Week 15 and Beyond/ Final

Compositing in Photoshop

Here is a render of my final look for the character. I have decided to make the decision to not only change the composition, framing of the character, and the background, but I have also made the decision to remove the wings on the characters back. I figured that even though the wings add some nice detail to the overall look of the character, they can also look unnecessary and awkward for the type of shape of the character. They also tend to blend in with the character body too much so I think removing them make the character a little more streamlined, and clean.

The above image is not my final render but just an example of what the new framing and background will look like for the upcoming renders.

Final Renders

Reflective Learning Report

Looking back at this project I think there has been a lot of learning, trial and error, and experiencing ZBrush from someone who is using the software for the first time.

I know that I wanted to design a character who was detailed from a body perspective, but was not to detailed to a point where I would make it hard work for myself when actually sculpting the character mesh. Overall I was able to follow along the linked in learning tutorial well, with the most amount of time I spent on the whole process being the actual sculpting stage which I think was the most important level on getting the right anatomy and overall shape of the character from this stage. I opted to add a nice amount of detail to the character which did overall prove to be a problem because to add more detail I needed to add a higher poly count to the mesh. The problem here was the fact that added an extreme amount of polys to a mesh will eventually overall slow down the software, so when it came transposing the character it proved to be a problem with the software not being able to handle the large amount of polys moving to different areas. So I had to lower the poly count which worked well for the software as I was able to easily transpose the mesh to a comfortable level to get the right position that I wanted.

Another problem that I had was with the coloring process as I had a specific colors and ways a shading the character in mind that I shown through the concept art, however translating my designs to 3D when it comes to color did not always look right especially when it came to the rendering stage as the shading methods that I went for, caused the character to lost body parts that slightly blended into each other because of the colorization of the body. So I went through the process of breaking up the main color with other complementary colors that add to the personality of the character, and also make it easier for the eye to look at certain body parts.

Another learning curve that I went through on this module was have appropriate anatomy that was appropriate for the overall character design, and for how the character will look in 3D. When I began sculpting the character mesh I had some issues with the head being a little too small which did not match my concept art, and also looked not up too scale with the torso of the body. So I had to scale that up. I also had problems with the main torso which I also bulked up, and overall made a look of a more stout creature other than the more lean looking body I had with the concept art. Throughout the sculpting process I would go through the process of changing body parts, or enhancing or decreasing them which is just a part of the process on getting the most clean looking character that you can get for the render. But I did want to keep the areas of the body with the slightly cartoon/exaggerated body parts like the hands and feet to really emphasize the creature aspects of the character. This lead me to have some fun with the designing process at the concept stage of the character but also sculpting these disfigured body parts worked well for the beginner level that I am at.

Looking back at my final render I can see that for next time I will spend some more time on using more variations of color as I think I have the slight problem of color blending into each other which give the character a slight camouflaged look which I was kind of going for when I designed the character as I envisioned the character to mainly be seen in the dark, with a level of dark colors used as a backdrop for my final renders. but I opted when working on my final renders to use a lighter background that faded into the shadows as the the closer you zoom out from the focal length. Even though this background I think looks a lot better than my previous background from my mock up render, it does expose some of the primary highly saturated colors on the body from the focal area which looks a little distracting as the brighter colors from the focal area don't blend well into the harsher tones from the other parts of the body. But I do think that I was able to create a sense of atmosphere with the renders with the depth of shading that moves to the right side of the body. My goal when following the linked in learning tutorial was to really work on the composition side in Photoshop by emphasizing colors, and bringing in a certain mood and atmosphere which I think overall worked with the fog and darker tones of the background, but this means that the character body in the final render looks a little different to what the character mesh looks like for my final ZBrush submitted file as I knew that I was going to bring a lot of touch ups in Photoshop. I think how the character mesh looked in the final file is sort of a rough version with the raw lighting, that is ready to be transitioned into to Photoshop for my final render.

But overall, not inducing the obvious derailment of the module due to the Covid Pandemic, which caused a couple set backs to how I was moving along with the module. I think the project went well for my first time using the software. I think that this software was a lot easier to use than Maya, and I enjoyed going through the process steps of creating this creature character. There would be a couple changes I would make if I were to do this again but overall this was a successful project.