Autopsy Table

Rebirth

Welcome to my student blog!

This page has a brief documentation of all the steps I've taken to create one of my university projects for the first term of my final year at De Montfort University. From the top to the very bottom of this blog page, I carefully dissected my workflow week by week and captured the nearly four months of off-and-on work. This was by far my biggest 3D project at the time of its creation.

↓ Week 1 | Initial concepts and the beginning of the sculpt

2023.10.02 - 2023.10.06

I chose to do the Autopsy Table as my first project, because I really wanted to explore human anatomy more and try to showcase my skills with it. I planned to have it done in around two months, good chunk of the time period being dedicated to sculpting and setting up the scene nicely in engine. While I had thought about it a little before I started it, I was open to the project changing on-the-go.

My very initial concept was to have a guy laying on an autopsy table just after he'd performed his own heart transplant surgery, or had minimal help with it. I wanted to see if I can have my scene be set in a sort of fantasy-medieval universe, maybe putting a bit of magic into the mix and having the guy not die while doing this, furthermore, be able to perform it on himself, not bleed out, etc. He was going to be an original character of mine who I've always connected with the theme of rebirth, gratitude, strive to live. I sort of hoped I can also portray the topic of organ transplantation as something very positive and even beautiful. Though of course, it was a little tough to have it be in the image of just one person, when organ donation and transplantation are very social concepts, involving people's teamwork and communality.

When I started creating my moodboards and gathering inspiration, I found very artistic artworks of people opening their chests up. I also stumbled upon pictures of a surgeon who had to perform a surgery on himself and I found it to be a great reference for how delicate and brave the process of a surgery is, let alone when performed by one's self.

The more artistic and symbolic pieces at the top fit my narrative of a metaphor a little more, I also feel they gave me a good idea of what shape I'd want the hole with exposed insides take. This would be the first time I'd model anatomically correct insides and bones, so I knew these would be a few of many future references.

I tried to brainstorm about what things in life symbolize rebirth. Plants and flowers fit the definition of that, so I looked for references on how they've been merged with the human body in art.

The old, sick heart would have made areas of the guy's body look affected by necrosis, poor blood supply and appear discolored. As for the plants - they were going to be brown, wilted, dry, malnourished. I liked that these ones also looked like vessels.

I also began thinking about the small bit of environment and props I'd do for this project. I figured there would be the autopsy table on which the guy would be laying on and then a smaller table beside it. On the smaller table there would be a bowl of ice in which the new heart would have been sitting, perhaps a cloth and several surgical tools, as well as a syringe with some kind of anaesthesia cream. Overall I chose to aim for a color palette of earthy tones, have wooden props, although it's not the most ideal choice for a room that's supposed to be sanitary. As for the bowl of ice, I was told I'd have to put a cloth on top so the new heart wouldn't have had its nerves frozen prior to being given a new body to beat in.

After brainstorming a bit, I blocked my idea out in 3DsMax. Even though it was just block-outs, I made sure the props and body accord to their proper heights and sizes by scaling them correctly. As you may notice, I was still debating whether I'd have my scene be a sort of a slice, with a couple walls showing, or whether it was going to be just a bit of the floor. I decided I'd leave that decision for later.

Here, on the right, you can see my 2D concept for the top view of the character that was to be laying on the autopsy table. After discussing this with the tutors, I knew there had to be a drastic change in my concept: according to the brief, the character was moreso a prop, since they had to appear dead. Well... That didn't go too well with my idea of portraying a burst of life and rebirth, did it?

That's when we came to the conclusion that it would be good to have my scene capture the moment my character is appearing dead, but in reality, he'd be sort of fallen into a process of feeling his body adjusting to the new heart. It's a bit like what a hibernating animal would look like I assume. That meant I'd have to make sure his body is completely limp and relaxed, eyes preferably closed. I thought about keeping his lips curved to a soft smile - albeit a bit unrealistic for his state, it was to contribute to portraying how happy and relaxed he was having exchanged a diseased, sick part of his body into a new and healthy one. It was quite difficult to have my scene not be too confusing when there was a lot of topics and details involved in its metaphor.

I was suggested later on, during week 5, that my concept looked and felt a lot like one scene from the series 'Hannibal' (shown on the left), and it was quite funny how the elements and composition were so similar. I'd never even seen the series before. Though the shot pictured a murder, while mine - rebirth.

Coming back to 3D, I imported my block-out into zBrush and began shaping my character. With the tools Clay build-up, Move, Inflate and SculptrisPro I was able to form my base rather quickly and comfortably, working with zBrush like I always do - as if I had a big blob of clay to put more clay on it, or take some away. It might have helped to separate more of the body parts right away, but I did that a little bit later by masking the parts out, splitting them and then closing the holes on each of the meshes. At this time, it was important to get the basic body shape and proportions sorted. I did turn his head slightly to the side to have it look more natural. I debated on whether I should have his leg be bent at the knee and in the air or laid on the table. I also realized I should model the base without the hole in the chest for now, and leave to ''cut him open'' for later.

I quite enjoyed the process of defining his torso, arms and legs. The placement of his right forearm was an important process, since I didn't want it to intervene much with the opening of his chest. He wouldn't be gripping on the edge of it or something at this stage.

It was time to start working on the face. I started sculpting it with symmetry and I mostly used the previous tools to form the shapes and proportions. Before I started exploring unique features and attributes, I just worried about very basic male face features. I wanted him to have a smile, but I was fine with that possibly changing in the future.

I used the faces of these two people as my reference, hoping to find a nice middle ground between the two. Sort of a balance between handsome and.. a different kind of handsome. But, in my opinion, the guy on the right picture had slightly softer features. I really liked how they look.

The most difficult area to go about was definitely the closed eyes. I probably should have added spheres to sort of simulate eyeballs under the lids, but I also knew eyelids have a slightly different shape on their own, even when they go over the eyeballs.

The eyelid area definitely didn't accord to principles of facial anatomy at this stage, but I paid more attention to the mouth area and nose. Also added hair.

↓ On the very left, you can see a reference of a heart I found on Sketchfab. I sculpted a base for a healthy heart while looking at it, and took into consideration how many parts it is made of. I figured if I had a healthy one, for the diseased one I could just clone it and add elements of deterioration and sickness of some kind, like shrunken surface, cysts, discoloration.

I also sculpted the bowl, from which the healthy heart would be taken out of. I found a nice reference for it, and I added a couple metal staples at the side for it where it's cracked just like in the picture. It was very handy to have a set of seam brushes, and ones for different types of cracks. I used the Trim Smoothing Border tool for it too, giving an impression of a carved, not smoothed wood surface.

I then continued working on the anatomy of the character. It was cool to know I could cover the legs with a medical sheet if I were to be short on time, but I ultimately wanted to showcase it and leave them exposed. I found a good foot model on Sketchfab too, and I appreciated having the ability to turn it in many angles. It was a nice and naturally relaxed pose for it, too. It was important to keep an eye on how relaxed muscles looked, so a standing body reference didn't do.

Overall I'd say I was pretty quick with getting the basic proportions of the legs out, and I was fairly excited to start working on the toes.

Above this text is a snippet of a great anatomy reference I found. Unlike many other models and studies, this one wasn't too buff and had a healthy amount of fat, enabling me to see the subtle definitions and shapes of the body type I'd like my character to have.

Since my guy was laying, I had to keep in mind that the shoulders would be laid back and relaxed a bit, with the chest popping a bit upwards. Ultimately, my guy was going to be tall and muscular, sort of a very rare ''flawless'' type.

I used SculptrisPro a lot to create geometry on the go right where I needed, though later on I switched to a workflow using subdivisions, allowing me to pick the density of Active Points of my subtools depending on whether I am doing detail work, or cleaning up ''muddy'' surfaces. Ones that are supposed to be smooth but is a bit like goopy clay.

Little by little, it was adding up to look like a pretty good base. It felt like I was putting together a ken doll or somehting.

It really began to come togehter when I added the hands and the both legs, though in some polaces he definitely looked more tensed than he should be. I was still debating on the position of his left arm too, whether the inside of his palm would be facing upwards with the dead heart in it, or downwards.

Nearing the end of the week, I managed to add a bit of definition to his hand. I was consulting the tutors about it and was suggested to bend the fingers a little so they're laying more naturally, as well as maybe putting the middle and the ring finger together as they tend to gather a bit when relaxed. The wrist was quite thin at this stage too. But all in all, it was a quite productive first week.

↓ Week 2 | Environment props and a different character

2023.10.09 - 2023.10.13

This week I definitely focused more on the environment props, and also figured out a comfortable technical workflow for my retopping process. I am excited to bring in new programs into this project and broaden my familiarity with tools used in the industry.

Since it wasn't too late for this, I decided I'd switch out my original character that I wanted to use for this specific project with another one, because this other one is much more connected to nature, and his body type is more like what I already started to sculpt. Original characters are a lot like personality and body image ''presets'' for me, sort of just living in their own universe, their own stories. I don't attach them to any real life people, but I feel like visually it's good to find faces that represent original character concepts. I'm glad I was able to find this model whose face I really liked. I didn't aim for a 100% recreation, but it was good to have a visual goal of what features I tried to achieve. As for the character whose face I'd sculpted last week - I definitely planned to use him in university projects of the second term of our year. Time ad effort not wasted.

Above this text is how I recreated the face using these references. There was still a lot of work to do, but I was happy with how it was looking at this stage.

I had a lot of help from John, a great tutor and friend, with figuring out how to work with subdivisions in zBrush. Up until now, my go-to workflow was to have a fairly high-poly mesh and delete lower and higher subdivisions in order to use the Sculptris Pro tool. Sort of only getting the higher Active Point amount in only some areas. However, I knew it wasn't a good mesh to work with, especially because I couldn't reach the lower density version of the subtool to smooth its ''muddy'' surface. I was glad to know I can just project these details on the face on a much more "zRemesh-ed" subtool, and have it now be in like 8 different subdivision levels.

With the update, I decided I'd showcase the initial concepts for this character. He was highly inspired by Calypso from The Pirates of The Caribbean. Above are a couple of many drawings I made of him in 2018 and 2016, when I was 15. At that age, my best choice of name for him was... Calypsus. So creative! Apart from being heavily inspired by an already existing character, my guy was meant to be a sort of loner living in his own island, being feared and talked about as an angry sea monster since he'd scare away humans who'd stumble closer to his island, sort of just annoyed with them being intrusive... He is sort of superhuman as well with how he's connected to nature, is able to speak to plants, animals, and perhaps in this autopsy table scene he would have been nearing death due to his sick heart, and he chose to travel away from his island to a human tribe, searching for help. Then, one coincidental death within the tribe would have brought them to think of a way to give a new life to this urban legend of a man, who really wasn't all that scary... And maybe there was only a few medics in this fantasy tribe, making the surgery not the smoothest, having even involved Calypsus himself reaching inside of his chest and replacing his heart because of how scared and unexperienced the medics would have been. While it's complicated, this scenario works.

Below this text, you can see I also added different polygroups to the upper half of my guy. That was just so I could for example work on the arm without having to have it split off from the torso, and have it be a different subtool. I also began working on the two tables of the scene. A new concept idea for them was that they'd have a very fantasy-druid-nature type of vibe to them, and they'd be made very simply: tree trunks for a single leg, and a stone rectangle on the top. Sort of very primitive, but also visually intriguing in my opinion.

Here are some of the brushes I used to sculpt this. Very handy and definitely very time-saving. I used Dam Standard too, a LOT.

My coursemate was kind enough to share a skin brush pack with me, and I actually inverted a blackhead brush it had to give the stump a few knots. Guess human skin and tree bark have interestingly similar texture details.

For the stump of the autopsy table itself, I decided I'd just duplicate the one I'd made, make it larger, rotate it, and cut its height to be around the same as the smaller table's trunk. This way, while the asset parts are the same model, it wouldn't be easy to say they were duplicated the second they meet the eye. For less repetitiveness, I also planned to implement instanced alpha foliage pieces to the two, make sure they appear more different from one another.

After I was done sculpting them, I went ahead and moved to the retopping stage. Before that, I decimated the asset to around 150k tris, later 35k tris just to have Maya digest it more easily while I made a lower poly version of it. I found Maya to definitely be more fluid and user-friendly when it came to retopping, as well as a bit less buggy in general - something I wasn't surprised to discover due to how many rumors I've heard about it during the two years in the course...

I started out with a low-density retop, making sure I get the sharp angles of the silhouette right before I add swift loops and things. I figured that would be something I'd discuss with the tutors before I made any major topology changes.

I did switch back to 3DsMax when I was mostly done with the model, because I struggled to get comfortable with very particular areas that involved creating triangles sort of "in mid-air". The bridging, connecting tools to me seemed just a bit more difficult to get to work right. Another thing I didn't like in Maya's retopping workspace was that the retopped mesh didn't really let me see if it intersects through the high poly mesh underneath it or not - it's difficult to explain. Though I did appreciate majority of the process being easier to work with, so I decided I could just switch between Maya and 3DsMax while I do my retop for assets, since the two are so closely connected. After finishing in Maya, I had the option to simply "send the scene to 3DsMax and I found it really neat. As for the aspect of time - I was ready for an organic asset part that was this intricate to take up a lot of attention. I am just glad I am allowed to use triangles in areas I really struggled to form quads in. Since it's a static mesh, I think they are alright to use. Something I also was happy about was the fact that I didn't really have a budget for this project. Though I knew I had to make reasonable choices.

I found plenty cool references for old-fashioned tools like medieval sheers for scissors, dagger-like scalpels, bone cutters. I made tweezers too. Over all, I knew it would sum up to be around 5 - 6 different surgical tools.

I continued focusing on the props of the scene and made a few surgical tools in 3DsMax. I planned to import these into zBrush and have a high poly models to bake into these low poly ones. While I hoped to not make them too dense, they had really delicate and rounded shapes - I really wanted to portray them as they are. Also planned to group them for explosive baking.

I sort of modeled the tools by following the top view photos for the most part, other ones just vaguely recreated from different angle pictures. Starting with a plane, then extruding it, then 'chamfering' the edges, etc. By far the most intricate one was the bone cutter. Because it was going to be the biggest tool too, I wanted to pay extra attention to its constructive details. I planned for the high poly sculpt do really enhance the model, too.

↓ Week 3 | Focus on anatomy and hair

2023.10.16 - 2023.10.23

This week I went back to working on my most important asset of the scene - the character. I'd say ''the body'', but technically, it's not just his body there. He's alive. Just.. Having a snooze. I did a lot of sculpting this week in zBrush. Around this time was also when I asked for feedback on my overall blog layout and writing style. I realized I was writing a bit too much, and at times a bit unnecessarily, so... For some good news - from this point on, I had decided I'd be more straight-to-the point when documenting my work.

With a great amount of John's help, I connected the different body parts into a single mesh, leaving them separated only by polygroups. Understanding a workflow with different polygroups was eye-opening, as I found it incredibly comfortable to switch between them and to mask them out if I didn't want them to effect the rest of the subtool. Lower subdivision smoothing allowed to remove any visible seams between different polygroup parts, and it all became a much more easy workflow.

One thing I did regret later on was not considering there would be a gap between the big toe and the rest of the toes. Since the mesh was zRemeshed like this, majorly changing a part like that required me to really manipulate and skew the topology 'against its will', to a point where it became a little un-manageable. Further progress will visually document what I mean. But, at the end of the day, the toes weren't going to be the main focus.

Working with multiple subdivisions allowed me to sculpt much more clean and smooth. I sarted to focus on hands, ears, feet.

I blocked out the front of the ribcage in 3DsMax by putting it in a box of references, and modeling a little more than I needed, just in case I were to change the shape of the gap in the character's chest. While placing the ribs inside of the gap, I had to take into consideration how deep it would be under the skin, how it would be tilted, and how much of the chest muscle would lay on top of it.

For the hair, I wanted to have him have either dreadlocks, or weaves. I liked the reference I found for it (on the left). I tried working with zSpheres for a bit but then doubted myself in fear of it appearing 'too technical' for what I'm used to doing. So, I made it my way: starting with a big blob of clay, and shaping it with SculptrisPro into what I found to look pretty.

And while it was more preferable of a workflow for me, I quickly realized with the help of a couple tutors that I was setting myself for far more work than I could handle. Retopping, unwrapping this and saving texture space was looking to be one hell of a task if I didn't change my approach towards it. While it was a good concept of a vision, next week would be when I changed my approach on this part of my model.

↓ Week 4 | Finalizing the sculpt, retopping and test-baking

2023.10.23 - 2023.10.27

This week was very productive. During it I broadened my knowledge of anatomy in the more particular areas especially - such as the way the skin folds when relaxed, the way the joints of the fingers are constructed and the position of the heart inside the body.

I learned the heart would be barely showing since it's surrounded by the lungs, but for the sake of the delivery of the composition, my character would have 'nudged' his lung to better expose the bed of the new heart before putting it inside. This area was going to be the main focus of the whole scene, so I paid close attention to doing a lot of carefully thought-out sculpting with it.

I split off the part of his sternum and ribs that he'd have cut out using the bone cutter and placed it beside, keeping in mind the position of that piece might change. I also added branches that would be sprouting out of him from the burst of energy flow from the new heart.

I enjoyed shaping out his hands and chest a lot and having Teo help me along the way taught me to be especially attentive when referencing real-life bodies, physical anatomy models we had at the university, photographs of live models and even traditional artworks. I felt myself wanting to lean towards stylizing the anatomy here and there but overall, I think I was nearing a realistic appearance with the character's body structure, despite the unrealistic fantasy setting he was in. It was fun to sculpt the diseased and ill heart in his left hand, documented below this text. I kept in mind texture work was going to add to it a lot.

As mentioned in the previous week, my initial attempt at sculpting the dreadlocks/weaves wasn't going to do me any good. With the help of Lincoln and Will, I gave zSpheres a second chance and realized working with them wasn't so bad and scary for me, after all. After making the set of zSpheres a mesh with Adaptive skin, I used the polish tool to give the locks their fluid shapes as well as a very tidy topology. I was told I can export these meshes as low poly retop for the bake before I divide it and sculpt each of the weaves. On the texture sheets, I'd have had to do my best to make them just rectangles - unwrapped cylinders with a single seam on the side.

Under the singled-out locks, I made ones that were more chunky, to sort of fill in the gaps and to later on be able to have them imitate a pile of single locks under his head and torso.

Another coursemate, Ella, of mine suggested I reference the hairstyles of some Indian tribes since they tend to style their weaves/locks in a very unique fashion. I found these specific pictures to be a brilliant reference fpr the king of wispy hairs/baby hairs that I planned to give to my character using alphas later on.

Before I could retop th full body, I separated it out into body parts. I found it very efficient to work on smaller, more attention-requiring parts of it first, before I connected them to the more chunky meshes. And since I didn't have to focus too much on creating animation loops, I allowed my main focus to be keeping as much of the proper silhouette as I could, within a reasonable amount of tris. For the body (without the insides, ribcage, hearts and hair), I ended up using under 16 000 tris, which I was told by a tutor to be a fair and rather economical amount.

The main worry I had was the character's right hand having to be exploded when baking, but I knew how to do it.

I modeled the ice in the bowl and it was a huge task to figure out how I was going to retop them but I ended up decimating them a lot and deleting the topology that wasn't visible. As you can see below, I even tried to just conform a high-poly plane to it.

Test-baking went great, it allowed me to see if I needed to explode any areas of the bowl, which I did, and made me make smart adjustments to my unwraps. I'm glad to have given the more organic assets a non-wasteful amount of tris while also maintaining their complicated silhouettes. With how big these parts of the props would be, I knew it was going to be important to not have their surface look faceted from certain angles. But I also knew some parts were going to be less important compositionally, too. For example, the bottoms of the tables. Or the tree trunks. I knew that the assets most dense in topology were going to be the character and his hair.

↓ (Baking error which I fixed)

Key points for the

formative presentation

TO DO:

Finalize assets (Mostly texture work);
Set up the scene in engine;
Create alpha foliage to instance in engine;
Setup lighting;
Possibly animate the healthy heart beating.

Sculpt, retop, unwrap:

Hair (Retop/LP is sorted); ✓
Surgical tools (Retop/LP is sorted); ✓
3 cloths using cloth modifier in 3DsMax (across body, on the bowl, on the smaller table) (Retop /LP will be sorted due to the modifier); ✓
Small bowl with numbing cream, magic elixir; ✓
Branches coming out of chest (only touch-ups) ✓

Only retop:

Hearts, ribcage, insides; ✓
Some of the hair. ✓

Set up the texture sheets:

4096 x 4096 - Character ✓

(Character's body, hearts, insides, ribcage, branches, cloth across the body); ✓

2048 x 2048 - Hair ✓

(Dreadlocks/weaves, their accessories like rings or intertwined roots and branches, beads);

4096 x 4096 - Environment ✓

(Autopsy table, smaller table, bowl with ice and cloth, cloth beside the bowl, surgical tools and numbing cream bowl).

↓ Week 5 | Final baking and Unwrapping

2023.10.30 - 2023.11.03

It was useful to write down all that I had left to do. Since my scene had quite a lot going on, it made sense that there was still a lot of work left to do. I set my mindset to focus on one thing at a time though, and kept my hopes and motivation for this project up.

Test unwrap of the character's body for the test bake.

It was good to see how I'd have to explode my model, as well as how the cage interacted with my high and low poly models. I had a lot of help from Lincoln with this specific area, but fully understood how it was to be done in the end. The important part was for the AO to bake nicely with the unexploded meshes.

During this week I also finished up the hair. I learned dreadlocks were a ton of work, and I could only imagine how much time I would have taken trying to sculpt the hair the initial way I tried to do it.

↑ Brush texture

I cleverly used a brush that was meant to create lip texture for the subdivided individual strands. I really liked the sort of messily-weaved look it gave, looking almost as if some of the strands had been wrapped around itself, intertwined and weaved through one another. The process of individual sculpting like this took up a lot of time, but I knew it was going to save texturework time.

Separating the hair into 'strands' and 'chunks' really helped me not get overwhelmed. There were four of the 'chunks' - Top Left, Top Right, Bottom Left, Bottom Right. I was glad to see they baked great while not being too expensive budget-wise. It was the individual strands that took up most of the hair tri count.

A tidy, organized workspace was key when working with this many assets. I even had a separate 3DsMax file for my exploded model. It was also because I liked my high poly assets to be in the same workspace, too, and there was so many million tris that 3DsMax could handle before becoming slow.

The character's body and organs came out to be 18 200 tris. Like planned initially, fit it into a 4096 x 4096 sheet.

While the hair of my character was fit into a much smaller 2048 x 2048 sheet, it took up a hefty 23 950 tris.

The environment assets added up to be 12 090 tris unwrapped over a big 4096 x 4096 sheet. My scene was ready for baking.

↓ Week 6 | Texturing and importation into Unreal Engine 5

2023.11.06 - 2023.11.10

Below this text, you can see how my model baked after exploded-baking the normal maps of all of his assets. On the left you've got the freshly 'reunited' baked meshes with no interaction, and on the right you can see it with the added Ambient Occlussion. Incredible difference, and a crucial step to a good character model that I unfortunately hadn't paid this much attention to in my past projects.

Here at the top you can see the low poly scene I imported into UE5. For some reason, it gave his hair a separate pink material, and I can't say I had complaints about that...

With the baking done all nice and flawless, I dived right into the texturing stage. I very much enjoyed beginning to texture the character and I couldn't wait to explore the subsurface profile aspect, texture the insides as well.

I also realized that his locks are going to be a bit of a task in terms of making them not look plastic/ too dense. At the end of the day, hair wasn't solid.

It really helped to use the Mold brush technique on the face, making it so that there are realistic color undertones within the skin. It was good especially because it gave more life to his complexity, and technically he was becoming more alive than ever in the scene. The brush also provided a very organic texture.

I had to be especially observant with the stone texture as it was a huge asset of my scene. I really liked how it came out, especially with the lighter marks and patterns on it. Lincoln once again assisted me here since he is stronger at realism.

The cracks helped give it some age, and the blood on the tools showed how my scene captured a moment just after the surgery had been done.

↓ Week 7 | Texturing

2023.11.13 - 2023.11.17

During this week I focused a little more on my other project, though I did work on texturing my character, as well. As you can see below this text, I gave a major update to his skin. In terms of the color palette, I hoped to portray his exhaustion and the pain he had to endure (dark under-eyes, tensed veins), as well as how much the diseased heart had effected his more delicate areas, such as the nasty open sores and cracks on his lips. I enjoyed applying freckles all over his body using the handy spot and splatter brush alphas and a hint of height for the bigger birth marks he has. The picture references helped a lot with determining the shade of beige I needed for his lips.

He was coming along quite nicely. I received feedback from the tutors suggesting me to have the darker, 'necrotized'-like skin to actually be darker because it was showing up much darker in Unreal Engine. I was also advised to have the darker tone to be spread higher above his knees, possibly up to his waist. For the actual texture of the dead skin, I used a 'mud splash' alpha brush enhanced with some height, sort of appearing as if the skin is deteriorating. I think the tensed veins helped show he is still alive, though I knew I'd have to adjust their positions.

This week I also tried out marvelous, after which I realized it may be better for me to hand-sculpt the cloths in ZBrush just because of how I wanted them to appear very specifically posed. I feared marvelous couldn't provide me with the mesh manipulation I needed in order to create the very intricate and fluid shape I wanted the assets to have.

↓ Week 8 | Alphas, cloths, texturing, Designer and Unreal Engine

2023.11.20 - 2023.11.24

It was a little distressing coming to terms with the fact that this week, according to my speculation a couple months ago, was supposed to be the last week for this project. I allowed that to be nothing but motivation for me to work faster on it, instead of panicking.

WHAT IS LEFT TO DO:

Finalize assets (Mostly texture work); ✓

Setup lighting; ✓

Make the healthy heart beating. ✓

Sculpt, retop, unwrap, texture:

3 cloths using zBrush (across body, on the bowl, on the smaller table) ✓

Create tileable textures in Designer, put on basic shapes in UE5 (cylinders and planes):

2 stone textures; ✓
1 plaster texture. ✓

Create alphas (add PBR in Painter):

Hair alphas; ✓
Foliage (grass, blossoms, vines, other). ✓

It was again time to make a little table of stuff I needed to do, I really liked the last time I did it. I feel it grounded me in a way, as well as brought me to be aware of my time and the end result of my project.

Here are some wisp hair and loose hair strands alphas I made. They were going to be on the same sheet as the eyelashes and the foliage, but I was sure to have them masked out separately for any shader profiles in UE5 (such as different subsurface scattering for the foliage). I was also excited to apply a bit of height to these if I needed to.

I carefully applied the cloned alphas inside of 3DsMax instead of instancing them in UE5 as they needed a nudge of the verts here and there since they weren't completely flat. It added to the character tri-count, but they weren't very expensive at all.

My next goal was to make foliage, and I was quite nervous about it as I've not properly made foliage before - only flat planes with pictures of plants on them. With this project, I wasn't going to use photographs for the foliage. Instead I decided I'd try to sculpt them in zBrush and then bake them.

As I said earlier, I was going to take the non-technical route when making the cloths for my scene. By that I mean I wasn't going to use the very tool that was made for this... Instead I wanted to use a skill that I had, and trusted more than I did a program completely new to me. The retopping process of my hand-sculpted pieces of cloth was far more time-consuming than the actual making of them, but I was very excited to have the sculpt come out exactly how I wanted it to. While I made mine more stylized, the references of ancient sculptures were very handy, assisting me into understanding and imagining how a cloth mesh would fold, nudge and curl when moved a certain way. Sculptris Pro once again majorly assisted me when making such organic shapes.

I made a little gif to schowcase how I used Sculptris Pro most of the time when sculpting these cloth pieces, four in total. It provided me with extremely dense topology wherever I needed, and when I was satisfied with the final shape of the sculpt, I ZRemeshed it with 'Detect Edges' and 'Keep Creases' options on, then remeshed it again to half its tri-count, then used the 'Polish' tool in 'Deformation. The remeshing provided me with topology that was much more clean, as well as got rid of any 'muddiness' left by ZSculptris. Overall a very satisfying process to me, personally.

This week I also worked on the environment, deciding not to have my character be in complete darkness. I was set on making a very primitive looking circular surgery room with a few Substance Designer textures and a load of instanced foliage. As I brainstormed at the start of the project, the tribe the surgery was to take part in was very nature-focused, and it would show in the furniture and room of the surgery. It was honestly fair to assume they've stolen the bone-cutter from a much more evolved society nearby. As you may notice, I flipped the trunk of the surgical table following the advice of one of the tutors. I had mixed feelings about it, but it was only an experiment, and I'm glad I followed the suggestion to think a little 'out of the box'. Unfortunately the underside of it would have needed far more attention brought to it if I wanted it to keep it that way, so 'right side up' trunks were my final decision.

While partially following this Substance Designer Cobble Stone tutorial, I made the floor texture for the scene - a very old, unpolished tile of stone chunks that would have some grass alphas sprouting out of it. It looks a bit wet here, but I applied some roughness and fixed it.

↓ Finalizing the Autopsy Table project

2023.12.11- 2023.01.26

This section of the blog covers the final steps I made while wrapping this project up. I mainly had to finish the texturing and make some alphas. Sounded simple, right? Well, it took a bit longer than I expected, because the I saw the scene packed with opportunities that I could not miss out on, wanting to tweak it and add more to it each time I looked at it again.

And I was quite nervous about the texturing - especially the hair. This type of weaves was incredibly difficult to portray in a form of a solid mesh, especially when aiming for a realistic look. I feared it looked too much like wood, or too plastic. I was happy with how I continued the necrotized parts of the body to drag out, evenly distanced from the chest cavity, and also lightened the darkness.

I feared for the cavity in his chest to not appear too dry, but the glossiness really helped cover that. As you can see, I was a bit confused about where the blood would flow downwards, so here it sort of flows just to the sides. I realized later that it would more likely follow the shape of the body, flowing towards his neck.

By far what got me most excited out of the finishing touches on my texturing was 'animating' the heart. It was really just the 'SimpleGrassWind' shader that I masked out to apply only to the healthy heart, and plugged into the atmospheric displacement option.

I was later suggested to add more discoloration around the cavity in his chest, however I needed to keep in account it wouldn't represent an older bruise with any yellow or green tints. Instead, I added red and maroon.

To combat the hair having a rather wood-like, harsh solid texture, I followed John's suggestion to add a bit of fresnel to its material. I think it helped add a tiny bit of fuzz to it, helping it appear more like dreadlocks. And I did get rid of the soft lighter gradient because it wasn't doing any favors to the texture that I'd given it. So even though it went against the original character's concept, I made the change for a better 3D result.

I made a couple aged plaster textures in designer that were very similar to each other, and put them onto the box I'd made. I ditched the route of using basic shapes UE5 has, since they didn't assure a symmetrical room that I was going for. Instead, this box had 438 tris in 3DsMax.

I also decided I'd give some blue emission to the ice and the magical 'surgery liquids' in the bowls. I feel like it helped the narrative of the scene, making this whole procedure evermore majestic and possible to have been done in a fantasy setting.

My coursemate Lincoln helped me apply a very soft pulsation to the emissive maps. I really liked it since it helped deliver the magical aspect of it. I later on put the emissives on the rest of the body, too.

I had a lot of help from our tutor John with my lighting setup, as it was a bit difficult to get it right. Since this was a bit of an environment piece too, lighting complexity mattered a lot, and it was important to not have the scene over-lit. As you can see, I basically used 3 rectangle lights, no directional lighting, and some really nice effects from the exponential height fog and post process volume. I was relieved to hear that some redness in the light complexity was allowed. That rect light was important.

It was finally time to tackle the foliage around the scene, too, so I re-gathered the references I had, and prepared myself for some environment work. I first wanted to focus on a few variations of leaves.

I'd never sculpted leaves before, so I only later realized I didn't need the stems. Since the bake failed on the 4 tri planes, I made a temporary higher poly retop version, only to absorb the sculpt information better for the bake. Once that worked out, I textured my leaves.

This was sort of a test I did, as you can see, the leaves were way too big.

My scene gained a lot of life with the ivy foliage. I made a mask for a specular map, making sure the hair alphas weren't effected by the AOR and normal information that the leaves had. I also added some foliage subsurface scattering for a more natural discoloration of the ivy leaves.

All in all, I used 9 types of ivy foliage that were 1000 tris together, and were all to be instanced in UE5. I was happy with how they looked, and ended up just changing their hue and saturation to have them be a bit colder later on. I also manually merged the sheets for the tables and tools in Photoshop, going from 6 sheets to just 3, and having them all be just 'props':

Since there wasn't really a way my character would have gotten into this room, I gave it an opening by adding just adding a bit of topology to one of the planes in 3DsMax.

This was around the time I also set up a camera and its pathway for the turntable video. It felt really cool being able to choose how I wanted the scene to be showcased in video format.

I want to mention, just in case, that the background music track featured in my hand-in fly-through video of this scene was created by Ludwig Goransson and it belongs to the brilliant soundtrack of the movie Oppenheimer, and I will be sure to mention it with the credit on my Art Station post.

I was suggested by my tutor Teo to de-saturate the heart's color and make it appear a bit less orange in my UE5 scene, however it was a bit difficult since the viewport in Substance Painter was giving me a different impression than UE5 (pictured in the screenshot on the left). Along with that, I was told to darken the blood around the cavity's edges and make it less glossy, and darken the nipples to have a more clear circular shape.

I'd done plenty adjustments to the focal area of the scene - the chest cavity. Numerous times I changed the hue, saturation and lightness of the heart, darkened the blood, adjusted its roughness, fiddled with the shape and size of the character's nipples. All to fit the best result I could achieve before the final sprinkle of geometry on him.

Since the concepting stage of the project I had wanted to add foliage in this area, hoping for it to represent rebirth and a tragic but beautiful awakening.

I don't know the name of this flower, but it looked very fitting for the scene, especially since it was such an oddly shaped little bloom.

Final 3DsMax close-up

Final Unreal Engine 5 close-up

Beauty shots and Post-Mortem of the project

(Post-Mortem, literally... Haha!)

(Except he's alive)

After the final touches and adjustments of the scene, it was time for this project to come to an end. Starting with the positives, I was to mention that I am satisfied and proud of this artwork, and I am happy with its addition to my portfolio. Not only does it cover the academic brief I was given, it also helps showcase a bit of my love for metaphors, poetic interpretations and general creativity when portraying typically gut-wrenching concepts such as a cut-open body. Since the start, I had been grateful for the tutors for allowing me to in a way translate the 'autopsy table' into something along the lines of 'self-heart transplant on a primitive table plus magic and flowers'. While the scene is very crowded and busy, I just feel that the details really tie in together to create a tragic harmonious piece.

I feel like this project showcases my strong anatomy knowledge, passion-driven semi-realistic sculpting and texturing skills and a sense of composition. Without the instanced foliage, the scene sums up to be a little over 67 000 tris, though I believe no areas where topology was used wastefully, in fact, I'd say something like the side table top could use a less faceted silhouette.

I am most happy about the scene looking great aesthetically. Texture-wide, I think I could have done a better job on the cloths and the tabletops. I was happy to get the hair looking as best as it can, though with the rough fuzziness that the fresnel gave it, the baby hair alphas were looking a little out of place. It was a difficult concept choice on my end to begin with, but I know I did my best to try and achieve the vision with the skill and knowledge I had at that time. Desaturating the floor tile helped have it be less noisy, better helping the eye to focus on the focal points of the scene.

I feel like this project did show I've improved since my previous year of university, however, I cannot stress enough to myself about how there is so much more for me to improve on. Aspects of my ability and skill aside, I am still very wasteful with my time, at times irrational with my self-esteem, struggling with managing my priorities and scheduling, and it all unfortunately did not allow me to give give this project my best. While I am happy with it, I know my vision deserved an even better delivery. This showed me it's bittersweet to grow so attached to academic projects, especially when I sometimes have a perfectionistic mindset. Either way, I feel it is still a great addition to my portfolio, and it's very important for me to remember that I am still learning.

I appreciate you reading through my blog, and I apologize for the rambling all across it...!

Google Sites

Report abuse