Stylised Bust (19/04/2023) -
I forgot to update my website on my progress of this project so I'm starting from a ways through already. As of today I have got my first version of the weapon and the first version of the face sculpt completed. I will be getting feedback for each of these tomorrow but here is my progress so far -
In order for this to make sense I feel as though I should explain the full idea -
I want to create a stylised bust of a post apocalyptic general who has been surprised by something. That something is up to the viewer to decide. Could be a huge zombie, or maybe he found a big food store.
In order to showcase my hard surface modelling skills as well as my sculpting skills I am including a weapon in the render. If I have enough time to complete this I also want him to be wearing body armour. But that is a stretch goal.
Touches to the bat (05/05) -
Due to feedback from my lecturer I am changing the texture on the nails. I have paid more attention to what blood does when it dries and how it looks clumped. I've also thought about surface tension but I decided it's too negligible to spend my time on since it's such a tiny part of the piece.
I also added some fuzz to the wrap since it's a fabric wrap, similar to a bandage. I used XGen for this since I am rendering in Arnold and I found an incredible tutorial on this process by JHill. He has some really amazing videos on his workflow and technique, they are very inspiring. -
Sculpt Progress (05/05) -
My other lecturer is helping me with the sculpt side of this project. He has helped me massively by helping me figure out a workflow. I have changed my project from a Maya/Arnold based project to a Maya/Unreal based project. This is turning out amazing so far since the results I've gotten are really exciting for me. The finished Retopologized sculpt -
My first MetaHuman wrap test -
My third MetaHuman Wrap Test -
This is honestly an amazing result for me and it's really exciting. I used Metahuman to create the texture and hair, but I think I will only be keeping the texture and eyes. I'm planning on changing the hair. I will now have to sculpt back in the nose and ear detail and take it back to its stylised form since the metahuman wrap got rid of some of that detail.
Sculpt Progress (12/05) -
Recently I have been really focusing on the sculpt side of this project. I managed to find a way to put my own sculpt into the Metahuman slot in Unreal after a lot of trial and error (about 5 days of it not working). I managed to get this result after a few iterations of the eyes -
I then started the texturing on the face, I added some blood splatters in Substance Painter and put it in the colour and normal textures in the Metahuman. This was the first result (I had a problem with colour spaces but it was sorted quickly) -
I now started doing the hair in XGen using JHills workflow. I have been watching a lot of his videos and I really like his workflow, it looks like a lot of fun and I am taking a lot of inspiration from him.
Update (19/05) -
So I have completed the XGen, and got it into Unreal, I haven't textured it yet so Reginald (name of my character) does look like eminem. Here's some work in progress shots of the hair -
Doing the XGen was actually really fun, I was able to really start studying hair growth and how it looks on different people. At one point when I was doing the stubble I was even feeling my own beards growth directions while in a coffee shop which probably looked weird to the people sat next to me. I originally was going for a longish messy hairstyle, but after talking to people about it I settled on a buzz cut, however, it's a messy buzz cut. I played around a lot with the cut and noise modifiers in XGen, using different scripts to create the look I wanted. I added some scars where hair doesn't grow and managed to use the masks to fade out the hair slightly so it's not such a harsh cut at the edges. -
I also changed the blood again but it's not done, I need to work on making it look more like it's being splattered from the right side, at the moment I don't think the direction of travel is obvious enough. I also added some smeared dirt to the skin, but I'm not sure how I feel about it yet and may revert back. I am really loving this workflow for this exact reason, because it's so easy to iterate, I can just have a play around with each addition and if I don't like it I can easily revert back. It's a lot of fun and I'm really enjoying the process so far.
Update (24/05) -
So I've run into a few issues over the past few days. Mainly just one that took up the whole three days. I've been trying to bake the high poly sculpt of the coat onto the low poly version. In the end it came down to the transform being off on the high poly version. Basically three days wasted trying to sort this out but it's working now. I had to split the bake into three seperate files -
I had to sculpt the mesh a few times for it to finally get working and I also needed to UV it multiple times using different methods. I'm glad I did this though since it's a workflow I haven't gone through before so it's a good learning curve. I now just need to texture this and then import it into the Unreal scene and it should be in the right place straight away since I managed to fix the transforms in ZBrush. I did learn a lot about ZBrush in this process though which I'm actually quite happy about.
This is how the scene is looking in Unreal at the moment, I changed the hair and the blood. He's also looking up a bit now and I made the pupils slightly bigger due to my girlfriends feedback. I think I want to add more density to the beard since it is a bit invisible at the moment and weirdly blonde even though I've changed the material. However, since it is stubble I think I want to keep it like this until the very end and decide once everything else is completed.
UPDATE (29/06) -
So, I had a bit of a break from this project to pursue some other projects and I've been trying to find a job so a lot of my time has been taken up by that. I came back to it recently and changed my idea for this project. I'm still going to create a stylised but I'm going to take it one step further and take advantage of Metahuman by creating a whole game ready character and pose it in Unreal. I also changed my idea on the clothes he's wearing. Instead of the jacket, I'm making a Bullet proof jacket. This is going to take a lot longer but I want this to be the thing in my portfolio that will blow away employers since it will showcase a lot of my skills and in the process I'll be modelling props to then create standalone renders of them. Along with the posed character, I have an idea for a scene to put him in but that will be a stretch goal that will be completed after getting this in my demoreel.
Here is the bullet proof jacket so far -
In order to accomplish this change in the project I am going to have to completely re-do the whole Unreal side of the project since I deleted all of the rig and animatable parts in my original Unreal file. This also means I'm going to have to re-apply all of the head and eyes but I know how to accomplish this now so it shouldn't be too hard. Another problem I'm going to encounter is the real time ability of the mesh. Initially I wasn't going to bother retopologizing the face since it was only going to be one render but I had to do that today and bake the details so it will run better in Unreal. Another issue is the hair but I'm just going to make it less dense in XGen so it runs smoother. For now I'm just setting up the new Unreal file and making the armour. I will update you when I make any more big progress