Character Brief: The Captain - Sculpt

For the body base, I used a stylized female bpdy I had sculpted during the summer and modified it in order to make it male.

I widened the ribcage and shoulder width and flattened the chest as well as straightened some of the curved shapes to give it more of a masculine look. I didn't really do much for the legs as one would be chopped off in the end anyway (oh God that sounded horrible) and the other one would be covered by the trouser leg and the shoe. 

I then sculpted the face using clean shapes, defined planes and sharp edges to give it the stylized look. 

I then started blocking out his helmet by extracting and Zremeshing the pieces and adding the round piece and the wires. I think I managed to somewhat recreate the shape of a tricorn hat and the braids that pirates would wear through the cables flowing from the helmet. Also, the metal piece on the face gives the impression of an eyepatch, with I am really pleased with.

I then Dynameshed the head and body together to make them one single object and smooth out the transition between them. I Zremeshed and used Project in order to project the old details into the new mesh.

I built the prosthetic leg in 3dsMax as it was easier and faster for me to do so. I had to review some of my design choices as they weren't properly fucntional, but came out with better, more practical ideas in the end:

I then cut off his leg (I can't word this better, I'm sorry) and replaced it with the prosthetic one. At first, the knees were too high up even for a stylized character and had a really weird unnatural shape to them, so I used Transpose Master to shape it metter and bring the knee down. I moved the pieces of the prosthetic leg around in order to bring the hinge at the same level with the other knee, so he could realistically be able to walk.

I took a Zremeshed version of the body into Marvelous to make the clothes. The first version of the jacket was too tight and it looked like it would rip off him with any move. No matter what I did though, something looked awkard, so I had to build the jacket once more/

This is the final version of the Marvelous Designer outfit:

I then quadrangulated it and brought it into Zbrush. I welded the pannels together, Dynameshed and Zremeshed the clothes to fix the weird topology, then used Dam Standard to redo the impression of seams on the outfit.

By extracting and appending shapes, I built the rest of the details, keeping them as clean and sharp as possible, as they are not only stylized, but also hard surface. 

Overall, I'm quite pleased with how he looks. I will proceed to retopping after adding the final touches and details and polishing all the bits and pieces. 

Character Brief: The Captain - Research and Concept

For the captain project brief, I decided I wasn't going for the basic 17th Century pirate Captain. The theme the brief offered was too open ended and gave too much room for interpretation and creativity to not take advantage of that. 

Being used to and pasionate about history and fantasy, I had never really tried something sci-fi or cyberpunk themed, so I decided that this is a good time to experiment with it and hard surface details as well, since it can't be missing from a cyberpunk character, right? I also decided to make the character stylized, since I enjoy it and the last year character project didn't allow me to go all out with the sylization and show my own style.

I first did some general research to get an idea of what I wanted to do. I thought I would take something familiar -  a pirate -  and place it in a context where it would normally be odd: the future. How would the environment affect him and how would the concept of a pirate change in order to fit the new environment? 

The story of my new character gradually took shape in my mind as I worked on the concept: In a future where the social classes have returned in the shape of conglomerates versus the normal people, I young orphaned boy steals to get by every day. Until one time he is caught and beaten almost to death by the authorities for stealing an insignificant amount of money from a rich man. The boy barely survives and is left disabled: his right leg is broken and gets infected, so it has to be removed and his eye.. let's just say it's missing. He makes up fot these through prothetics and cyber enhancements and as he grows up he becomes a pirate in order to steal more than a few pennies from the rich. 

I did a bit of research into prosthetics and got some references to make sure my design is accurate and functional.

I also brought into my moodboard one of the characters I began sculpting during summer, to use her as reference for the type of stylized I wanted for this character and maybe this way showcase my signature stylized art style. 

I wanted to keep the basic shape language and visual symbols of a pirate: The tricorn hat, the longcoat and the peg leg, while completely reimagining them in a cyberpunk context. 

These were the iterations I came up with:

I chose the last one, a mix of the second and third one, as I think it brinks together all of the best details from the other iteration while conveying the visual image I want. 

I also detailed the face, to have a better idea of how I was gonna sculpt it. I chose some photos of a guy from Pinterest that I thought fit the vibe of my pirate captain and observed his features in order to exaggerate and stylize them. He had to look young, maybe a bit too young for a pirate captain, yet still demand respect. 

This is the final concept: 

Legendary Jacket Item - Retop, Unwrap and Bake

While retopping the jacket, I did my best to create proper deformation loops for the shoulder and elbow area that would enable it to deform without breaking the shape. I did my best to keep the topology as even as possible. For details such as the chest piece and medals I used triangles in order to reduce topology. I believe that won't cause any problem with deformation in a game, as the chest piece is made of metal and wouldn't need to deform. It would be simply skinned to one single bone. 

At first. I simply concentrated on getting the topology done, the cleaned it afterwards, straightening up the lines and inserting loops where the topolgy was too simple and uneven. 

Looking back, the trim around the chest piece could have gone with less topology, but I was still far from the budget limit of 16000 tris with a final tri count of  13,512   for the military jacket. 

I then unwrapped it, trying to keep the seams to a minimum and as hidden as possible. I straightened out the pieces as much as I could without causing distorsions in the unwrap, in order to better pack them together. I split the jacket into two UV sheets using material ID's: one for the jacket and one for the metal pieces and details. 

For the biker jacket skin, I simply took the military jacket, took out the medals and modified the trim around the chest piece, as well as retopped the shoulder pads and the spikes. This way, I didn't have to redo the unwrap for meshes that are esentially almost the same. I then unwrapped the new details and added them on the UV sheet in the place of ones I took out. 

The biker jacket ended up with a final tri count of 11,982.

I then prepared the jacket for baking by doing a last check for any kind of errors, checking the naming of the high and low polys and vertex painting the high polys in order to be able to generate colour IDs in Substance Painter. 

I took the jacket into Substance Painter and baked it. The bake came out quite well, with just a couple of errors that I had to paint over manually in Photoshop. Overall I was really satisfied with how the bake came out. 

Now the jackets are ready to be textured and finalised. 

Legendary Jacket Item - Scultping

In order to achieve the base of the jacket, I decided to experiment with a new softwear: Marvelous Designer. I retopped and brought in my mannequin in order to make sure that the jacket fits it afterwards. 

For the mannequin, I didn't dwell on deformation loops or avoiding triangles at any cost, as I knew it wouldn't move in the context of a hypothetical game, and half of it would be covered by the jacket anyway. 

After bringing it into Marvelous Designer as an avatar, I had to set the bounding volumes and arrangement points as the program hadn't managed to do it on my mesh. Thankfully, it didn't take a long time, and the arrangement points were helpful later on, when arranging the material on the mannequin.

 

I used examples of military jacket patterns I had researched and added some of my own ideas too in order to get the shapes in my concept drawing. I first made a basic blowse pattern then started to shape it to my liking. I used "darts", triangular cuts made into the material in order to make the jacket more fitted and give it the stiff, triangular shape.

After getting the basic shape, I just adjusted some of the shapes to make sure it fit the way I wanted it too and that I could get the folds I was looking for. I then quadrangulated it and sent it to Zbrush. Unfortunately, I hadn't set the particle distance properly, so the topology was too low and the level of detail on the folds was lost. I couldn't figure this out in that moment, so you'll see I had to sculpt some of the detail back in Zbrush, though the indication of fold shapes was still helpful. 

I welded together the pannels that made up the jacket using Weld Points and then regained some of the seam indents using ZModeler. On this occasion, I got the chance to practice ZModeler, which I had been reticent using until now. 

I then used the base to build up my jacket and made all the metal bits and details in Zbrush. Since they were simple shapes, it didn't take long, though I spent time making sure they look polished enough, as they are hard surface. As for surface details, I kept the damage low on the military jacket, since it's supposed to look clean and distinguished compared to the other one. I made the medals in 3ds Max and then polished them in Zbrush.

At first, there was no trim around the round piece on the chest of the jacket, but after getting some feedback, I decided to add it as a decorative piece in order to mask the sharp transition between the chest piece and the jacket surface. I also added more folds and inflated the edges of the panels a bit in order to give the impression of how the pieces on a real military jacket join together in the shoulder seam area. 

For the biker jacket skin I simply modified the shape of the metallic shoulder pads in order to give them a sharper more aggressive look, and added spikes on top, as well as more surface wear and damage on the metal. 

The rest of the details I will add in Substance Painter, in order to hopefully keep a non-destructive workflow and be able to change things on the way without spending too much time going back.