Tianao Chen

Firstly, I use Zmolder to make a hole as a iris, I delated the meshes in the middle and then extured all the polygons. Now I can easily to use brush to sculpte the details.

After finishing the details, I painted color on eyeball so that i can see how the eye would be looks like.

Baking in Substance Painter

I created another outer layer for the eyeball, larger to simulate the texture of the eye glass. The I edit low poly’s UV in Maya for baking and texturing.

Import it into Marmoset Toolbag4 for rander ( also it was a test )

But that looks not good, I think I must miss something important and then I learned that i missed a map called parallax map, and I should not make a hole in the middle, sp I decided to make another one.

Sculpting in ZBrush

The same, use mask brushs to create the texture of eyeballs.

Texturing

Making Parallax Map

This map is very easy to make, i just need to import basecolor map into Photoshop and create a new layer with black sphere in the area of iris, then blur it, so I can get a nice parallax map.

Apply Parallax Map in Marmoset Toolbag 4

Final Rander

Baking

Texturing

Basically, In the process of my painting materials, I basically adhere to the basic colour – colour change – material details – surface wear – edge damage – dirty stains in this order, according to this way of thinking to make the material tends to be more realistic and detailed.

gemstones

First I added a base colour to the stone, then I used a different colour to create its texture, as we all know, gemstones are translucent, so it can’t just be a simple shade of green, which would inevitably look a bit monotonous and illogical. So I added two generators with a gradient effect and gave them a darker and a brighter colour, after which I added a layer to simulate the texture of the gemstone.

At this point the material had taken on the effect of a partial gem, but it wasn’t quite enough, so I adjusted its mask to make the edges more centred, and then created height for it, thus completing the jewel.

Zwrap

Zremesher

Topogun Beat3

Tried Zremesher in Zbrush

For faster speed, I tried Zremesher my model as topology, and I think that should be fine with eveything I have done. I use zrmesherguid brush to draw a guid line and sperated the model into red and blue to make suer I will not lose structure and the mesh can be distributed correctly after zremesher.

Testing Baking in Substance Painter

Then I import it into Substance Painter and auto unwrap the UV for baking, but unfortunelt, even I used guid line and different color to guid zremesher but there was still lots of issues that cant be ignored. such ad the twisty edge and wrong structure, what is more, the meshes after zremesher was not good for UV editing.

Anyway, Zremeher is a good way to retopology but not for me.

Retopology in Topogun

For a better intergrating degree of my high poly and low poly, I decied to retopology manully in Topogun. It is quite easy and more convenient than Maya.

Edit UV in Maya

After retopology, I import the mesh into Maya for editing UV then do the test again in Substance Painter.

Testing in Substance Painter.

Even the ups and downs on the surface matched very well.

Block out in Maya

It is time to build differents of the belt, I use Maya to build a basic shape of the Taotie and then import into Zbrush for further sculpturing.

And I was considering about the project I made in year2, in that project I built a big mecha and even I got a A+ in that project but I think there are lots of points I can do better such as the the edges of the mech are not hardenough for a hardsurface, so I realyy want to make hardedge hard enough in this project.

For this puporse, I use Maya to make sure the meshes are perfect and then extured it in zbrush so I can get a hard and clear edge.

Cloud armour

The same way, block out in Maya and sculpturing in Zbrush for clear shape and edge.

Armour Pieces

For those complex pieces, I used a function called nanomesh in Zbrush, first of all, I need to build a average mesh to make sure regularities of distribution then use the brush in Zbrush to draw on this mesh. So I can get a regular distribution of pieces. ( Based on the mesh I made.)

Final view

First of all, I drag a very basic shape of the shoulder armour, I make it I made it extend a bit down to the chest, so that the chest area doesn’t look so spacey.

use Zmodeler to edit mesh

but I didnt do polygroups in Zbrush which makes that shape looks not like hardsurface but like clay. Unfortunatly, I didnt notice this big problem just kept working on the ornimental sculpturing.

This time, I use mask brush to do polygroups, fold it and zremesh it by polygroups, so I got a very nice hardsurface shape.

use mask brush to do ornimental sculpturing.

simple render in Zbrush

Block out in Maya

Shoes Deatils

After finishing the details, I tried to move the shoes to where they should be, then I did a little bit change on the pucker of that long dress to fit the shoes.

Crown

So, for making sure that the whole feeling of my character would be correct I move everything that I have built to the right position, and he looks not bad. Honestly, I have been happy with this.

Block in Maya

For a better shape of my character’s shoulder armour. I decided to block out a basic shape in Maya, and then I will import the OBJ file into Zbrush to build details.

Rebuilding meshes in Zbrush

After importing the OBJ file into Zbrush, I just did a dynamash and then used Zremasher to rebuild the meshes. So, now this modle is ready for me to edit deatils on it.

Editing Details

At first, I tried to make the deatils by using brushes, but the fact was that I coudn’t held the shape, expecially the edge of the parterns which higher than the surface, that was making me suffering.

Finding a Way

Fortunately, I found a video on Youtube made by Seth Thompson who worked in Blizzard. In this video, he tought me how to use mask brush to build ornamental designs, he would draw a basic shape of partern with mask brush and then fix the edge by wiping the superfluous edge. This was really helpful for me. So I started built ornamental designs of my model in this way.

By this way, I did more details.

After finishing the shape, I strated to draw some little partern on the surface.

Final Model with a Simple Texture

Another Shoulder Armour

I built the another shoulder armour by this way.

After I had done most of the face work I started to add armour to my character, but once I had done the initial block out I found the overall silhouette a bit boring, so I now need to make some changes to the silhouette.

To make the silhouette look more interesting, I upturned the edges of the armour to give them an upward stretch.

I’ve also replaced the flat crown with this elongated, upturned shape, which makes the character look less rigid and the effect is especially noticeable on the sides.

But so far, I’m still not very satisfied with my shoulder armour design, it’s because I didn’t do a good design and didn’t do a preliminary block out of the model, I’ll focus on redesigning the shoulder armour in my subsequent work.