Lighting Workshop P.3

For this project, I practiced 3-point lighting and outdoor scenery lighting in Unreal. I used a creature model that I created for another class, and placed it in an environment to match it. 

Here are my renders:

Simple Creature P.3

  For this project, I am focusing on character modeling. I am modeling a creature created by CreatureBox. 

Here is the concept I am working from:

First, I made a low-poly proxy model in Maya, smoothed it, and then I imported it into ZBrush. Here is a ZBrush render of the non-smoothed proxy:

After that, I subdivided my model and lined it up with the reference image with the spotlight tool. I extracted the extra spikes using masks and the move tool. 

Here is the reference set up in ZBrush:

Here is the render of the final blockout:

For my next steps, I sculpted in the wrinkles and adjusted the eyelids.

Then, I brought my slug into Maya to be retopologized.

Here are my UVs

I moved my model into Substance Painter to create the textures and bake my high resolution sculpt onto my game-ready model. 

Here are my final renders:

Simple Creature P.2

 For this project, I am focusing on character modeling. I am modeling a creature created by CreatureBox. 

Here is the concept I am working from:

First, I made a low-poly proxy model in Maya, smoothed it, and then I imported it into ZBrush. Here is a ZBrush render of the non-smoothed proxy:

After that, I subdivided my model and lined it up with the reference image with the spotlight tool. I extracted the extra spikes using masks and the move tool. 

Here is the reference set up in ZBrush:

Here is the render of the final blockout:

For my next steps, I sculpted in the wrinkles and adjusted the eyelids.

Then, I brought my slug into Maya to be retopologized.

,

Here are my UVs

Lighting Workshop P.2

 For this project, I practiced setting up a scene using depth of field and meshes provided by Quixel Bridge. I also used an HDRI cubemap while lighting the scene.

Here are my renders:

Artist Roadmap

Artist Roadmap

Projecting Out Past Graduation

Questions:

1. If you could project out past graduation, what is your overall career goal? 

• AAA first, then moving on to an indie team once I've developed more of my skills and learned what its like to work in the big industry.
• I prefer a midsize or small team so I can be closer to my coworkers, but I am not opposed to a large team.
• I am interested in simulation as an option if the first doesn't work out, specifically with in the healthcare or education area. 
• The theme park industry isn't my first choice, but I think it would make for a fun job too.

2. If you could project out into starting your career, what sounds the most appealing to you? 

• Primarily I would like to be a character artist, with environment art as a backup plan or starting path. Starting with environment, I really like nature and would be interested in natural environments. With characters, I like to make stylized models of humans and creatures.

3. What are some of the top companies that you are interested in working for? 

• Iron Galaxy, located in Orlando where I live, is a very inclusive studio with a great environment. I have some friends working at this studio, and I have chatted with some of the employees at an event. I really like their vibes!
• Bungie, located in Seattle, WA, is a large company responsible for making the game Destiny 2. I would enjoy working on space-fantasy models in their style.
• Nintendo, located in Washington and Texas, have the cartoon style I would love to work in. I also grew up playing their games.

Inspiring Reference 

• I created an ArtStation account, located here.
• I have another post including my top 10 artists that inspire me, located here. 

10 Artists that Inspire Me

I made some reference boards for 10 Artists that inspire me. Here they are:

1. Rinotuna

2. Orb

3. Marco Di Lucca

4. Jessada Sutthi

5. Max Hay

6. Dong Cheng

7. Mickael Lelièvre

8. YCFCG

9. Lemon Art

10. Marina Markova

Lighting Workshop P.1

For this project, I am learning the basic concepts for lighting in Unreal. This assignment specifically focused on the 3-point lighting system: Including a main light, a bounce light, and a rim light in your scene. 

I created four different shots of two different models, each one showing a render in white light and a render in RGB light. The RGB light identifies the three points of light. Red is the main light, green is the bounce light, and blue is the rim light. 

The models I used are provided by ThreeDScans. The model of the woman can be found at this link, and the model of the crab can be found at this link.

Here are my renders:

Simple Creature P.1

For this project, I am focusing on character modeling. I am modeling a creature created by CreatureBox. 

Here is the concept I am working from:

First, I made a low-poly proxy model in Maya, smoothed it, and then I imported it into ZBrush. Here is a ZBrush render of the non-smoothed proxy:

After that, I subdivided my model and lined it up with the reference image with the spotlight tool. I extracted the extra spikes using masks and the move tool. 

Here is the reference set up in ZBrush:

Here is the render of the final blockout:

For my next steps, I will be sculpting in the wrinkles and any extra bumps.

Studies/Exercises

 Male Anatomy Study

• Torso
• Face
• Eyes
• Nose
• Mouth
• Ears
• Overall
• Arms and hands
• Legs and feet

Male Anatomy Sculpting Study

For my personal project, I aim to practice sculpting the male figure to improve my understanding of anatomy. To begin, I am going to focus on a torso with a muscular build to get a feel for where the muscle structure lies under the skin. 

Here is my reference board:

Research Project

 Marvelous Designer

- I want to learn more about the Marvelous Designer Program and complete a character project I started my senior year of undergrad. 

For this project, I worked on creating a realistic version of the character Morganthe from Wizard101. This game was a childhood favorite of mine, and I was inspired to recreate one of its villains in a high poly style. One of my goals for this project was to familiarize myself with Marvelous Designer. I have never used this program before, and it is both really interesting and challenging to learn. 

First, I started with my reference board:

Then, I used the base female model provided by Zbrush to work off of. I changed the proportions of this sculpture to match Morganthe’s features. The most significant changes were to her eyes, lips, and nose, which are more pointed.
(First is the original model, second is the adjusted model.)

I also added her eyelashes and eyeballs.

I sculpted her accessories from scratch. For her staff, I modeled it in Maya and then imported it into Zbrush for polishing. Her belt, rings, and crown were blocked out and polished directly in Zbrush. 

These are the blockouts:

 

For the last stage of the sculpting process, I used the Alpha Curves tool to create her hair. I worked from the bottom of her scalp first, gradually adding more layers on top until I reached the part on the top of her head. I smoothed some of the hair together and went back in with the DamStandard brush to work in more details. 

Some of the base hair layers, working off of an extracted scalp shape:

The hair layers put together and smoothed: 

The UV process was pretty time-consuming. I wanted to learn how to work with UVs directly in Zbrush. I followed tutorials from FlippedNormals

https://youtu.be/p56N-dN11zYLinks to an external site.

and DannyMac3D

https://youtu.be/ObStsHYxagsLinks to an external site.

to use the UV Master and Decimation Master Zplugins. These allowed me to paint areas of the model I wanted to protect from seams, and then Zbrush would automatically generate UVs for me. However, this method reduces the user’s control over the UVs, so some trial and error had to be done. Once everything was UV’ed, I decimated the subtools to prepare them for import into Marvelous Designer and Substance Painter.

The areas painted in red are the parts of the model I wanted to protect from seams (her lower body would be hidden by her dress, so seams there didn't matter as much): 

What I struggled with most was figuring out the best order of steps to follow. I would do work, realize that wasn’t the proper step, and would have to go back and redo it over. Zbrush also happened to crash a lot during this experimentation which caused plenty more work-redos. Bit by bit, I'm learning the quicker steps. 

Here is the finished sculpt ready for Marvelous:

Finally, after all of that was done, I imported my model into Marvelous designer. There was a lot of troubleshooting to do here. For some reason, it automatically set the mesh to an opacity of 0 after it was imported. I fixed this by going to the upper right corner, changing the Fabric browser to Scene Browser, finding my model, and changing Opacity in the property editor to 100. Shoutout to one of the commenters on this troubleshooting video who helped me discover this fix:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uzIrgL-EeeULinks to an external site. 

I also had to alter the camera distance caps as my model would disappear if I tried to zoom out to view the whole mesh. I also had to re-import the whole model as a different scale, since I could not view the entire model in the 2D viewport. It also crashed several times. Phew. Marvelous Designer really didn’t want me to work.

After that was done, I followed tutorials from Veryveig to begin.

 https://youtu.be/eGi_NGSW3ZsLinks to an external site.

I first messed around with making her skirt. Following the tutorial above, I created an ellipse shape and cut a hole in the center to fit it around her waist. Through this test I was able to get used to more of the menus, tools, and controls within Marvelous Designer. 

However, this shape did not drape in the way I was expecting. It seemed to float as if there was wind blowing. I decided to mess around with the properties in the bottom right panel. Lowering the "pressure" slider seemed to reduce this float. I also added more points to the skirt, which seemed to help as well. Experimenting with different cloths surprisingly didn't effect it. 

After some messing around with this test skirt, I looked up a dress-specific tutorial. I found a good guide made by 3D Megaverse

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ILZ0fgsu7BQLinks to an external site.

that started me on a good path to making her full dress.

I made a basic polygon dress, duplicated it, lined it up with my model, and used the Free Sew tool to sew the outer edges of the pieces together. At first I tried to use the arrangement points to line the pieces up, but they appeared drastically larger than my model. 

Once I hit simulate, the pieces snapped together around the sculpture.

The edges were very pointed, but I was excited to see the dress come together. To clean it up more, I used the curve tool to round out the polygons. I scaled the dress to be longer and wider so it would fit around her shoulders better.

Rounding out the edges helped significantly, but I was still struggling with the shoulders. I think this was because of her spider legs, as the sleeves would snap around them. I experimented with pins to see if they would reduce this, but the dress became more jittery. I think a solution to this would be to either cut holes around these legs or alter the back of the dress with cloth straps that weave around them. Increasing the curve of the sleeves did help it fit around the arms a little more.

My project is still a work in progress. There is a TON to learn within both ZBrush and especially Marvelous Designer. I aim to continue on with this project through the texturing stage and work to improve what I have made with Marvelous Designer. Despite the roadblocks and frustrations I faced, it helped me better understand Zbrush and Marvelous as tools. It’s so cool to see this character come to life in a new way, and I am really fascinated by the capabilities that these industry software provide. I never use Marvelous before I got to this project, so it feels good to be even one tiny step closer in my journey to being a better artist.