For my second FMP character I am going to be making a male punk character based heavily on the punk social and musical movement in the 70s. The style will be a dead by daylight kind of look mixed in with some semi realistic final fantasy elements. I am hoping to submit this project to the upcoming 'Punk- Rage and revolution' exhibition happening in Leicester later this year. Therefore my design will have to clearly reflect the time period along with being a professional and game ready character with relevant technical specifications and budgets. I am really interested in this field personally and often take a lot of influence from the fashion elements which came from this movement. I will include my tri and texture budgets further down as they have already been written in my brief. 

The images I collected are mainly of members of the sex pistols such as Johnny Rotten and Sid Vicious who were very influential people during the punk movement due to their involvement in the band and their attitudes alike. As they are such iconic and distinct figures from the punk movement I thought they would be the perfect references for my final fantasy meets dead by daylight character. I am going to be looking into popular motifs and garments often worn by them along with more specific designs by Vivienne Westwood who was a very crucial part of the movement also and worked closely alongside the Pistols. Some key point I have picked out from the images I have collected include customized blazers, leather, studs, chains, hats, safety pins, screen printing. These are elements I am going to be taking forward into the sculpting phase of my character. 

I have also bought a book which is from an exhibition at the v&a with many amazing images of punk fashion and influential people during this time. I will be looking through this and taking pictures of any pages which inspire me, I will include them in my blog a little later. I think since this project is being based from an important musical but also social movement I need to do in depth research and find references from a range of different sources to properly understand the concept and include relevant details in my character FMP. 

Since Louis Partridge has a lot of images of him dressed as Sid Vicious I thought he would be the ideal source for references for my project. I have also made a pur ref board on the computer which I will be using along side my Zbrush file for more specified and refined images which are more specific to design choices that I will make during the process. I will add some images of this below. 

The style of my character is going to lend itself to the semi realistic style of the game Dead by Daylight which I personally love to play myself. Here are some reference images I can use as a style guide. I love the very grungy look the characters have to them along with how their personality has been captured in the expression and stance. 

When doing some further research on the punk movement I came across this amazing looking book and I decided to buy it since it looked so perfect to get ideas and refs from for this project. There are so many amazing images inside of both new and old punk fashion along with some iconic people such as the clash, pistols, Malcom and Viv which not only give my refs for the fashion but also ass further context to my project and give me more of a realistic understanding of the punk movement as a whole. I love the clothes that John Lydon is wearing in the image above. These are something I would like to include on my own character. The trousers, belt and chains are particularly iconic. I ended up reading the whole book because I found it so interesting, it was definitely a great purchase and has given me a lot more confidence when it comes to now tackling the first phase of my project. 

I have decided that I want my character to style wise be kind of a cross between Lydon and Vicious with nods to both of them plus Vivienne's amazing designs.

To begin my sculpt I began by blocking out a basic male figure using the kind of body type i wanted as a general reference. I then dynameshed these basic shapes together and then smoothed them down to get a good and clean base for me to start working into. I started adding some muscle definition using realistic diagrams of the male anatomy and a little statue that my lecturer learnt this to me showing the bone structure along with the muscular structure. Since this is my first time sculpting a male character I am quite nervous about getting the proportions accurate. Female figures have a lot less muscular definition in them since there is often more fat however male figures you can often see muscular structure more so getting the muscles accurate is essential to this project. My character will be a semi realistic style like final fantasy character however a lot of that will come from the textures apart from possibly exaggerated leg length. so far with this sculpt I have been finding the shoulder and chest area quite difficult since there is a lot of complex muscle and bone structure. I have been consistently working at low subdiv levels in order to change the overall shape of these areas to ensure accuracy. 

I am using Louis Partridges face as a refence for the structure of my characters face since he has a lot of strong bone structure and facial definition which I like and think would be interesting and challenging to sculp. So far I have been finding this a challenge since the soft and hard edges are quite complex and must all be realistic to a human skull. I have paid close attention to the distance between features such as the nose mouth eyes and eyebrows and related them somewhat to my references of louis partridge to achieve a convincing outcome. After some feedback I will be making any necessary changes to the face of my character. The key points of my characters facial structure are the high nose bridge, strong jawline and high prominent cheekbones all seen in the references I have been using of Louis face. I have so far enjoyed sculpting such a dynamically structured face and am hoping it will fit the overall punk rockstar type vibe I want to portray. Sex Pistols Sid Vicious had a similar face and body structure to that of what I am currently sculpting also. Some changes that I might want to make going forward is the size of the chin as it is looking quite small in relation to the rest of the proportions of the face. I also want to have a look at the side and front profile of the nose since I think it needs more prominence as this is a key aspect of louis face along with a strong masculine chin shape.

I receive some feedback for where I am currently at on the sculpt in my project. This also applies to the 2 images below as I will be making changes to the structure of the face as well. From my feedback I was informed that the shape and distance of the legs was off as they looked slightly bowed and far apart, also there is not much space for a rib cage so i will be adding some more shape to the area just under the arms where the ribcage will go. I will also be slightly modifying the shape of the trapezius muscle area since it is not completely accurate yet. 

I will now go on to make these changes and then start sculpting the clothing which is the part I am most looking forward to since I love using marvelous designer and am very passionate about punk fashion and Westwood clothing. I have already started this progress by simply masking and extracting the basic shape of the tight vivienne westwood long sleeve top that John Lydon is wearing in my primary fashion reference. Since the fabric is very close to the skin I dont think its necessary to use marvelous designer for this piece therefore I have chosen just to mask extract and then use any relevant deformation tools to help polish it up. Of course I will be going in by hand to add creases and fold where there would realistically be them using references of fabric ans the actual garment. 

I love using marvellous designer so I am very much looking forward to the next steps of this project. I used marvellous designer for the clothing of my previous FMP character the nun and it was extremely effect and saved a lot of time. I typically have some issues importing simulated fabric into zbrush so I have given myself a hit of time in order to trial and error and fix any mistakes that may come from this part of the process. I will be making both the trousers and the blazer style jacket on marvellous as these garments don't sit close to the skin and would have a lot of realistic fabric properties that I would have to hand sculpt. Sculpting fabric folds especially loose fabric can be challenging to make it look convincing. I plan to find some references of patterns of men's skinny trousers and blazers online so that I can draw up realistic pattern pieces to make the clothing from. In first term I also picked a brief in which I made a jacket on marvellous designer so I am relatively confident about using this software. It is also something I would like to develop my personal skills in continuing after these projects.  

I was originally going to model the trousers on one of the default mannequins from  marvelous designer since they line up with all the markers well however I decided against this since the trousers are skinny and tight form fitting so I felt it best to make them on my own sculpt so I would not have to mess with them in zbrush too much to make them fit perfectly.  For some reason marvelous was not picking up where the limbs of my character were, I think this may have been down to some sizing issues from exporting it from zbrush. I had to manually line the mannequin up as I really needs to utilize the deformation markers in marvelous as simulating fabric to fit around the model without them is really hard and comes with a set of issues. It was a lot of trial and error with editing the pattern pieces in the 2D viewport so that the fabric would fit nicely to my mannequin and also create some nice folds. I tried a lot of different kind of materials and structural properties to create folds where I wanted them. In the end the best way I found was to simply strengthen the fabric using the modifier however I still wasn't getting as many folds as I wanted. I am now looking back on this after by chance seeing a video on a pair of skinny jeans which look curved when not on the body in order to create lots of folds down the legs. If I was to do this again I would have made the 2D pattern pieces curved in this way like the skinny jeans I saw online to create this fit. I decided to freeze my simulation at the specific time and export it into zbrush and add any folds myself manually. I will show this part of the process further down in my blog. This was definitely one of the most challenging parts so far, I wish I had done a little more research on actual functioning patterns of skinny jeans before I started to see different methods I could go for to achieve different finishes on the fabric. 

I found the jacket to be a lot easier to make than the trousers since it didn't have to be as form fitting as the trousers. Since the jacket was going to be a little loose I decided to use the default marvelous mannequin rather than my import from zbrush since the simulation and tools work a lot better on this. I think contributed also as to why I was a lot faster working on this despite the pattern being more complicated. For this jacket I learnt from my previous mistakes with the trousers and did a lot of research on how different patterns would create different outcome of the silhouette. I used references I collected from various styles but my main reference with the image of Johnny Rotten wearing the Westwood outfit that is inspiring my whole character. The jacket appears to be relatively loose on him and in the middle between a jacket and a blazer type thing. I will be adding pockets. patches and any other details either in zbrush or substance painter if it does not effect the silhouette. the jacket Rotten is wearing appears to have different panels of fabric stitched and pinned on, this will be an interesting addition I plan to make and apply different types of fabric textures too. I am really excited to texture this jacket since the refence I am using has so many different elements and textures on it.  Since the jacket is a lot less form fitting than the trousers I was very satisfied with the amount of creases and folds I was able to achieve when simulating and hopefully will not need to sculpt much into it as I wanted to avoid doing this as much as possible in case it starts to loose its realism. 

The image on the right shows what the jacket looked like after I imported into into zbrush, added thickness, dynameshed, zremeshed and then subdivided to make sure the topo was clean for me to sculpt any details on to.  I decided to export the jacket and collar separately so that when I come to retop it will be easier for me to do so. When making these projects I am thinking clearly about how I might make processes more efficient for myself. I didn't have many issues with importing the jacket in apart from when I came to resizing it as I did not use my own model and used the default one. I had to use the Move tool quite a bit in the lowest subdiv in order for my jacket to fit my character well. 

The trousers looked very basic when I first imported them into zbrush therefore I have added quite a lot of extra folds using a lot of references as it could quite easily start to look oddly structured and unrealistic. When doing this I was considering the type of fabric that my jeans would be made from. On the reference of Rotten they look like they are made of a pleather type shiny material, in which case I think they would have quite a of creases compared to a more stiff fabric as plastic leather tends to be quite thin in comparison.  I am still not completely happy with the look of the trousers however I am going to leave them for now and move onto other parts of the clothing since I need to have made the shoes before I can finish them as this will dictate how they sit at the bottom and how they will effect the creasing. 

As I previously mentioned I struggled quite a bit to get the jacket to fit my character perfectly since I used the default marvellous mannequin to simulate it on so it wasn't a perfect fit. However after awhile of playing around I managed to get it to sit perfectly on in relation to the references I was using. I am quite happy with the structure of the jacket especially in relation to the collar and the shoulders which sit nicely on his frame. I don't think I will need to add many more creases apart from tension creases around the seam line where the stitches would be pulling the fabric. However saying this the fabric the jacket is made from is quite thick by the looks of it so there wouldn't be many visible tension creasing in it. 

If I was to do this differently I probably would have imported my character into marvellous to simulate the jacket on since having to mess around with resizing it and using the move tool to correct any structural issues wasn't an efficient use of my time. I need to find a way to make sure marvellous corresponds with my model so that the simulation works well on it. 

In the image on the right I have began adding some chains onto the jacket, I will then be fixing these on later in a way relevant to DIY customising techniques I have been researching.  For the chains I used an IMM brush. I have been thinking of ways that I am going to be able to make a low poly out of these and in doing so I exported the chains into 3DS max and started playing around with the pro optimize and retopoly modifer to see how effective it was in comparison to zremeshing to a low poly count. I found that using the pro optimise retopo modifier was actually much better than using zremesh as it was warping the shape of the chains too much. I have decided that from the retopologised chains made from the IMM brush I will then go on to Msmooth them to create a new high poly from the retopology modified low poly in max. This sounds very confusing to type but it was actually quite a quick and effective method for combating this. I decided against using a spline and array since the IMM brush in zbrush perfect allowed me to made the shape of the chains around the blazer in a non destructive way. I do realise though that I will have to individually unwrap every chain however since they are so small I am planning on trying to play around with the auto unwrap function in max to speed up this process since unwrapping each link individually will not be a good use of my time. 

As you can see from the images above I decided to completely re do the beret hat. Upon feedback and looking at it more I realise that it is actually very structurally inaccurate and the creases and folds don't correspond correctly to the way in which they would naturally occur. When i was modelling my first attempt I did not collect enough references for the hat and therefore it ended up looking wrong. I was mostly unhappy with how the silhouette looked since it didn't have the classic cupcake like shape berets tend to create. After my second attempt I am now much happier with how the beret has turned out it has more of the distinct shape I was looking for whilst the creases look convincing and natural. I would have liked to have had a go at making the hat on marvelous however I wasn't sure if it was the most suitable piece of software for doing so. 

Here are some screenshots of my finished sculpt. I am really happy with how he is looking so far. The shoes took me quite awhile but i think they came out well.

The way I went about making the pins was a mixture between editing on photoshop and Substance designer. I used actual photographs of safety pins and messed with the levels on designer and generated some masks in which I took into photo shop. I generated the normal map in designer with the ao and opacity maps I had made. I am really happy with the result and since I will need so many of them they are also very cheap geometry wise also. 

Today I have made a start on my characters retop process. Usually the retop is the most time consuming part of my pipeline so I have taken care to make sure I have given myself adequate time to do this. The clothing on this character is no where near as complicated or layered as that of my nuns clothing so I am hoping this retop will be less complicated as the nuns many layered skirts took a big chunk out of my planned time frames. I have started my retop as I usually d by first retopping the face by looping out any key areas of deformation first as this makes it a lot easier to start making sure everything can join together. In the second mage above I have made progress on the torso of my character. I have looped out the part of the clothing where the cut outs of the top are since not only did I have to try and capture the shape of the cut outs but also make sure that the shoulder had the correct deformation topology along side it. 

At this stage I have made the decision to make my characters jacket not removable. Originally I was planning to fully retop the arms as well as the jacket however I have decided against this since I am very conscious about my time. I would have really liked to have done this since the top is really unique and it would have been nice to have beauty shots of more variation however this is something I will have to do over summer. I will only be retopping up to the edge of the shoulders and then obviously the full jacket will be retopped. Then only the wrists and hands. 

I have managed to make a lot of progress on the retop since I last updated my blog since I think I am getting much better and quicker at it. I used to really struggle with retopping but I am glad that I have managed to get better with practise. I am trying to keep my topology as straight and eve as I can by using edge constraints and straightening as much as I can. I have used the relax conform tool along side drag and conform to achieve an even retop with good edge flow. The face is quite dense topology wise but since I have given myself a budget of 70k I feel as if it is ok to have this much geometry here since it will be the area where the player will look at most. The jacket and collar was quite awkward to retop since they are quite oddly shaped and do have some areas of deformation however since the jacket will be a statement part of my punk character I am ok to have spent a long time on them. There are areas which I have welded in and therefore plan on using material Id maps in painter in order to mask them out quickly and efficiently. 

Considering the alphas for the hair lashes and safety pins my character will be just under 60k. I am particularly happy with the geometry on the hands

My next step is to move onto the unwrap.

I have now finished the unwrap for my character however I really struggled to pack this since all my uvs were such weird organic shapes and I don't have much hard surface. When I tried straightening out some of the UVs it really messed up the checkerboard so I had to keep them mostly organic apart from relaxing some of the uvs. The sheet that is bothering me a lot is the trouser sheet since it is not very efficient however I just did not have time to think of an ulterior method for packing this since I am very aware of my time pressure to move onto baking. If I had more time I would definitely reconsider some of the pack for this character however I just don't have time. 

Unfortunately it did take me quite a bit of time to fix and I was still not able to get them perfect due to the presence of the seam lines in between. I have tried to hide the issues as much as I can with textures. They way I have dealt with this issues was exporting the normal and ao maps out of painter and into photoshop and by using the content aware patch tool to hand paint out any errors between the fingers. On the picture above you can see the harsh white lines between the fingers on the ao map. I blended these into the rest of the ao and then did the same for the normal map. Once I had finished this I imported them back into painter and replaced the old ones with the newly painted ones. This whole process did take me a couple of attempts to get right and it did take a lot longer than I had hoped. 

I am so happy with how the folds in the clothing have been picked up along with very small details. Luckily I was able to also paint out some issues on the normal map in photoshop and now my bake is pretty much perfect. I can now move on to texturing which is my favorite part. 

I posed my character using Mixamo due to time constraints and then edited the skinning and pose on max since due to the hands being inside the sleeves it did not pose my hands well at all so I had to re position them. I am really happy with this pose now since I think it related well to the narrative and his concept. The skinning was a bit awkward to fix and move around however I am pleased with the outcome and can import this into marmoset and unreal. 

To make these sheets I did them all in photoshop using a mixture of images I found online and editing and hand drawing. I used the automatic normal generator in photoshop and it worked so well. I have used the same maps for the hair on the punk and nun since they have the same kind of hair and style. 

I have also added eyelashes and alphas over the hair cap which I think has made a really big difference to the overall shading over the character. The eyelashes especially have added further depth to his face s before adding them it was quite uncanny looking. If I had more time I would like to have spent more time on my characters hair with the use of X gen in maya however along with my other 2 projects I didn't want the quality to suffer by adding full hair cards. In summer I may swap these out when I have some more time. Like i also mentioned I wanted to make it so you could remove his jacket however due to time constraints I was unable to do this which is ashame as I am super happy with how the texturing and original sculpt of the top looked. 

The lighting concept that I have gone with was based on a few references I found from sex pistols gigs. I wanted to create a dark atmosphere whilst also showing off my texturing.  I am not sure if it is too dark so I will ask for some feedback on this or ask my friend Jake who is specialized in lighting for some feedback. I do really like the blue light that I have used however I may have to slightly turn the brightness of the scene up in order for the character to be clearer. As for the pose I am also happy with this now that I have messed with the rigging in max and corrected any errors. I like the slouched yet cool stance he is in, as it fits well with his character.  

Moving forward I will be finishing off all my texturing, correcting any lighting issues, making a turntable, taking beauty shots and presenting in an unreal file with the correct texture sizes for a game ready character. 

I revisited my reference image so that I could further add to my textures just to push it the extra mile since I think parts of it were looking very plane. I went back to my book for some good ideas. I made some alphas of the classic destroy stencil and the spray painted Westwood logo to add on to my jacket. I also forgot to mention before that the badges are a nod to the sex pistols as Sid vicious worse the I'm a mess badge a lot. I also included his famous lock and chain necklace. 

Along with my beauty shot folder submission please see below some of my favourite renders from my marmoset scene. I am really pleased with my lighting scene here. Along with emulating the lighting from dead by daylight I also wanted to give it kind of a stage/ nigh time vibe to fit his narrative. I am very surprised at how well my hair cards and eyelashes have worked along with how the subsurface has nicely softened up my areas of natural scattering. 

Overall I am so pleased with this project and I have enjoyed making it so much. This has been my first time making a male character so I was very nervous about it however I am pleased with the way he looks. My favorite part about this project is definitely the textures since I did so much research and planning behind it in order to make it perfectly fit the narrative and the 70s punk movement since I would like to submit it to the punk exhibition happening in Leicester soon. Some things I would like to do differently would probably be to revisit the  UV pack since I had to rush it quite a lot to make time for the texturing which I did end up going back to quite a few times to add extra elements. Overall I am really proud of myself for finishing this project and I hope that you like him as well. I think I have been able to stick to my brief along with the dead by daylight style along side. I would love to make a female punk character to go with him in my own time as having a Sid and Nancy pair would be really cool! I have learnt so much from this project and it has developed my skills in many areas, particualy within my texturing and sculpting. I am really happy to add a male character to my portfolio as I hope that it can show I am able to make a wide range of characters. 

The end of my blog for my punk man <3