Photobashing the projects.

After I had the base of my projects done, it was time to start adding color and texture to them. 

It was important for me to have the images from which I was going to extract the textures ready from the get-go, in that way not having to keep switching between working on my projects and searching the internet for them. 

Having those placed on the mood board ready for me to use them, it was time to start working. 

Starting with the character, the first thing I did was get rid of the background and convert the image into greyscale. That way, I will have the freedom of using gradient maps, which will spare me lots of time from painting the colours manually. 

At this stage, I decided to add the wings as well, using the shape that I have achieved with my final concept drawing as a blueprint. Once they are completed. I will duplicate them to the back view as well. An important factor for me while working on this project was developing the front and back view at the same time. That way, they will be consistent in colour and texture.

The next step was adding the gradient maps. In order to do that, I had to figure out what my colour palette would be. 

This painting from Michael Husar really spoke to me and matched my idea seamlessly, so I decided to approach it straight away. The yellowish and greenish tints gave the image a very sickening and scary look, exactly what I was looking for from the start of the project.

With this painting by my side, I started making the gradient maps, taking this opportunity to split my character into the different materials that will be making up its body, that being skin, flesh with a very thin layer of skin on top, and bone structure. 

After doing that, I decided to also bring the wings to the backside, since I had to figure out how these would attach to the body.

Adding the textures was not as difficult as I thought it would be. Using the warp tool I made the wrap nicely around the body, keeping in mind things like perspective shortening and the direction in which those should be heading. 

Using the base of the body, I erased the excess afterward, and then using the healing brush, I  made sure that there were no seems between them.

At this stage, I have also played with the different blending modes to get the best result that I possibly could. I also made use of the gradient maps that I have previously made, in order to add the textures just to the desired area. I purposely left the bone structures out, to induce the fact that they are sticking out of the body.

 After adding some final details and finishing adding the textures, I can finally say that this stage is done.

For the battle arena, I have approached the same workflow. Erased the background, converted the image into grayscale, etc..

One additional thing that I did was paint over the wooden structures and crystals, so I would have a layer to select easily if I wanted to work on these individually. 

Another difference in the workflow was adding the detailing of the rocks, such as the stalactites and stalagmites, before doing the gradient maps, since those were going to be sticking out of the initial contour of the arena.

Making the gradient maps was directly dependent on the colour palette of the monster since the cave had to match its aesthetic. 

After having those, done, it was time to add the final touches, such as the nests, water, etc... I also added an additional layer for the new shadows that were going to be present with the addition of the new objects. 

Creating the textures for my character

 Having had the previous positive feedback from my professors regarding the way that I approached the texturing of my Husky, I decided to use the same workflow for this project.

I divided the project into two parts: the textures done in Painter and the ones done in Designer.

I needed to make a fabric one for the blouse and boots, a leather one for the vest and boots, a cargo one for the pants, and an eye one.

For the fabric one, I took some inspiration from this tutorial I found on youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7dSPG7f9dXY&list=LL&index=13

For the cargo one, I have taken a look at the approach used in this tutorial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bSeAlD43Ywc&list=LL&index=10

The leather one was done while looking at the following approach: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P7WAMBiVlcA&list=LL&index=9

Of course, for each texture that I created, I made sure to use the nods in the most suitable matter to get the results I had in mind.

For the eyes, I made the same patterns I have previously made for the Husky, making the necessary adjustments to suit my character. 

Baking wise, I did not have many issues, only encountering some artifacts on the ambient occlusion map, which were easily fixed with some tweaks to the values.

The next step was importing everything in painter from designer and scaling the textures on my objects. For the smaller objects such as the fabric straps and the belt, I ended up reusing the fabric texture, but changing the color to the complementary color, which in this case was orange. At this stage, the way I have previously unwrapped my clothes has come in very handy, the textures tilling perfectly onto the surfaces, with the minimum amount of seems.

 After that, I added some wear and tear to the vest, in order to make it more believable. 

After adding the textures, I have realized that there was some clipping of the meshes on the boots, which I will be fixing in max, since that won't require any alterations to the UV maps.

For the skin, I have followed the amazing tutorials of Magdalena Dadela on youtube, using a variety of 

fill layers and masks, using the paintbrushes to add visibility to them, in order to get a lifelike appearance. The roughness maps and subsurface scattering ones were made using her tutorial as well.

After finishing those maps, I imported only the normal map from my leather jacket texture from designer and added it on top as a final touch. I am very please with how the textures turned out, and I can't wait to see how everything looks in engine.

For the eyebrows, eyelashes, and hair I have used a more traditional approach, opening the files in photoshop and used my hair brushes from there to speed up the process.

Retoping my Character

 After I had the high poly done, it was time to do the retop. Since this is quite a complex project, I had to think about how I was going to approach it beforehand. Skin needs subsurface, so it has to be placed on its own UV sheet. Since the presence of the turtleneck is dividing the body and the head, I will be placing the head on a different UV sheet, while keeping the abdomen area and the hands on another. To minimize the errors that could occur with the baking process, I decided to retop every clothing object as a different object, while also keeping their details as different meshes as well.

Working on the head, I had a look at some examples on Polycount and started placing the polygons, firstly the eyes and mouth, which are the most important considering the presence of the loops. 

Next on my list were the hands, since those are one of the most difficult things to retop, mainly because of the presence of so many joints with the fingers and also the small scale that I had to work with. 

To make my life easier I decided to only retop my finger, make a copy of the result and place it on the other fingers, using conform to place the vertices back on the surface.

The clothes were pretty straightforward, the blouse and vest needing some more attention, considering the presence of shoulders and elbows. I have taken advantage of the extend tool heavily, which sped up the process significantly.

I have also taken into consideration the possibility of clipping, so I deleted as many of the polys that were not going to be visible but keeping the ones that had importance over the deformation, such as the ones on the shoulders.

I tried to keep the geometry as even and consistent as I could, having more dense areas in places with specific details, an example being the folds on the trousers. or the features of the face. 

Retoping the hair was quite easy, the only thing that I had to worry about was keeping the general flow of the strands. 

I decided to retop those as different meshes, for a better bake while texturing. 

I am very happy with the retop, It did take me a small while to get done, but using the new methods I was able to finish it faster, in comparison to my Husky project.

The whole model ended up having 34174 tris, which is an ok budget considering the large number of individual meshes.

I also added some planes for the eyelashes and eyebrows. I will be using alphas for those. 

Sculpting the clothes and the hair

 Thinking about the workflow that I approached with the husky, I started working on the clothes, since the positioning of the hair was dependent on it. 

Using the masking tool on the highest subdivision level, I drew the shape of the turtleneck and then extracted it. For the trousers and boots, I did the exact same thing. The next step was zremeshing them and adding the details such as the folds, 

While doing that, I had to also keep in mind the different materials and what type of fold they would create. The turtleneck is made from a soft material, so it would generally have softer and more rounded-looking shaped folds. Since the trousers are cardo pants, which are usually made from tougher material, they would have sharper and more defined folds, creating triangle shapes between them. This thing was pointed out to me by my professor Katarina since previously I have used the same approach as the one for the blouse. 

For the boots, I decided to add some individual parts, using the extract option again. For the rubber sole, I decided to make it 3ds Max and import it afterward, since it has very obvious shard edges, that being quite hard to accomplish in Zbrush alone. I have used the same approach for the props such as the machetes, metal part of the belt and walkie talkie.

The base of the vest was extracted from the body, and the parts that were sticking out were made by appending shapes, dynameshing everything together afterward.

Doing the hair was a more complex process. I decided to sculpt it since my group colleague Chloe decided to do the same thing. We want the project to look consistent, and also, unfortunately, for this project, I do not have the time to learn hair cards. 

As in the workflow that I approached, I took inspiration from this youtube tutorial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8S5xKSoalw8&list=LL&index=44

Starting with a sphere, I moved it into place to achieve a relative placement for the hairline. 

With this in place, using the sculptris mode and move brush, I created the general shape and flow of the hair. 

With the clay tube brush, I started defining some individual hair strands. The next step was masking some of them and starting splitting them apart into new subtools. 

Having this done, the only thing left was adding details to each part, and I did that by combining the dam standard brush and the standard one with the heir alpha I have already made for my husky project.

I decided not to go too overboard with the details tho because that would result in a very distracting effect while in the engine. I will rather be doing that at the texturing stage. 

The last step was fixing the hands and adding individual nails to them. For this process, I have mainly used pictures of a sculpt I found by Andor Kollar, which were very helpful due to the diversity of the angles.

I am very proud of the results of this sculpt. It was a longer process than I thought, but I am trying not to be too harsh on myself considering this is the first time doing a character in Zbrush. It is finally time for retoping, which I already know will be tedious, but I already have the experience of working on the Husky's topology, so it shouldn't be as difficult this time around.