Week 14 Guitarist

Just spent all of this week texturing, and trying to figure out how to do the afro hair as I'm not too sure how to approach it. I've been following the Baj singh tutorial on how to do afro which has been fairly successful for me. I personally struggled with the earlier stages, such as using fiber mesh, i haven't used it really before and i found it really had to get right, and in the had to paint some of the hair strands in Photoshop later.




Some of my Progress on the Guitarist's textures. Unlike Baj's hair i wanted mine to look really frazzled, like in all the images i have looked at of Jimi. I am pretty happy with results, and this is probably the character whose hair come out the best in my opinion. I was expecting for it to go really bad so i think the results turned out great!

 

Week 12/13 Guitarist and (Easter break)

Uni has been closed or the last few days for Easter so couldn't start my guitarist till Wednesday so not enough for one blog post so I've decided to merge the two weeks. Here is the finished high-poly.
When I stared working into this character the first thing I wanted to do was make sure he had a very strong sense of weight. In his resting pose he is still very laid back, his spine very noticeably bends to an extreme. This I felt read as an over exaggerated guitarist. I made his fore arms very long again to push his alien anatomy to a extreme.


Low-poly for guitarist. I tried to be very sparing in the tris given to this character, because I knew a lot needed to go into the strings that hang on his shirt or it won't look believable. I also will need a lot of tris for the afro, as I'm not sure how I'm going to approach that yet, and will probably need a lot of tris.

Also rigged and posed the singer. This was a good learning experience, in rigging the skirt I figured out how to correctly add bones in Max, and parent them, something I didn't know how to do before, otherwise I would have rigged the drummer in Max.

Here is a fairly finished singer, she still needs quite a bit of polish, but I'm pretty happy with her progression.

Week 11 Leadsinger

Started the weekend by working on one of the instruments as a little break/refresher of non Zbrush modelling. I really enjoyed just switching of my brain a bit a going back to the basics in max, I got a bunch of guitar ref and made orthographic, and then started working on modelling. This has given me more confidence in my max modelling skills as I was worried that I might have forgotten how to really get results this way, so this has been a very encouraging experience.

I wanted this to be fairly low poly as it's all eventually going into one marmoset scene which is going to be very intensive already. so I need to make sure everything will run.


texturing progress, kinda got the hologram leg bit figured out. I want it to read as the emissive shape are kind of peeling off to reveal the robot body underneath which I feel I'm starting to achieve but it still needs a lot of work.

another day of the texturing, just trying to really exaggerate the anime hologram vibe. My values are getting a little messy the face need to be to focal point, but we aren't quite getting that so far. I'm also working on the roughness values for all the clothing, I am finding this difficult because they are very similar materials and I am struggling to get them to read properly.
I now need to rig/pose the character and transfer the normals for the hair. Then I really need to move onto the next character as I don't want to fall behind.
also wireframe :P

Week 10 Leadsinger

finished retopo, when retopologizing I looked at the topology of the character is the Witcher 3 game as reference, I love how much detail they can get into such low tri character models, I Think good topology is an art form in it's self and something I still struggle with. One feature that I noticed of characters in the Witcher is that they double the geometry around the nose and mouth which makes it look really round and nice.


here is the low poly with the baked normals, hair is place holder, just used some old hair textures.I am pretty happy with the bakes I think they came out pretty nice, especially the bag. I just need to now go into the bakes and remove the seam around the backs of the hands.
and face textures so far, still need to do the skin maps. I've been studying how Blair Armitage does face texturing in order to try and apply it to my models. I am very new to this but I don't hate the result I am getting so far. I haven't done any roughness yet but just playing around with the fuzz map settings in marmoset I like how it looks already.
Here is the current stage of the face textures. going to get the rest of the base textures done on Monday then I'm going to start the fourth and final character. I also need to look at how to do make up, this is an aspect of character art, that I Have no doubt I will be completely terrible at. I have been advised to watch some youtube tutorials on how to apply make up. 
I have also put a hologram mask into the fuzz map setting which get a nice effect of holographic material on the edges of the face as it catches light.


Week 9 LeadSinger

Starting the hologram Lead singer, Mainly focused on getting a anime style face, and poly painted the face a little. Also testing out a hair style, which might change. I begin the poly painting by following the colour groups rule, I'm still not sure if i am doing it correct, but the end paint doesn't look bad, so I'm happy so far.
Current stage of the high poly, Ideally I feel it could do with more surface detail, such as memory folds on the shirt. I also need to use my Hair Planes Insert mesh brush to do the hair. Overall I am going to move onto re topology otherwise i will never stop working on it.
Starting on a robot leg, this will be visible where the hologram is disappearing. I wanted it to read as familiar to the muscles you would see in the leg. I looked at the artist Marco Plouffe and his contribution to the new Deus Ex franchise.

gonna begin unwrapping next week, and texturing. Busy, Busy, Busy!


Week 8 Bassist

This week I started baking down my textures and then texturing. I worked on color Palete at the same time as texturing which I think was not the best idea. I focused on adding the face paint, this was inspired by the character monkey from the video game, Enslaved Odyssey to the west. I really like his design and sort of stole that a little bit for my own character.
I think I'm making better progress with this character, than the last in terms of texturing, although I can see some things that need work such and, the body and jacket have pretty similar roughness. Texturing the amp I think was the most successful part so far, I think i got it looking pretty acurate to my reference of an amp.
This is my first pass. I spent the rest of this week tweaking and just getting comfortable with substance painter. I'm enjoying substance a lot right now, though I can see that everything is way too shiny.

Week 7 Bassist.

On Monday I began with a paint over of where I want the character to progress to. I feel the character is overall to clean, also I think her overall skin colour needs some tweaking. I also want to add tattoos, though talking to my tutor he said that I have overdone it in this paint over and their is not enough rest area, so I need to dial it back. Manly I want to have another stab at those jeans as I think they currently look really bad.

I then moved on to sculpting my second character sculpt, and refined that. I looked at Danny Devito for reference for his fat belly, I work very quickly on this sculpt, as iwas happy with the base design all i needed to do now was start refining him, and adding the surface detail to bring him up to the standard of the hopefully the whole band.

Then I moved onto retopo. I didn't come into any hiccups here and in fact got most of the character done within half my budget, and I don't feel I have to add that geometry back because he is half the size of the rest of the character it actually makes sense.

I then moved onto the unwrap, I was behind on the last character, but with this character I've been able to pull it back. When Unwrapping I split this character into sub materials IDs. I give the face a whole sheet, because its the focal point and will be under more scrutiny. Now that I'm back on track i feel a lot better about what I'm Going to Achieve.