Major Project - "Gold"

For my FMP I've decided all my characters will be part of the same universe, the same story, inspired by Romanian folklore and fairy tales. Through this, I want to show that I can give my characters diverse looks and personality, while still showing them belonging to the same world and concept. 

A while back, I started putting together my own folklore inspired story as a past time. I drew inspiration from the Romanian fairytale "Praslea cel voinic si merele de aur" (Praslea the brave and the golden apples) to make my own version of it and some of the sketches of the characters were part of my portfolio for applying to university. I think it is only right my final project consist of the characters that got me into uni and that developed so much during these years, alongside with me and my art skills. 

Through this project I want to demonstrate the development of my art style, clean and expressive sculpting that portrays the characters' personalities and shows an adequate amount of detail and the ability to produce characters belonging to the same universe yet still possessing their own charm, as well as diversity in age, gender and body shape, while also conveying their role in the story (protagonits, antagonist, helpers etc.) through shape language, colour and detail. 

Moving on to the characters:

1. The protagonist - The Hero 

In the original story, the protagonist was the youngest son of a king. He uses a bow to catch the thief stealing the king's golden apple (yes, they were real actual gold), so I thought my character should be an archer. I also thought, why not change the protagonist to be a girl, just for the fun of it, and just to see how the image of the character would change in my mind's eye. 

                 

Since she is an archer, she would have to wear lighter armour (mostly made of leather, with a metal chest plate at most, to protect the vital organs). I want to incorporate elements of traditional Romanian clothes into her attire as well. Taking into consideration practical details like having to fight and technical details like the time I have for each character, I decided to give her a braided hairstyle, with the braids secured around her head like a crown, in order to be able to sculpt and retop that more cleanly. I quite like her silhouette and the shapes in her design, as they suggest the idea of a hero. 

2. The Helper - St. Friday

In every story, there is one character, old and wise, that advises and teaches the protagonist. In some Romanian fairytales, the prince is helped by his talking flying horse, but in others, one of the personifications of the weekdays shows up (mostly Wednesday, Friday or Sunday). I chose Friday, as she is mostly portrayed as either being a very gentle granny that helps the hero if they show empathy to her, or a wrathful deity that punishes people who work on Fridays (Friday is a holly day that is supposed to be for rest and prayer). I wanted to show this duality so I made her look like a petite yet spry grandma in traditional clothing. Yet, when you look back at what she is carrying in the pouches on her back and you take in the details, you begin to think she might not be who she pretends to be. Her expression is going to be frozen in a perpetual benevolent smile, so I will sculpt that in. 

3. The Antagonist - Zmeu

Described in some stories as an ogre, some as chimaera and some as a dragon humanoid, I chose to go with the last one as it was the most memorable version for me as a kid. In the story I mentioned, he is the one stealing the golden apples and he and his two brothers kidnapped another king's daughters, that the hero saves, marrying the youngest one. I want Zmeu to have a bulky body type, similar to the orcs in World of Warcraft, but slightly more lean, since he is, at the end of the day, similar to a lizard. When making the concept, I made him too human-like at first, at least the body, so I tried to push his ribcage out and up and give a more serpentine shape to his posture. Back in the day, most of the clothes worn by royalty (and since he lives in a palace he is, somewhat, royalty) were influenced by outside cultures that occupied Romania in the past, like Turkey, Hungary, Byzant, so I'm going to have him wear something similar to that, which would make him look alien to this world, enforcing the point that he is in fact, intruding in it. 

Character Brief: The Captain - Texturing and Final Steps

When texturing, I tried to keep a clean, stylized look, still adding enough details to give the character dimension and story, but not as much as a realistic style piece would have. I drew inspiration from different stylized works, mainly Overwatch and some Fortnite characters. 

For the skin, I started with a base colour, added some ambient occlusion using two fill layers with a black mask and a mask editor (one for wider, softer shadows and one for the finer, stronger shadows), then some edge highlights (especially on the nose and edge of the eye) in the same way. I lowered the layer opacity and added a slight blur so it wouldn't look unnatural. I used a pink layer with a black mask for the more vascularized areas of the face (mainly the cheeks and a tiny bit on the nose). I added some around the eyes as well, since I wanted to achieve the "haven't slept for days" look. With a purple layer and a blur effect I painted over the jaw and chin area, as well as under the eyes for some eyebags. I painted some more shadows around the eye to make it pop more, but not too much as I didn't want it to look like make-up. With a layer with only roughness turned on, I painted over the shinier areas of the face, where there is more sebum production and hence, makes the skin a bit glossier: nose, cheeks and forehead (it's not visible here though). Of course, on a stylized character I exaggerated it a bit and also added some on the lips. 

For the metal on the helmet, I kept things simple: I wanted it to have that painted kind of look, so I used a grunge procedural with a blur slope to achieve it. I added some roughness using procedurals and colour variation using a layer with a white mask and a light generator. I added ambient occlusion and edge highlights using mask editors, as well as some rust. The copper was made in the same way, just different colour. 

For the clothes, I kept the pants simple, adding ambient occlusion and some edge highlights, as well as some colour variation using a light generator on a fill layer with a white mask, something I've noticed in a lot of stylized characters. For the clothes I did something similar, but used one of the smart materials in substance painter as base and modified it to fit my vision. For the metal bits I used the same metal from the helmet and for the leather I used a cell procedural on a height layer in order to get the leather texture. 

I used Mixamo to pose my character, though I had to edit some of the skinning manually, as some pieces of the metal leg were deforming unnaturally. I then brought everything into Unreal, made the emissive bits and lighted the scene. I also made the eyeball texture in Substance Designer and implemented it using parallax occlusion mapping. I kept it simple, to fit the stylized character. 

 

I am really happy with how this turned out. My favourite parts are the face, the metal leg and the shoe details. 

This project was a challenge in some ways, but it thought me a lot of things that I will be able to use for my final project. 

Character Brief: The Captain - Retopology, Unwrapping and Baking

First, I tried retopping the entire head of the character altogether, including all the pieces of the helmet, but ended up retopping the front piece and the one going around the back of the head separately, since the incide was difficult to retop because of spaces I left between the pieces and the head, which is something I will keep in mind for the future. I could have probably managed to retop them, but it would have taken way more time than I could afford and so, I needed to make a decision. So I ended up retopping them separetely. 

I kept the deformation loops on the face as even as possible and used the cut tool in order to retop it altogether with the eyepatch, to avoid any holes in the mesh in the scenario the mesh would be animated. 

I first retopped everything, then used the Conform and Conform Relax tools in order to clean and even out everything.

For the bullets, the wires, gauntlets and the small bits of the shoe I used Zremesher and then Conformed them to the high poly. 

For the leg, I prefer doing most of it manually, as it is a point of interest and I wanted it to be perfect. Plus, since there are so many small pieces, painting over baking errors would waste too much time.

For the shoe, I retopped the big part of it myself (the shoe itself) and used the Zremesher method for the laces and circle bits in order to save some time.

I've seen plenty of stylized characters with no deformation loops in the hands, but I decided it was a safer bet using them and I wanted to practice retopping them properly, so I added them in the end. 

I then unwrapped the mesh on four UV sheets: one for the clothes, the shoe and the glove, one for the leather and metal bits and one for the head, as well as one for the eyeball. I straightened the UVs as much as possible without warping the textures. 

After baking, I only got errors on the small bits and pieces like the bullets and the shoelaces, which I painted over in Photoshop, after finishing the texturing process, in case I had to bake some of the maps again. 

I also had to go back and model a bandage around the leg in Zbrush, since the shape of the organic leg going into the mechanical one looked a bit unnatural and I had to do something to fix it. It took a bit longer, but I just conformed the mesh to the new high poly and had no further issues.

Legendary Jacket Item - Texturing and Final Steps

Texturing

For texturing, I started with the biker jacket. I made the base for the leather texture using a height layer with a black mask to which I added a Fill with a Cells procedural. I also used levels in order to have more control over the mask. 

I then added some roughness variation as well as some dirt using procedurals, since the jacket is supposed to be a rebel's jacket and hence, less better kept and dirty. 

I also added some blood stains since they give a nice effect and more variation to the texture, as well as another story element to the piece. Why is it bloody? Who did they fight? 

Using mask editors I added some ambient occlusion and very subtle edge highlights.

Following my concept, I drew a Skull design in Photoshop, then used it as a mask for the drawing on the back of the Jacket. I added dirt, roughness variation and used a blur slope filter in order to create the rough edges of the skull and blend them nicely with the dirt texture, making it look worn out and faded. 

Using designs I drew in Photoshop and height layers, I made the badges. The big "A" letter textile badge was supposed to be made in the same way, but the folds of the jacket showed through it, so I ended up making it using geometry. I added some rougher spots to the smaller badges, as if the plastic was old and dirty and some dirt. I had to mask out the leather texture underneath manually, but it was worth it in the end. I think the badges add more personality to the jacket, a playful yet deadly vibe. The person wearing this is definitely not sane (The "A" stands for anarchy, for the record :)) ).

For the metal, I used an old metal texture I made and modified it for more wear and tear, added some rust texture and the blood spots, as well as highlight the edges using two lighter layers and a mask editor generator: one for the softer, bigger highlights and one for the finer ones. 

I also added the emissive layers and masked out the rest of the textures in those places. 

And this is the outcome:

For the military jacket I made a textile mask using substance designer and imported it into substance painter in order to get the material height detail. 

I then added the base colour as well as some ambient occlusion and edge highlights using mask editors. Using procedurals, I gave it some subtle colour variation too. 

For the metal, I used a gold texture I made a while back, this time taking out some of the wear and tear layers and changing the colour slightly, in order to make it seem newer and well kept. I also added the details on the gold trim and sleeve cuffs using a height layer, then baked them into the normal map. 

I wanted the medals to look really shiny, maybe even over polished, so I only added some roughness variation and fingerprints using just roughness layers. I also gave the edges a lighter, greenish glow, as if they'd been polished too much and to add in some colour variation.

I then added the emissive bits and this is the outcome:

For the mannequin I used a layer of a dirty white colour and set the roughness low so it would look like the shiny material used for fashion mannequins in shops. I added some colour and roughness variation using procedurals and some ambient occlusion using a layer with a black mask and a mask editor.

Final Steps

I took everything and put it together in Engine, built the lighting and the materials. Using the emissive texture exported from substance painter I also made the pulsing dynamic material. 

I had a little problem with some stretching on the military jacket textures, which weirdly didn't show in substance painter, but I fixed it by hiding the seam of the UV underneath the gold trim rather than have it come straight down on the jacket. Even weirder, though, this didn't show up on the biker jacket, which had been unwrapped in the exact same way. 

I had a similar problem when presenting my work in Marmoset, but importing the mesh from Substance Painter somehow fixed the problem. 

And the final product: