Embedded Files
Welcome to my personal student blog!
Here you can find my 3D coursework that I've made during the year 2023, while studying at De Montfort University. This particular page showcases my projects for the course 'Game Art' and its module 'Game Production', where I created a couple 3D projects during my second year and second term - the Saddled Creature project, and the Humanoid Character (Group) project.
I've separated my workflow week-by-week, and each week is sort of stacked on top of one another through-out the page. In order to see the start of the Saddled Creature project featuring a horned lion, scroll to the very bottom of this website where you will meet Week 15. Later on, Week 20 marked the start of my the Humanoid Character project. Enjoy!
Character Project beauty renders
Unfortunately, our main Group Project level wasn't gathered and put together in a single UE4 file with the appropriate environment that we had created a bit of lore for. The tutors said it was alright to only have our own separate projects, though, and I wasn't stressed about it as I knew we'd be graded independently as well. And so, here are the beauty renders of my personal part of the group project - the Prowler.
The amount of adoration I had for this character was huge. I put so much time, effort and passion into him, that I can confidentally say he is the best 3D project that I had ever made. I felt in my element when working with all the programs and I gained a ton more experience and knowledge with all of the processes that were involved in making a PBR textured 3D character. The Prowler is an unforgettable project to me, and my only regret was probably the fact that I could have rigged him manually, providing him a slightly more dynamic pose for my presentation. I also really wanted to get a bit more of the experience as a group and work alongside my coursemates during the process of combining all of our projects together, but I am confident there will be another opportunity for me to work in a team.
Finalizing the Prowler
I used Mixamo for the posing and slight animation of my character and I was happy to see his model not have practically any issues with clipping or skinning that the program automatically gave him. Obviously it was because of the simplicity of the pose, too.
I re-unwrapped the alphas a few times since I changed up the way the planes needed to be positioned, as well as deciding that his necklace could be the one that I own myself. I took a close-up and put it on my texture sheet, hoping to achieve a nice effect of it being a little sphere. I added a bit of a yarn/rope texture to the string of it, and I think it turned out good.
With the model now fully taken care of, I moved onto working on the base. Guess what - I made my character stand on a floating rock again, just like I did with my lion. I sculpted it in zBrush, then decimated it to a reasonable amount of tris (around 4 000), and re-conformed it to the high poly sculpt in 3DsMax.
I'm not sure why I had an obsession for floating rocks, I honestly just think they went along very nicely with the Sky Sphere in UE4. I already had a vision of it put right in there, and I knew I could duplicate it and rotate it slightly for a separate little showcase of the props I made beside my character.
After baking it, I textured it and imported it into my UE4 file right away. Just as I expected, it looked DAZZLING (in my opinion), and didn't need any explanation as to why it was there whatsoever.
I separated out the extra armor prop for my tutors to be able to distinguish from the rest of the model as well, and I figured it would be fine to just have it floating in mid-air like that.
With a bit of subsurface scattering applied to his ears (crucial detail), My character was ready for the final lighting adjustments as well as the importation of the props. And so, the huge project came to a successful final result. I was excited to take some pretty close-ups with the beauty renders and call it a day.
Week 30 | Texturing and UE4
2023.04.24 - 2023.04.28
I copied the thick rubbery texture that I gave the hood across to the rest of the body, having a look at which areas could use a similar type of material. Of course I made the cloak's cape match the hood, and gave it a nice gradient effect that I later on lightened up a bit. I finalized my extra armor prop afterwards and gained a texture that I could copy over the rest of the same materials as well - the belts' leather.
For some reason, I missed the fact that my curvature map didn't bake at all, so I went back in my 'Bake Meshes Menu' and re-baked it after re-importing the correct files together. At this stage I realized I'd done half of the work for myself with giving my sculpt a texture, and I liked how I could kind of pick what I could do more in zBrush and what I left out for texturing.
I added more detail and height to the Prowler's face and hair next, resulting in a very nice effect of his hair being a bundle of strands instead of just a singular mass that reminded of clay. Providing a bit of height to the eyebrows helped them look more realistic as well, and I think te face was now done. I did make a note to create some eyelash alphas for him later, too.
As you may notice in the previous screenshots, I did encounter a thickness map error right on his neck which I tried my best to cover up by using numerous amounts of layer effects and fill layers. I gave him a little mole there alongside the problematic outline that I couldn't get rid of, in hopes to have the eye cling to it instead of the strange outline that the error gave. I did realize that it was still a bit of an issue later on in UE4, but it strangely passed as just a better lit area of his skin.
Above this text you can see the final, fully textured model that I think came out looking great. The dark earthy tones of the shirt, pants, corset as well as all the different values of brown across the model really provided him a rather grungy and semi-realistic look, fitting in perfectly with the group project's theme.
I worked on making a couple alphas next, which were going to be a necklace as well as eyelashes. You can see on the right side that I was very excited about supposedly being one tri under budget because believe it or not, I still thought our budget was 23 000 tris instead of 25 000. Well done, me.
At this stage I imported him into Unreal Engine 4 not posed, because I wanted to work on his alphas and get a more presentation-accurate result with them than I would have in 3DsMax. The blue squiggles show my attempts to locate the alphas on their maps in Photoshop.
I felt the project coming to an end, and I was excited to get it done. What was left to do was the pose and presentation.
Week 29 | Baking, start of texturing and props
2023.04.17 - 2023.04.21
As I mentioned earlier, I was really set on decimating my high poly sculpt in zBrush just enough for it to not crash 3DsMax, still being good and detailed enough for the bake.
The screenshot above this text featured that exact version of the mesh, and as you can see it was high poly enough for the details to still remain in tack and ready to be baked into the low poly retopped mesh that I had just finished working on.
I mentioned in my post last week that I had over-lapped a few of the back face meshes of the belts onto the right sides of them on their sheet, and this is how it baked, gifting me a few very clear baking errors. It was great experience for the further expansion of my knowledge of unwrapping and baking synergy, and it surely taught me to never put UVs on top of each other for PBR texturing.
I was once again thankfully assisted by Lincoln when understanding the point of exploded baking, now in a far more complex sculpt than the lion which practically consisted of two meshes. The Prowler needed to be separated out into a fair amount of pieces, making him look a bit like one of those 'DIY' toy kits involving separate parts of a character all spread out. As you can see here, the parts are all colorful because they had different Material IDs. Which I learned to be an issue.
It brings me to mention that I found the answer to a question which was very confusing to me. I kept thinking that Material IDs were pretty much dependent on the separate parts one would explode their multiple meshes in, resulting in me having a ton of Material IDs at first. But later on I realized that the IDs only needed to be assigned accordingly to the way the texture sheets of the mesh were separated out, and that's exactly what I did, then proceeded with the exploded baking again. At the end of the day, four texture sheets (head and hands, body, eyes and the prop) meant four Material IDs, meant four texture sheets in Substance Painter.
This here is a screenshot I took of the nearly unexploded bake I did, resulting in many areas bleeding onto one another and the overall material being dark in places where it shouldn't. When I re-exploded it and baked it back onto the connected low poly model, I was happy to see that even the most worrisome areas (such as the ends of the planks for my extra armor prop) baked perfectly fine.
I took screenshots for a comparison particularly of the face here, and you can really see how nice and clean the bake is especially in the areas that the two meshes connect. I felt very grateful for learning about exploded baking after seeing these awesome results, I feel like they're a crucial part of the basic baking knowledge.
The first thing I textured was the face. I did use Smart Materials across all of the model, but I made sure to customize them according to my own liking to a point where the materials seemed very far from their initial look. For the skin, for example, I used one of the skin texture presets, but only because they had a nice dense pore texture and adjustable red spots that passed very well as freshly healed up wounds and battle marks.
I gave my man a scar on his upper lip that had quite a big height level, making it pop out nicely since real-life scars were bumpy as well. I painted the rest of his lips and gave him a blush in the appropriate areas, and I also gave him eyebrows, and he was very rapidly becoming far more cool-looking than I ever thought he'd be.
I then proceeded with tackling the asset I felt slightly more anxious about, my prop. I didn't mention earlier, but the actual premise of it was basically that it was meant to for example fall off or break once the character took a certain amount of damage. So the character could function visually without it, too. Again, I'm grateful for the tutor for allowing me to make a prop that turned out to be an asset attached to his body.
I did some work with my weapon prop in zBrush as well, going back and forth between it and importing it in 3DsMax for the retop of some parts.
The man catcher was done, consisting of only some of its areas being retopped. Others like the blades I knew I'd bake the low poly onto itself, and made sure to add the correct smoothing groups for them - not just one smoothing group. I decided to make an unlit torch as my third prop item.
At this point I noticed I was moving between programs quite fast. The sculpt of the torch could have used a bit more attention in some areas, but I was happy with it all in all.
As you can see on the right side of this text, I made a very low poly retop, then gave it a bunch of smoothing loops and conformed it to the high poly mesh.
After their unwrap. I assigned the two props to their own single Material ID, and proceeded on with the bake. I thought about the position of the weapon on my character's back and figured he could be left-handed, the little white arrow indicated the path of how he'd pick the weapon up. I was unsure of how i could make it attached to his back at this point but I figured it wasn't a big deal.
The blue arrows in the picture above this text point out a few baking errors I came across at first, because I was just curious to find out how it would look when baked unexploded. The other picture shows a clean result after the exploded bake, with no texture weirdly merging into one another.
As for the texturing itself, I quite liked the very warn wooden stem that I gave to the weapon, featuring a few cracks and possibly slashes from when a beast's claws would scrape across it. This was was overall very productive, and I was excited for the texturing stage to continue.
I started with the unwrap of the face, and right away I want to mention that I made a mistake that I only came across later on - the tip of the nose was a bit too stretched and I had forgotten to relax it. It's also sown in the screenshot above that I made a seam down his neck, and I just want to mention that I wielded that seam in the end. I knew I didn't want any seams to show on an important place like the areas around the head, so it was better to split it differently - I broke the edges off at the sides of the neck instead.
Week 28 | Unwrapping the model
2023.04.10 - 2023.04.14
Before unwrapping, I of course used the X-View check-up generously, going over the model a few times with it to fix up and optimize any open edges and isolated or over-lapping vertices. Obviously I got rid of any n-gons, as well.
Once again, I kept unwrapping the body one asset at a time in order to not become overwhelmed by just how many there actually were in general.
And this is how I decided to unwrap the eyes, only leaving half of the sphere instead of a full one. I didn't really see a point of it being necessary to have it whole since it was biologically impossible for the eyeball to turn far enough as to where we would see the edge of the pupil - assuming that the very center of it was the pupil, of course. In general, it was the way I saw other 3D character artists do it on the internet.
When placing the UV islands in their sheets, I made sure to have the checker pattern on the model to keep the texture density in check. Unwrapping really didn't take as much time as placing the islands together on the UV sheet but I knew it was a step that I couldn't rush.
Below this text, the sheet of the extra armor prop showed a couple back-faces of the belts overlapping their own fronts which I also fixed later on. Overlapping unimportant back-face UV islands only worked with hand-painted textures, not PBR ones.
Week 27 | Finally wrapping up the retop
2023.04.03 - 2023.04.07
This week was filled with more worry at the start, because each asset I retopped just kept adding heaps of tris to my budget no matter if it looked like it was 10 tris in total. I mean, look how jagged the silhouette was:
It was a good thing that most of what was left to do were the armor pieces. They were already pretty much rounded up into simpler shapes, and had edges that actually didn't harm the silhouette with how sharp they were.
I'm very glad that I decided to ask for help from my tutor. I was at a loss and it felt as if I was about to genuinely ruin my hard work of my sculpt by giving it a much lower poly retop than it deserved. I was advised to have the spiky planks be turned into a prop, and I could not have been happier with the suggestion, proceeding with it immediately and feeling relieved to know that I now had a bit more budget where it was desperately needed.
But what's funny was that I also kept thinking that we had a more fair budget of 23 000 tris instead of 25 000 for this character as I kept mixing it up with the creature project that I'd just completed earlier... I was just tired, for real.
I separated the prop out, and noticed an immediate change in my tri count, proving that this addition of my character was by far the most expensive in geometry. Without it, my model had only 20 242 tris.
I dedicated the 'newfound' budget to areas like the belts and the armor pieces all across the model, achieving far better and not neglected silhouettes of the assets. I hid the prop containing the planks with the spikes, and focused on moving forward.
As you can see, I separated my mesh yet again into two groups but these were for my texture sheets: the head and the hands (blue) and the rest of the body (red). While I thought I could balance it out a little more evenly, just like I did with the creature, I had to be reminded that the face and the head were very important focus points, therefore they had to have more density in their texturing.
Week 26 | More stressful retopping
2023.03.27 - 2023.03.31
As I mentioned, I was very worried about my model at this time around. I focused on making sure it's as low poly as it can be, and just continued on with retopping it. The hair was very important, so I allowed it to be more dense... Except of course, I did the back.
It wasn't that bad but I could have definitely left it out of the equation in my opinion. There was absolutely no reason for it to be there, but I let the irrational fears I had get the best of me. I just kept being unsure of whether there would be a possibility of it to ever be seen. And if there was, how bad it would be if all the player saw was a pitch black void.
Every asset ended up being unavoidably expensive because it was important to the silhouette. The hair, hood and cloak were very tricky ones to retop as well, which is why they took up a lot of time during the week. And seeing my tri count, the anxiety only kept growing.
The previous week was by far the busiest and most productive of all. It was important to keep the productivity up as I noticed there was still so much to do. I decided I'd import the decimated high-poly sculpt into 3DsMax and use it for the baking as well, later on. Also, my model was tiny in zBrush, so I took my sweet time rescaling it.
Week 25 | Decimating and Retopping
2023.03.20 - 2023.03.24
As you can see, it was important to not decimate the sculpt too much as it got rid of the details.
Seeing the whole mesh together in 3DsMax was vey overwhelming, therefore I went ahead and grouped it up into a few different 'layers'. This way I could keep my focus and take it one step at a time.
Something I wasn't happy about was the retopped mesh accidentally conforming to the under layer of the clothing because it was a double-layered mesh.
I took it upon myself to fix it manually, and separated the meshes outby deleting out a line of faces, then deleting the second layer which kept having the retopped mesh conform to itself.
It unfortunately had to be done with the pants, shirt and the boots, I bridged up the open-edged areas around the waist.
On the left, you can see me show that the mesh is consistent and a single object. I now didn't have to worry about it being a huge pain when conforming, and continued on with my retopping.
When I was done with the main body, I started retopping the hands. I carefully picked out a good hand retop reference with a tutor so I knew what he considered most useful for animation, and followed it closely while trying to remain as low-poly as I could.
As for the face, I actually used the same guide that I used for the gladiator project back in the first year of the course, It was just the best example for the facial loops, and it was very clearly separated out. In my opinion, I could have made the face less dense in terms of its tri count, but later I understood that it needed a lot of information as it was pretty much main focus of the character, or the most eye-catching area.
The Relax Conform Brush tool really helped achieve a nice and tidy edgeflow, and overall I was glad to have captured the animation loops correctly. I know I definitely should not have retopped the back of the head, but I kept being paranoid about it.
Just like the shirt - I could have absolutely used the bake of the normal maps for this, yet I decided I'd retop the back of the shirt slightly, right where the back of he fabris had a 0,0000001 % chance of ever being seen. I honestly did this across all of the mesh, causing needless tris to go into the already tight budget...
Speaking about a tight budget, around this time was when I really set into anxiety over not having enough budget space for the whole character, because I noticed the planks and spikes eating all of it up alongside the face and the horns, no matter if they were just about as low poly as I could make them without losing their important and complcated silhouettes.
As you can see, I had already used up more than half of the budget, and so much more of the complicated and important assets still had to be done. I had used 15 875 tris out of my 25 000 tri budget.
The week ended with me setting into a slight panic, but I knew the only way to found out if I was going to be okay was to keep up the work, and leave the optimizing for later.
Week 24 | Finishing all of the sculpt
2023.03.13 - 2023.03.17
This week I continued on with the sculpt, focusing strictly on finishing it completely. It was a lot.
I made the armor pieces one by one, and honestly I didn't use any tools or tutorials for clean hard-surface modeling, that's why the armor came out looking a bit like doughy clay. I didn't mind, though.
Sculptris Pro was very useful for any of the assets. At this point I still brainstrormed about having the hood down but I changed my mind later on.
The making of the cloak was a bit complicated. I didn't figure out how to not make zBrush "Close holes" not close the little tears I made on the end of it, so I imported the cape into 3DsMax where I was able to bridge up the edges the way I needed them. Then went back to zBrush and smoothed them out a little. Overall, I think the cloak looked really nice from the front and back and I left Substance Painter to do the work on texturing it.
The hood had holes for his horns and ears, so the process was the same. I went back and forth between the two programs but it didn't take that much time.
I absolutely loved using the Orb brushes alongside a brushpack for seams that I found on the internet, and I experimented with giving the character some scars using the inverted "Slash" brush.
I was a bit worried and anxious about sculpting the shoes because I knew how influencial they are as a body part to the whole feel and style of the character. In general, the anatomy of feet and legs was quite difficult to capture correctly. But I picked these for my reference and began sculpting.
Even the most basic shape of feet was important to get right - it would determine is stance.
Having the soles as a separate Subtool helped me work on them individually whenever I needed and I could adjust the rest of the shoes individually without effect the whole boot. With the seams added, I started to feel far more confident.
And here's a little detail I added for the inner voice I had which which kept begging me to indulge further into the aspect of him being cat-themed. It was a fun and subtle design choice that wouldn't have any effect on the final grade whatsoever, but one that breathed even more of my adoration for my character into me.
The next asset I worked on were the planks that were going to have sharp, rat-stabbing spikes darted right in them. I do think I made them a little too stylized, but it got along fine with the rest of the design in the end.
I made three variations for these pieces of wood to have, and figured I'd place them around the character's shins and forearm, just like in the sketch,
Though I wasn't too sure if I wanted them to be held by metal rings, or some more leather belts. I did make up my mind deciding leather would work better in the end.
And by this point, if I needed to sculpt an asset, I'd just import a basic tool like a cylinder right there in zBrush instead of going over to 3DsMax and adding it over there. It saved time, kind of... I also knew there were far better and more clever ways to create something as simple as a belt, but I made them from scratch using mostly the Move tool and just pushing them around.
You can see here that I've also given him gloves. They were a bit thinner than the ones I'd made before just because I knew if I had made them thicker, it would be really tough to retop them due to there not being a big enough gap between each finger.
When the planks and their belts were done, it was time to put some spikes into them. I really liked the way they looked without the planks, too, but I knew this was a crucial attribute to the design.
Before thickening the fingers up just slightly, I did make sure they had a bigger distance between one another just to make sure the glove wouldn't 'glue' them together to the point where it wouldn't allow me to retop them. With a bit of the leather texture and the seams, his gloves were ready,
And finally, the sculpt was done. really liked the way it turned out looking, and I was looking forward to continue working on it.
I figured I'd showcase it here in a couple different materials that zBrush had, just because some reveal finer details more than others.
At this point, it didn't really hit me that this was a sculpt that would require a lot of attention to its silhouette when retopping, i.e. that it would take a lot of tris, a lot more quicker than it did with the creature project.
Sure, it was kind of my own fault but at the same time this was one hell of a sculpt in a good way. Complicated didn't mean bad, and I was excited to find ways to make it all work and come together in the end.
Week 23 | More blocking out and sculpting
2023.03.06 - 2023.03.10
With a nice base for my weapon prop done, I decided to add a bit more 'fantasy' to it, and find ways to portray it as a more stylized as well as hostile piece of gear. I thought about giving it little manual handles for a better grip there at the sides, but then realized the weapon would function fine without it.
This is the approximate scale I gave it, and as you may notice, it isn't quite the size for a regular person's neck to fit in it, meaning this was a weapon this guy used for bigger creatures just like our level's bad enemy, the rat.
I also continued giving him block-outs of pieces of armor and bringing them into zBrush for detail and refinement as seen on the left side below this text.
I was happy and relieved to know we didn't have a budget for our props, so I knew I could basically add as much detail and geometry as I wanted to it. While re-creating my upgraded design in 3D, I used my sketch as a guide and sort of modeled in front of the plane with it.
I added clothes using the Edge Loop tool which helped me make them very thin. It was like copying the body mesh.
I was quite proud with how believable the pants came out looking, with the folds being merged with the armor pieces in a realistic way. I wanted it to look streched and loosened wherever it needed, and I was glad to have achieved that look. As you can see, I also added a bit of a leathery texture to the belts.
The upper clothing were also fun to sculpt and I think they really flattered his figure. Sure, a corset wasn't the most comfortable thing to wear when assassinating giant rats but it sure was a pretty addition.
Week 22 | Armor block-out, weapon prop and hair
2023.02.27 - 2023.03.03
This week I brought my man into 3DsMax, where he was going to get dressed. It felt a bit like a dress-up game. But before that...
I needed to look back at my mood board and figure out exactly what kind of clothing I wanted him to have. It wasn't going to be heavy armor, rather something moderately light but protective and easy to fight quickly in. Talon from League of Legends (picture above the text) was a good reference for it, although his concept lacked the aspect of grungy medieval assassin. It was a bit too polished, but I did like it as a reference in terms of the stylization of the art style and over-all weight of the outfit.
One of the tutors reminded me to stick with the main aspect of our group's environment - it was essentially a rat-infested dungeon that lied underneath the church, making the transition from a holy temple down to a grotesque cult chamber. And so, he recommended me to have a look at the real-life medieval profession called the rat-catcher. The worker would be usually equipped with man-made tools for critter-catching and had an over-all peasant vibe, which I liked.
Of course these concepts didn't involve the theme of a mercenary but they gave me insight on what would be functional to have when you're going into a dirty space with loads of rats in it. Thick padding in the over-all outfit is what stuck out to me a lot, and I began to brainstorm on how I could merge it with my character.
I sketched up a couple variations of the attire, and I quite liked how it turned out. I didn't want something way too busy but at the same time I knew the character's role needed to be clearly portrayed in his gear and armor.
I did plan to add a couple dead rats to it but then I realized it wouldn't make much sense. Plus, he wasn't some barbaric maniac who wanted the poor rabid rodents hung onto him by their tails. The most telling detail in my opinion was the spiky planks tied to his shins and forearm - protection from the viscious biting of the rats.
Now that I had a visual sketch of my character's clothing and armor, it was much easier to bring the vision to 3D. I think everyone's workflow varied a bit when it came to creating the block-outs of their character's attires but I found it logical to work on the more hard-surface pieces in 3DsMax, and the thin clothing parts in zBrush.
It was also a fair time to start thinking about the character props. I knew I wanted one of the three of them to be his weapon. As for what kind of weapon it was - I chose a very unique real-life medieval weapon called the man catcher. It was around this time that my coursemate Lincoln casually stated that it looked like a cat's head with ears, and it set off a theme that
I began modeling it in 3DsMax and knew that I'd be able to import it into zBrush for any touch-ups.
The symmetry modifier really helped keep an eye on the shape of the weapon's head and it split the workload in half. I made a good base for this prop and I was excited to improve it later on.
As for the character, I came back to him towards the end of the week to give him more detail on the face and hair. I wasn't really looking at the face of the actor that I chose at this point, sort of letting my own input sprinkle onto him. It was alright especially because he was meant to be semi-realistic, after all, and having his features a little stylized didn't hurt at all.
At this point I still paid attention to his hair and the back of his head since I didn't know fully if I wanted him to have a hood on or off. And just like with the lion, I decided to give him horns. But it was partially because the other artist in our group had their character have horns as well. Hers here very extravagant and fully grown, so I thought I could have his be cut off in contrast. And, well, because cut off horns had potential of looking like cat ears, which flowed very nicely into his new thematic and title that I chose - The Prowler.
Week 21 | Continuing sculpting the base
2023.02.20 - 2023.02.24
Now that the general silhouette of my character was sculpted, It was time to focus on details like the hands, the face and hair as well as a more anatomically correct muscle structure in some particular areas (arms, chest, thighs).
I began with sculpting the hands, and again, I took a pretty unique approach with that in a way that I masked out the gaps between the fingers and shrunk the mesh within itself to forms gaps. It worked for me, but I do admit it was a slightly messy process. At the end of the day, what mattered was that I made a base for hands.
Just like with the creature sculpt, I kept using the Sculptris pro tool generously in- between remeshing the whole model, which gave me access to different geometry on the go in areas where I needed it more dense. Big fan of this tool.
After the hands were done, I moved on to the stage of making a face. The moment I heard the tutors recommend us to have a particular person's face, I knew I had a couple people in mind. James Cutler just so happened to have stuck out to me in my memory as someone with rather sharp features and that's exactly what I wanted for my character to have. Of course, I knew that I most likely wasn't going to be able to portray his exact facial anatomy but I was happy to have his face as a guide for what I aimed towards. A quite angular face and tensed expression, even when he was in a neutral mood.
I gave him hair as well, and at this point I was only brainstorming through his design, debating on whether he will have a hood on or not.
I shaped the nose, mouth and brow brow bone areas first and then gradually began sharpening some areas up while adding a softer touch to the others, and made details like the lips and the corners of the mouth, the nostrils as well.
During this time I spoke with a fellow character artist from my group and I was inspired by her to start modifying the ears of my character, just so the two would have a bit in common throughout the scene. We both used the same reference for an elven ear, and I really liked the way it turned out:
I implemented the Paint tool as well and it helped me obtain a vision of how the face would look with the eyes and eyebrows, a detail that in my opinion is crucial to keep in mind when sculpting faces.
At this point he looked a bit surprised or just shocked, so I made a note to myself to make it a bit of a more relaxed expression. At the end of the day, we weren't going to animate the face so I wanted to have him neutral but not too stiff.
The upcoming week I knew I had to begin sculpting the clothing. The body was done.
Week 20 | Beginning of the group project
2023.02.13 - 2023.02.17
Apart from the gladiator project last year, I'd only ever worked on human characters in 2D, so I was very happy about the opportunity to make a 3D model with this particular project. And above all - to do something I've dreamed of doing since I was little.
I was assigned to be a character artist in our group of 8 people and decided I'd go with the over-all theme of an assassin/mercenary character. In short, my character' was meant to tell a story of him barging into a church that was very grim behind the curtains. He was to be portrayed as someone on his way to assassinate a supposed big bad human-eating rat. In general, it was going to be a human/dark elf character with a lot of tactical attire in the supposed fantasy timeline of our scene: fantasy medieval. The art style of the model and our scene was going to be semi-realistic, which I was pretty confident about.
And so, I got to work right away and used my own... questionable methods of sculpting using zBrush. I did try the route with zSpheres but for some reason I preferred to add mass onto my little blob with brushes like Move and ClayBuildup in order to make it closer to a human-shaped blob. I was quite eager in this process, wanting to just quickly get the basic form out so I can start adding and taking away the mass where needed.
I kept Dynameshing and zRemeshing back and forth, as well as using the symmetry tool during this stage, and I was genuinely happy with my Martian was starting to shape up.
ClayBuildup was great for adding layers onto the model, and the clay man was quickly approaching a point of resembling a human. I of course took notice of how big the head, ands and feet were at this point, but it wasn't what mattered most yet.
Here's a screenshot of how he looked after I've worked on him with an actual anatomy reference (picture on the right side of this text). The image of the realistic model was a reference from Google that I'm afraid I could not credit at this moment, but it is not my work. It was very helpful though, and I think I combined it with the semi-realism of our chosen art style pretty well in my final sculpt. I would say the more difficult areas to work on for me were the muscular distribution around his legs as well as the backs of his arms, but in the end it all kind of came together. He was definitely beginning to look like a man.
At this point I was making a decision of my character being a young adult with an athletic build, however I didn't want him to be too bulky, and he probably wouldn't have had time for as many leg days as arm days.
What's important to mention is that I knew he was going to wear a bit of armor and chunky boots, and that he wasn't going to have much of his skin exposed across his body, therefore I knew I didn't have to get into details like toes or the foot in general. Overall, the week was very productive.
Creature Project beauty renders
I really like the way my Creature Project turned out looking. I'm glad I was in time to finalize it and I'm glad I paid enough attention for it to have both the aesthetic and technical side of things to be executed successfully. I do think I could have been a little more careful and thoughtful when it came to the presentation but at the end of the day, it was definitely not the main focus of the project. After this project, I felt a lot more confident and comfortable when baking as well as working between different programs, and having an overall better and broader knowledge of the industry software that I was fortunate enough to have my hands on.
Finalizing the creature project
2023.02.13 - 2023.05.04
The 20th week was the start of a new project, however I knew it was alright for the creature project to overlap it slightly, as long as I handed them both in on my deadline (May 5th). With that thought in mind, the group project easily overcrowded my head and I ended up working on the lion a bit after the group project was done up until the deadline date... But I did it on time!
As you can see, I went with a realistic color palette for my lion, making him a soft sandy tan. I really liked texturing the horns and seeing how the curvature map generated a perfect texture and really made the Rake brush effect pop. I added an over-all gradient effect to them, too.
I wanted the leather of the saddle to match the darkness of the horns but not the material of them. I enjoyed playing around with the height map and creating little bumps, tears and possible bite-outs or splatter burns on it to really portray the wear effect. Who knows, maybe the lion had a friend mouse who'd randomly chew at the leather on his saddle?
I was grateful to have been given so much artistic creativity. Although I wasn't a huge fan of the way I sculpted the saddle, the texturework really made up for it in my opinion.
What really changed the whole mood and focus on my lion's face for the better was a small suggestion from my course mate Link. Since he hadn't been looking at the lion for ages like me, he noticed right away that his eyes could use a bit of work, pointing out how big cats have a lighter, then a darker line under their eyes giving them a really cool effect. I agreed that my lion lacked that and after adding the feature I really loved the way such a small detail influenced my character for the better this much. Always grateful for my fellow artists' advice.
Finally, here is how I textured the saddle. I decided for the twists to be sort of like vines that were attached to the saddle as it was made, stuck in-between the metal and the leather. At this point I also thought more about how I could put around some alphas right in it, showing that the saddle is sort of alive in a way that the foliage is growing on it, and from it.
Now that the texturing was done, it was time to make the alphas. I kept in mind that I needed to separate them out into two categories because they'd effect the budget of 1) the lion and 2) the saddle. So I made just a couple whisker variations for my lion and then dedicated the rest of my texture sheet for some pretty flowers and leaves, as well as a nice branch with buds. I couldn't wait for them to be ready to be put on him.
It was the first time that I was making alphas in Painter, and since they were very stylized, it wasn't hard to draw and color them using a few masks and separate folders. I did notice the opacity feature leaving out a tiny gray outline on each of them, but I figured it wouldn't be too noticeable and bothersome. for my overall scene.
When they were done, I put them on a plane in 3DsMax and cut them up using the Cut tool and trying my best to have them be as simple and low-poly as possible. At the end of the day these were going to be duplicated a lot across my model, so I had to be careful with how it would effect the budget.
With the right settings, my alphas showed up as double-sided and I really liked the way the flower looked, alongside the other cute pieces of foliage. Putting them around the saddle required a bit of time and patience and it was definitely worth it.
As for the whiskers, I purposefully wanted them to be very flowy and curved in a way that isn't really typical for real-life feline or canine whiskers. I'm grateful for the tutors allowing me to have this little fantasy detail on my character because I loved the way it looked. I also think it corresponded to the curvature of the horns nicely, as well.
Here is the tri count with the alphas attached to the lion and the saddle (lion - 22 988, saddle - 6 979). I did go back and forth a little after these screenshots and tweak it in some places, but all in all it stayed the same. I was glad to fit these alphas into the budget since I feel they really added a lot to my creature.
Since I was properly dreading the process of rigging, posing and skinning, I decided I could focus on the creature's presentation first. That meant coming up with something that would fit in the given budget - 2 000 tris. So I went ahead and (hurriedly) sculpted a strange piece of floating rock that would be a base for my lion to stand on in the middle of the gorgeous sky of Unreal Engine 4. I didn't even want to retop it, so I decimated the high-poly in zBrush and called it a day. After unwrap came the baking.
I made it have little hills of moss because I knew I could put the foliage alphas all over the place. And the overall cold blue tint to the stone would have a nice contrast against the lion's fur. I wasn't too upset with how it looked in UE4, and went ahead and imported everything but my lion, preparing the scene for it. The proper naming conventions would come a little later on, but for now, I really needed to move on with the lion.
And that's when his cousin Bill was born, seen on the family photo on the left. I moved his joints around so he'd fit accordingly to my lion's idle pose, and then assigned his bones to the creature.
I decided to go with a neutral/happy pose and I'm pretty satisfied with how the skinning turned out, resulting in very few areas with obvious texture distortion. I followed the instructions of last year's rigging and skinning tutorials on Blackboard as well as YouTube. I adored the creature so much by this point, I loved this cat.
And here's how he looked like when imported into UE4. I do have to note that I merged the final meshes together resulting in the saddle being fully attached to the body of the lion. It's not visible in the screenshot to the left side of this text but with the help of Skylight, I was able to make even the darkest shadows light enough to provide information of the whole model and make all the texture work visible. and ready for grading.
I made a few areas of the model slightly emissive just to make them stand out a bit more and in general look more pretty. Those were the eyes of the lion, and the foliage. I'd never really applied emissive maps before, and I was a bit surprised with how easy it was. It all depended on the masked out area, and the few clicks on the parameters. I'm very sure I will use this feature in plenty more projects in the future.
With these final touches added, I was really happy with how my scene looked like. The tutor complimented it before hand-in too, which made me feel even more confident about it. And so, the creature project came to an end. The presentation was done and the only thing left to do was to take a few beauty renders.
Week 19 | Unwrapping and baking
2023.02.06 - 2023.02.10
I knew the unwrapping process wasn't going to take too long since the tutor had a very helpful guide on how to do it for four-legged creatures. I also brainstormed on how to distribute my texture sheets - the 2048x2048 for the body and the 1024x1024 for the head. In my plan-out on the right you can see I included the horns for the head, but we decided to have them assigned to the body texture in the end. The face needed a lot of density.
The seams that were unavoidable to be present on the model didn't bother me too much since there really wasn't a better way go to about it. The unwrap went nice and smooth, and here are the final separate texture sheets that I had when I was done:
Later on I realized there was a better way to unwrap the eyes - splitting the spheres in half and simply having a full circle on the texture sheet for both of them - but I figured I would just go with the method that the tutor suggested, creating a sort of a candy shape for them.
And when all that was done, I prepared the model for the bake. That meant applying one smoothing group to all three separate meshes (lion, eyes, and saddle) and separating the four different materials into their own material IDs by assigning it through the faces of the mesh (lion body, lion head, eyes and saddle).
I had a difficult time understanding this simple concept because I kept over-complicating it in my head but I was very lucky to have my coursemate Lincoln assist me on this important step.
He helped me with the over-all bake too, reminding me the paths of importing the correct files, as well as introducing me a little better to the concept of exploded baking. Mind you I did check out the content on Blackboard as well, but it's very useful to have helpful peers to re-translate any misunderstandings in a simplified way. When the bake was done, I was very happy to see that all of the details of my sculpt were right there on my retopped and smoothed low-poly model.
I textured the eyes first, giving them a slight height map on the furrows - lines in the iris, and an overall cold blue tint. I went with a more realistic look later on, but texturing the eyes really helped bring life into my lion, building a better connection with my artwork.
At first, I gave him a bit of a 'fairy' color palette just for fun. Because the horns made him into such an ethereal creature in my eyes, I wondered if I could emphasize on the fantasy theme further. Though as suggested by the tutors, it was better to have him have more realistic attributes for this particular project. I was happy either way, and my fairy lion was going to be forever kept in my heart, walking 'round with a rainbowy mane and having a purple gradient going down to his feet. ♡
Week 18 | Retopping the model
2023.01.30 - 2023.02.03
Now that I had the sculpt done, it was time for the retop. I first imported my high-poly sculpt into 3DsMax and re-sized it. The pink box there represented a height of a human, and the blue box was a scale reference for a real-life lion. It was good to have those beside, since I wanted to stick to a realistic size for the creature.
To have a reference for decent animation loops and edge flow for my retop, I went on Sketchfab and searched a rigged lion model. Most of the models there were triangulated or retopped to have no animation loops, but I'm glad I came across this particular one:
Our budget for the whole creature without the saddle was 23 000, so I knew it would be quite dense over all. But it was good to start with a lower number while already keeping an eye on a clean edge flow with the loops, so I could put swift loops through it with no trouble later on.
It was important to not accidentally begin 'spiraling' when making the connection on the base of the leg and the leg, while still giving reasonable geometry for the joints that would bend most. And of course, I only worked on one side since I knew I could 'Symmetry' it later.
On the right side of this text you can see a pretty good example of the feet retopology that I found through Google images, and I figured I can use it as a reference when working on my own model. My lion's fingers didn't stand out as much but it was still a good guide to follow.
I probably could have sculpted toe beans for this big cat, but I figured I'd not pose him in a way where he'd have them visible, anyway.
When I was done with the low-poly retop of te body, I added way too many swift loops, then condensed them down to a more reasonable amount.
This version (screenshot above this text) was 5 258 tris in total. I knew I could later on use the Relax Conform Brush tool that 3DsMax had in it to have a slightly more balanced net of quads across the model, so I didn't mind it having uneven gaps between the edges currently. It was now time to get the more complicated part done.
The mane had a completely different workflow of retopping since its surface was so bumpy. I was certain it would be the part that took the most out of the budget, even though it was smaller than the body. The screenshots above this text display a version with a tri count of 3 583. As you can imagine, it was also quite tricky to connect the verts while step-building later on since it kept picking the ones on the other side of the dense mesh.
I did finish it though, with a reasonable and quite clean edge flow in my opinion. I also did the tail tip which I made more dense later.
Next came the face retopology, and I found a very nice example of it on the internet, as well (picture above). This particular edge flow would allow the supposed animators make the lion's nose scrunch up when hissing for example, and nostrils to expand when he'd be sniffing. Of course it featured a mouth bag, but it wasn't our focus with the project, so I didn't make one.
When that was done, I retopped the horns by following the flow of their twisting. Because they were round, it was important to pay enough tris for a smooth and accurate silhouette.
Of course, after each of these body parts done, I made sure to check for their open edges. face orientation, isolated and over-lapping vertices and n-gons. I am a big fan of the X-View option, and I always find it satisfying to make a check-up on the model using it and fix any areas that need to be optimized.
Next up was the saddle, which had its own 7 000 tri budget. As you can see, I attempted to turbo-smooth it to see if I'd pass with using it on some areas, hoewever I was quick to realize it ignored far to much of the detail.
I went ahead and done it by hand instead, getting a far better detail and silhouette capture. The Optimize tool in the Conform toolbar of 3DsMax really assisted me with quickly merging the extra verts and simplifying the mesh in some areas as I really didn't need the cushioned part to be as dense as it was in the crevices.
With the saddle done, it was time to merge all the body parts together after I've collapsed the Symmetry modifiers. Here are the separate tri counts that I had for each of them:
Body: 5 232 tris
Mane: 3 601 tris
Tail tip: 290 tris
Face and ears: 1 904 tris
Horns: 1 136 tris
Saddle: 6 011 tris
All in all, at this point the lion had only 12 150 tris out of the given 23 000 tri budget, so I added swift loops to a lot of areas before merging them together. As you will see in the screenshots a bit lower, I added the most extra geometry to the mane and the horns, as well as the tail tip. I re-conformed the body for a nicer edge flow as well. It's important to mention that at this stage I wasn't too considerate of extra geometry for the few alphas I wanted to give him such as whiskers but I did optimize him for them later on, fitting into the budget just right.
With all of the body parts merged together and optimized through the X-View check, I was happy to call it finished and ready for the bake. The total tri count summed up to be 22 704. I was surprised with myself to have the retop done in one week, honestly, and it was mostly because I knew I was in a tight time limit.
Week 17 | Finalizing the sculpt
2023.01.23 - 2023.01.27
It was time to give the Lion a saddle. I honestly didn't use any references for it, just kind of rolled with whatever I thought could look nice, and wouldn't be too too complicated. I followed the theme of a fantasy saddle, not a modern or tactical one, not even necessarily functional. It wasn't going to have pockets or any kind of a harness. Let's say it was a bit like an accessory, or a ceremonial saddle of some sort? Yeah, that works.
Alongside doing the saddle, I also gave him a tail and added details to his horns using the Rake brush. The final version of the saddle turned out quite organic and fluid, only the sharp ends at the bottom could have used more refinement.
I figured I'd only make the tail as high as it naturally goes upwards at the base. I re-attached it to the body and smoothed out the area where the two Subtools connected, and over all it was good to finally have it added to the sculpt. I was excited to rig it to bend in a nice curve, perhaps with the fluffy tip of it pointing upwards. At this point, I wanted to hurry and finalize the sculpt by adding some fur to it.
In order to add fur, I had to create a fur texture brush alpha. I never knew it could be so easy, and I'm grateful to have learned such a quick method to make a texture that provided so much surface information without having to hand-sculpt each of the hais one-by-one.
I was worried about the alpha duplicating over itself in some places, but then I realized that since no one would really look at it from a far, it was going to be alright. The Clay material made the fur stand out best, but I had to keep in mind it was going to be a quite rough surface, crucial to a curvature map in Painter.
These are screenshots of my final high poly sculpt on zBrush. I like the way it turned out and I knew that I had slightly more technical tasks awaiting me. Retop and texturing were going to take a while.
It was honestly interesting to see myself be far more comfortable in zBrush than I was during the pumpkin project or the fireplace project from last year. I was more friendly with the UI and the tools and brushes, as well as the topic of the projects over-all. I definitely felt connected to this project, far more than I did with the backyard slice. I guess this was one way to assure myself of being a character artist. With great enthusiasm, I moved on forward.
Week 16 | Horns and mane
2023.01.16 - 2023.01.20
During this week, I decided to give my lion a pair of horns. Because... Why not?
I also added some more defined muscle structure clumps with ClayBuildup to the whole body and it was very comfortable to have the anatomical guide right beside on PureRef.
I was just so inspired to create something slightly magical and 'fantasy'. It wasn't going to effect the main realistic proportions and anatomy of my creature's body, so the tutors were okay with it as well. It wasn't like I was giving him four arms or something, after all. Above this text you can see a few images that I came across which really encouraged me to make this project just a bit more special in a way that I've described.
Working with a few more symmetrical and jointed zSpheres, it wasn't too difficult to make the kind of base that I wanted to have for the horns.
It was really the curves and a balanced edge that I was puzzled about, but I did get it to work.
I very much enjoyed sculpting the face since I'm a big fan of portraying emotion and facial expressions. In general, conveying the lion's personality through his face made me become just a little more connected to this project.
With the horns now in place and added to the whole package, the creature was ready for some more complicated sculpting and refinement of the base sculpt.
I knew I could do the mane with the help of haircards, but I decided I'd sculpt it fully. At this stage I took a look at the lion sculptures that other people have made in real life, and figured out ways to approach the task ahead.
Dam Standard was the best for me when creating this detailed and very organic part of my lion, and I at first used it in a much larger size to get the deeper and larger crevices of it on there. It was sort of imitating the way the mane fur was light and poofy, as well as the way it layered within itself and wasn't just a consistent ball of fur.
What's important to mention is the fact that I didn't sculpt any separate strands of hair sticking out, providing myself an easier retopology experience later on as well as a safer unwrap process in terms of there being no possibility to have noticeable seams.
I managed to get it done at the end of this week. Although I was satisfied with the final outcome and the overall density of the stylized silky fur, I do think the very front of it could have used a bit more asymmetry.
Week 15 | Beginning of the Creature project
2023.01.09 - 2023.01.13
This week marked the start of a very exciting project. As someone who preferred to create art of characters over environment, I couldn't wait to get into it right away. For the species of my creature, I chose a lion. I find it to be very gracious and full of pride, as well as it being a unique choice for a saddled creature. And, of course, I just love cats.
The best references to look at were surely pictures of real-life lions. But because I was going for a slightly stylized 3D sculpt, I was curious to see how other people have executed the same type of task. Looking into careful anatomy analysis of the lion also helped me understand what parts of its form were crucial, and gave most information about it as a species, as well as the smaller details which were also extremely important.
And so, the first stage of the project began: The simple block-out. Starting with just a sphere, I had a lot of fun shaping out the big snout and the prominent brow and cheek bones of the lion, immediately creating a lot of personality.
Next came the addition of Z-spheres, which I found helpful for making a sort of a structural framework for my lion. I might have not used it correctly, but it did help me get a good starter on the body. I liked that it looked goofy too.
The mane was at first only a big sphere, but quickly shaped up to fit around my lion's head. I decided I'd continue using symmetry on it, but later on I knew I'd have to break it up a bit especially at the front.
Soon after gaining its body, my lion got a very trendy haircut and was looking a bit like our beloved Simba but I didn't mind admitting the cartoon had influenced my artistic workflow.
With it set up, I began adding mass onto it while using the brushes inflate, clay build-up, move and clay tubes, as well as the assistance of smoothing. And surely enough, while temporarily looking extremely malnourished, my lion was beginning to gain its feline body.
Also, by far the most difficult area to work with for me were the back legs. I believe my struggle is very visible in the close-up.
I want to showcase just how much I was using the Sculpter Pro tool to generate a higher-poly surface on-the-go. Truly this tool provided me a very comfortable option of sculpting and I used it very frequently throughout the whole making of this model.
As you can see, the mesh is quite unevenly broken-up and extremely dense in some places. That wasn't an issue however, because I just kept Dynameshing and making sure it's all even.
With a bit of work on the mane done, I went back to focusing on the muscular anatomy of my lion. He was now looking far more healthy, and in my opinion, he was starting to read as a quite realistic observation of the big cat. It was important to keep in mind all of the different angles, as well as their charm and dynamics.
Here is how the model of the model was looking by the end of the first week of the project. I'd say it was a good amount of effort considering I was still in the early stages of working on something like a creature with real-life references in zBrush. It was a careful but strong beginning.
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