3D Total:Professional 3D game character creation pt.II

After working crazy hours and traveling to St. Petersburg, Russia for work I have finally completed the high poly model in ZBrush for my character.

While I was in Russia I used what free time I had to explore and to work on my character model. There were some lessons learned. While working on details I kept seeing issues with the hands and feet. I spent quite a while refining the details on the hands and feet to ensure that they looked realistic and good.

I encountered an issue with one of the armor plates on the right arm that gave me a headache for a night. Overcoming this minor obstacle was made easy thanks to GoZ. I took only the armor plate back into 3ds Max fixed an issue with a few edges, set the smoothing groups accordingly and the issue was resolved. 

While adding details such as the stitching using Alphas I played with the Lazy Mouse settings under the Stroke Menu and the H value and MidValue until I found a result that looked good to me. 

While working on thin fabric pieces I found it helpful to go to the Brush Menu and Select "Auto Masking" and then enable Backface Masking. This will prevent the brush from effecting the geometry on the opposite side of what you are working on. 

Moving on I am currently working on unwrapping the Geometry for the body so I can bake my Normal Map. After that I will be unwrapping everything else and moving onto texturing. 

After texturing I will be rigging the character and then rendering him out. I am excited to see what he will look like with textures and I am also excited to work with Marmoset 2.  

3/4 view of face without the helmet

Front view of the face

3/4 view of the face with helmet

View of back with bracers

View of the back without bracers

An extreme angle to show detail of the hand and bracers

Close up of the right hand to show detail work.
I spent a lot of time working to get it right. 

Front showing armor

3/4 view of the chest with armor

3/4 view of torso without armor

Front torso without armor

Back with armor

Back of leggings

Front of leggings

3D Total : Professional 3D game character creation pt.I

In January I signed up for a workshop with 3D Total for game character creation. The main reason I wanted to take this workshop was to learn the process of making a game character and to jump start my portfolio.

The character we are modeling is a fantasy King Arthur. We were given two pieces of concept art produced by Patrick Lamberts.

Note that this is the first part of a two or three part blog post. Also Alex Troufanov provided us with a base mesh for the characters body. We used that to start off and then each student re-proportioned it as they saw fit.

At first I saw the class was going to be using 3ds Max and ZBrush. I learned how to model/texture in Maya. I know Maya really well and at the time I didn't know Max very well. I used Max for two classes in college.

So I set out to take this workshop and I abstained from using Maya. The point of this workshop for me is to learn and improve my existing skillsets. And Alex definitely provided plenty of information for us to absorb as well as helping to keep us motivated when we ran into an obstacle.

I still have a ways to go to finish the character model but I am getting there. After a few issues  regarding symmetry in Max with the body and then an annoying issue with GoZ I finally got my model into ZBrush.

As of right now I am loving polygroups. Easily hide pieces of your model to get details sculpted. Sculpting the anatomy is fun as I have a decent knowledge of muscles and bones. Right now I am pretty much blocking out shapes, pushing the detail for the amount of polygons, polishing it up and repeating. Once I get to the subdivision levels in the millions range that will be fun as the details you add are minute.

This weekend will entail finishing up anatomy, adjusting the cloth, armor and leather vest, and I am looking forward to learning how to make normal maps.

 Concept art provided by Patrick Lambert

Re-proportioning in ZBrush

Line up

Starting the armor

Adding shoulder pads and armor plates

Gauntlets and belt

Shin guards

Starting the helmet

Ready to go to ZBrush

Starting on the chest

Back

Back and arms

Checking how the armor fits after sculpting

Shrunk some of the back, pecs, and arms...

Later saw that I would be adjusting cloth and armor. I'll work with it.

Detailing the abs and knees.

Sketch Sculpt

As I have been working ten hour graveyard shifts at work I have been forcing myself to go work on 3d after work for two hours. I drew a thumbnail of a character whilst at work and here is my translation of said thumbnail into 3d. I spent about an hour a day for three days on this. I needed to take a small break from the dwarf.

Quickly busting out the basic silhouette and then working through small issues with ZBrush.

I'm open to comments and critiques. The more feedback the better I can make this and improve my skillset.

Note: I will post the thumbnail later. Haven't scanned it yet.

Dwarf Update

I have finished work on the dwarf in Maya for now. I have finally taken the low res mesh into ZBrush. Before Retopologizing the sculpt was around 700k polys. After retopologizing it is now around 100k with all of the original details projected onto the low res mesh.

Once the low res was back in Zbrush I divided it a few times and divided it one last time with the smooth modifier on. I projected the details from the original hi-res sculpt to the low-res mesh each time I divided. I am pleased with how this project has turned out so far.

I had an issue with the hi-res models lips connecting in points and I had to take the hi-res in Maya and completely weld the mouth shut for the time being.

Luckily most of the issues I have been able to figure out fairly quickly. I ran into an issue when taking the low-res retopologized model back into Zbrush. That was easily fixed by setting it positional coordinates back to there original settings.

I have learned a lot working on this project and cannot wait to make more progress. Hope you enjoy.

Close up of the face poly flow.

The body with all of the geometry worked out.

Close up of the face.

The Original scrulpt at about 700k polys.

The final low-res sculpt after retopologizing.

The Old Dwarf

I have been working on this dwarf model for a little while now and figured I would share my progress.

I started this guy out in ZBrush using a dynamesh sphere and then I used a ZSphere to retopologize in ZBrush. Right now I am correcting the poly flow in Maya and looking forward to getting back into ZBrush to detail him. I would like to use fibermesh for his hair and beard. Once he is complete I look forward to creating some fantastic weapons and armor for him.

Any feed back would be appreciated as I am having some issues with the flow of geometry where the ear meets the jaw, in the nostril and under the chin. So any feedback would be greatly appreciated!

Hope you enjoy.

Cheers,

Ryan

This is what he looked like when I started. I went back and toned him down a little bit.

Closeup of the head. 

This is what the dwarf currently looks like. I used a Z-Sphere to retopologize him and sent him to Maya

to rework some of his poly flow.

If you notice the lips appear as though they were welded...

This occurred by smoothing the Dynamesh when the lips 

were to close together. 

The Z-Sphere with the adaptive skin  

generated during retopologizing.     

                                                                     

      Z-Sphere Retop                                    

Close up of the chin poly flow issues. 

Right where the ear meets the jaw has been giving me some issues.

Have not started in on fixing the arms or legs. I want to finish the heads poly flow issues first.

Mouth poly flow. I still think it needs tweaking.

Close up of the poly flow in the nose. Trying to keep

all quads. But those Tri's spite me!