on and off .

You cant scale lights like assets, you have to edit it in it's 'details' using it's 'Source Width' and 'Source Height'.

Wall & Floor lighting channel is automatically set to 0 like everything else.

Wall & Floor lighting channel now set to 1. This makes it unaffected by the lights that are in other lighting channels.

Added a black colour and a mat texture to the material. Also drastically decreased the directional light intensity.

Under 'Advanced', make sure 'Combine Meshes' is ticked on when importing the mesh.

Material settings for M_Background

Right-click in materials folder and add a material [naming it M_Name]
Hold 3 + Click = to set a colour. (3 for 3 numbers [Red, Blue, Green])
Hold 1 + Click = to set roughness (1 = mat, 0 = shiny)

Material settings for M_Head

Base Colour (or Diffuse) goes into Base Colour
Normal goes into normal
Ambient Occlusion = Red
Roughness = Green
Metallic = Blue

Material settings for M_Eyes

The eyes are pretty simple and don't require any of the fancy details needed for the head so it just needs the base colour, and roughness set to the highest reflectivity.

double click the Ambient Occlusion texture and make sRGB (under 'Texture' drop down) 'False' before dragging it into a new material.

Got some help from my lecturer to get to this point

I added a Rect light and set it to Channel 1 to add a gradient colour to the background. I also set the eye texture to a material.

I went back to substance painter to add a few details like eye highlights, and also into 3ds max to move his eyes inwards just a tiny bit so that he doesn't look spaced out.

Grade: 62/100 (-1% from Block 2)

Previously :

☆*Go back to Digital Art*☆

Up Next :

☆*Go to Block 4*☆

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