FMP Demoness - Textures 1

The week I finished baking (on Monday), was the last week the university was open, so taking into consideration what was happening with the virus I decided that it would be best to return back home until the situation calms down. I didn't manage to get much work done that week since I had an interview and the rest of the time was spent packing, travelling and then setting up my workspace at home. My computer at home is not as fast as those in the labs but it can still handle most programs decently so hopefully I won't have many problems with that and I can finish everything on time. 

So after this busy week, I was finally able to start texturing the character. I had references for most of my materials so I had a fairly good idea on what the materials are supposed to look like. At first, I tried getting the base properties of the materials right without worrying about wear at all. This is how I built the materials for my previous character too, which is a method that works really well for me because it forces me to make interesting materials (as brand new)  without relying on the wear and tear. 

This was the first material pass. Probably, the most challenging materials for this character were the fabrics, the ones on her dress and the lace material. The lace was actually a bit easier than I expected, I made the base fabric material first and then masked with a lace tiling alpha (and added height to it). It was much more challenging to get the dress material to look how I wanted to since I wanted to make it look quite elegant and have some highlights on it. Adding metalness to some of the areas did this trick quite well without making the material look like plastic (I mainly used references of the sorceresses' dresses from Witcher 3).

After a second pass, I started adding more details and adjusting the materials. I started thinking about the wear of the materials too, I don't want to make these characters very worn given the world context but some battle damage would make sense (I am trying to find a balance for now, if I have time, one of my stretch goals is to make different battle-worn levels for the characters). 

I added a bit of opacity to the lace material, a mid-value to go over the entire mesh. I think that it works better now and it resembles more the material I was going for. I am still not sure about the thick edges of the material, I am thinking of adding some tears right near the edges to break the continuous lines. 

Also, I started adding some height patterns to the metals and other areas, most of those have only decorative purposes and I think they contribute to the elegance that I wanted my character to have. Only the patterns on her rings are some demonic sigils that I found, I thought that adding those might help suggest her powers. 

I wanted to make the shackles on her legs visibly older and more worn than all the other materials, since she was supposed to have been imprisoned for a long time and freed when she made a contract with my previous character ( I hope I cand find some names for them until I finish the project, but that's the hardest part). After being freed from imprisonment, I didn't want her to lose those chains completely as a way to suggest that she is still bound (with the contract) and not completely free to use her powers ( I added the glowing marking on the shackles to give them a more supernatural look, so it would be more visible that they are not regular chains which can be broken easily). This character's main motivation to collaborate with the biker dude (who is a demon hunter) is to find a way to be completely free and regain her powers (which the biker guy can channel through the contract and make him more op).

Something more challenging about both these characters is showing that some of the things they're wearing have different ages, so they would need to have different wear levels too (and on top of that comes the battle damage which is a different story). For this one, the shackles are visibly older, the dress is supposed to seem different from the other materials too (it should be something that she had before the imprisonment, that's why I was looking at references from the Witcher which is medieval) and all the other things should belong in the modern world. I think those aspects are quite difficult to illustrate and match together so things wouldn't seem completely out of place or unplanned (or just a mistake). I don't think I was that successful showing these aspects through my first character and this one still need a lot more work too, but hopefully, I can find a balance.

 I tried to suggest the demonic look through her skin material too, that's why I added a lot of veins on it to kind of make it look translucent (being imprisoned for a long time it would make sense to for her to be very pale too). Making her eyes glowing contributes to that look too, also I think it would help for some dramatic lighting renders at the end. The horns were quite challenging, I looked at a lot of real-life references but I found it quite difficult to get the material properties right. 

The main element which is missing is the tattoo on her back. That's a big part of her design so it's important for me to get it right. I tried out a few patterns but none were looking right so I am gathering more references. I am considering extending the tattoo over other parts of her body too ( which would make her look more demonic) but I would have to see how that works. Also, though about making the tattoo emissive, I think it would make some cool final renders but wouldn't make much sense otherwise. The third option would be to make a scar instead of a tattoo, something like hot iron branding, but I still have to look into how I could texture that convincingly (it's also important to make the scar look different from the one on my previous character since they would have different causes).

This is the progress that I managed to make in one week. I still have a lot to do before the textures will be finished but it's getting there. Until I decide on what to do with the tattoo/scar I will take a break from texturing and start working on the hair for both my characters, as this will be quite time consuming too. 

FMP Demoness -Low Poly, UVs, Bakes

I spent a week working on the low poly, UVs and bakes. I'm quite happy that I managed to finish all of these so now I'm not that behind on schedule anymore.

For the low poly, I already had some of the objects (like belts, buckles) made as low polys from the start so I only needed to adjust them. The other parts I retoped in Maya, I really tried to keep the silhouette of the objects, have clean loops for deformation and keep everything at the same poly density. The only part which is higher in density is the face, as I didn't want to have any sharp edges around there, I also added some more loops on the sleeves of the cloak just to be safe, so it wouldn't clip with the arm. 

 The low poly has around 43k tris in total, my budget is of 70k tris so this leaves me with a lot of budget for the hair ( I don't think that I'll actually get to 70k though, the hair wouldn't probably have more than 10k).

My texture budget is one 4k sheet for the entire character, so I decided to split it in more 1k sheets for all the different areas like I did with my previous character. I mainly took into consideration the material the objects are going to be made of when splitting those, this way it would be easier to set up the properties for each material in engine. The only issue that I have with this method is that there is quite a bit of empty space on some of the sheets, but overall I can get more details in than if I had grouped them all together. I ended up with 9 texture sheets and I will need to add 2 more, one for the hair and one for the eyes.

After I've finished those, I baked the normal, normal obj, thickness, curvature and ao maps in Marmoset Toolbag. This was quite straight forward and I didn't get any big errors which I couldn't fix directly in Marmoset. 

I'm happy that now I can finally begin working on the textures since this is going to be a big part of the character and that I managed to save some time and catch up on my schedule.

FMP Demoness -Sculpt 2

I spent another week finishing up the sculpt. I went over everything and tried to get them all at the same stage of polish. I didn't want to add many surface details at this point as it would be quicker and easier to do that in Substance Painter. 

That's how the sculpt ended up looking at the end. The only thing that I added was a ring on one of her horns to break the symmetry and apart from that, I just tried to fix everything and get some nice details in. If there is something else that catches my eye, I will fix that on the go, as I really have to move on to the next stage now if I don't want to fall behind on my schedule. 

Fortunately, some of the objects are already low polys so I don't have a lot to retop, I am hoping I can speed things up a little now and finish the low poly and UV in another week. 

I took a pic almost every day so I thought I'd make a gif of the process. 

FMP Demoness -Sculpt 1

Week 21, started working on my second character for the FMP. The first one is still not completely done, I have to finish the hair and the rig, but it is at a decent stage so I will keep working on it on the side since I need to start the second character so I won't fall behind on my schedule.

For this character, I have decided to do a demon lady to match the backstory that I wrote for my characters. The main ideas for her are to make her look mysterious, misleading and much more elegant than my first character, I am trying to design my characters as opposites of each other. For the clothing style, I tried to mix a few styles together rather than just go for a clear one (like the clear biker style for the other character) since she is supposed to come from another dimension and had to adapt to the modern world, I thought it would make sense that she would mix her clothes in an unusual way. To make her design I just combined the references from my mood board and made a few initial sketches, after I got a better idea of where the design it's going, I blocked in the main shapes in Zbrush and Marvelous Designer and drew over that to further define the design and added some material callouts. 

I started working on her the usual way, blocked in the body directly in Zbrush, made the base of the clothing in Marvelous Designer. Because I had a lot of leather straps going around her body, I decided to make those in 3ds Max and the bring them to Zbrush. This way I had more control over them and could also make the low poly as I go so I wouldn't have to retop them. I found that starting in 3ds Max actually helped me make a cleaner base which would be easier to handle in Zbrush, so I decided to make the metal accessories and boots like this too. 

This was the block-in of the main elements of her design, it is still missing the cloak and the accessories on her hands. It took me a week to get to this stage, I sculpted very little details, most of the work was on her body so the clothing still needs a lot of work. Still, I am happy that some of the objects that I have are already low polys so I won't need to retop them, it was definitely good to do them like this even though it took a bit more time, but hopefully, I will be able to save some time on the go. 

This was the result after two weeks of work. Most of the elements in her design are there, now everything just needs detailing. Hopefully, I will be able to finish the sculpt in another week. I couldn't work as fast as I wanted to on this character, life kept getting in the way and I had to take some time off.

Even though I am a few days behind schedule, I am happy with the result until now and hope I can speed up the work later down the line.