Beginning of the Captain project
First and foremost I always start with the concept and deep research. As the project name is Captain I started looking for captain pirate and similar keywords. I thought about all the possible captain ideas but found myself to be most interested in The Golden Age of Piracy. I remembered my childhood and how I loved the Pirates of the Caribbean, so I also used it as a reference. I looked for Victorian-era garments and what material was the most popular for wealthy people. I came across this elegant blouse with balloon sleeves and tried to match them with the pirate-like bottom. I did a few rows of iterations and in the end, I took elements that I liked from each variant and mixed them together.
I've also been wondering about the story behind this character's wardrobe. I identified a few adjectives that will stand as the character's key association words: persuasive, rebellious, greedy, and agile.
I've begun forming the body and studying anatomy. In order to compare proportions, I added the female Zbrush model to the scene. This enabled me to identify any issues and provided me with a wonderful anatomy guide. In addition, I also used the Spotlight with added reference to compare the facial features as well.
Despite the fact that I enjoy and I consider myself to be quite skilful at drawing characters and faces, I have encountered problems when sculpting the head and giving it a natural shape. The most challenging part of it was the eyes. I reasoned that it was because I didn't picture a particular face, so I looked up some well-known actresses and picked Monika Belucci and Keira Knightley for the face reference. In spite of their popularity, it was difficult to find a picture with good lighting and no retouching. When I found few pictures of them it still wasn't enough to make a beautiful head because I needed to know how the mass is distributed. Then I remembered the book called Anatomy for sculptors by Uldis Zarins with Sandis Kondrats. This book is very helpful for understanding the basic shapes of the human anatomy. There are very useful images that I save for the future and this project specifically.
These are the references from other sources:
Now I can notice things that were wrong. The fact that I've made the eyeballs bigger than they should have been, made me sweat. After I made the eyes smaller, I still had some facial proportions issues. I started looking at more references to the human face from different angles. Also, I placed ZBrush female head next to my head and tried to math volume.
Sculpting the body was slightly easier, although I still struggled with establishing muscles and even though I had the left model next to me, there were moments when I could not spot what was wrong.
When I added the eyebrows I finally could see a human behind this face. At this stage, I was delighted with the shape of the face but the facial features were not as I wanted them to be. I have definitely created the female face but I wanted to make it more attractive. Despite the fact that I made the cheekbones more visible and the jaw more pronounced, the face looked still childish, so I tried to spot some facial marks on my references and recreate in in my character's face.
References for the face:
Here is the list of useful videos that gave me a huge hand in learning anatomy
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Tutorial on how to sculpt a female head https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wSKsmyV9ISk&t=2748s
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Head anatomy mistakes https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9AQzPgepa5o
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Anatomy Secrets - Facial Fat Pads https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=miUBuhZK1nY&t=97s
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5 Mistakes Every Artist Makes When Making Faces https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vIKxffo7YsU
I get the strong feeling that sculpting a character is the same as drawing in 3d and you also have to put time into it. The more you practise the more you the better result you get. And even though the body won't be visible, I still tried my best to study anatomy and match the body with the references by Ed Pantera.
Also, I started making the base mesh for clothing and some accessories like the hat. Almost every part of this garment was extracted from the body and Zremeshed a few times. I left the meshes clean and with polygroups so I can easily make any needed details. By building good foundation meshes I could easily manipulate with Polyloops and create nice trim on the corners. In addition, I noticed that starting off with only a plane and modifying it from there is considerably simpler.
I created an InsertMesh and used it with curve mode ON in creating the necklace for my character. At first, I was getting weird results but soon after a few attempts, I realized that in order to create a continuous chain you need to have 3 polygroups: the beginning, the ending and the middle part which will be repetitive. It is a useful feature and it is much easier than trying to create it by copying one element over and over.
I've started working on a skirt. Firstly, I extruded a base from a body, then I Zremeshed it a few times. In order to move the points easily, I left the mesh very low-density. In order to save me some time, I deleted the back side of the mesh and was only transforming the plane. After I set the shape up, I used Zmodeler and extruded the back side. It is a good way to create width and don't lose polygroups. In fact, Zmodeler will create another polygroup for the one you've just extruded and then you can hide them when needed or use them for different purposes.
Another useful feature in Zbrush is called Stager, which stores an initial position as a Home Target and your other position (where presumably will hang your object) as a Target stage. In this case, I could easily create a knife pocket in the middle of the scene while looking at how it looks on the clothes.
For the belt, I've made two polyloops and pressed Frame mesh (in Stroke->Curve functions). This created nice curves around the selected polygroups, which I could you with Insert mesh. For the stitches. I've made stitched with a simple cylinder that was Zremeshed a couple of times. In addition, I've appended the buckle, which I've created with a few primitives( a box with boolean mesh inside, a cylinder and a rectangular)
The way I created the trousers was pretty simple but at the same time time-consuming. At first, I utilized a feature called Gravity Simulation (in the Dynamics panel) in Zbrush. The result wasn't enough to leave it as it is but at least it created a good start. Then I started looking at the references for baggy trousers and tried to make them similar. I was using the DamStandart brush and Standart brush in order to create wrinkles in the tension points. I thought I need to exaggerate the folds so it creates a more realistic effect but I was wrong. Eventually, I smoothed the trousers out and tried to create a much more relaxed silhouette of the trousers.
I've been working on a leather corset. At first, it was too simple but after I made folds and little wrinkles, it creates a much more plausible look. In addition, to give it a more victorian theme I added a floral pattern to the sides by applying Surface Noise. I've chosen sides because I already have so many focal points in the middle and it would distribute the attention a little bit.
Also, I added the busks to the backside as before the corset didn't have anything that would indicate how you can put it on. I created a VDM brush that includes a cylinder and a busk itself (transformed torus)
Garment creation and first try in Marvelous designer
Since I started making clothing for my character, I got introduced to Marvelous designer. I heard about this software last year but never intended to use it as I was mostly doing environments. Now is the ideal moment to experiment with this program and create a few clothes for my character. My plan is to make a pleated skirt and a peasant blouse.
At first, I created base meshes in Zbrush, but later I changed my mind and chose to make the blouse right away in Marvelous. When I opened the program I noticed that the interface looks very minimalistic but there are still a lot of buttons to click. In order to avoid unnecessary rambling and get the job done quickly I looked for some introduction tutorials and discovered a video from FlippedNormals. I now have a better understanding of the fundamental process involved in making clothing, as well as the kind of buttons I will most likely use.
Despite the fact the front of the blouse does not exactly match the reference image, I really like the way it looks.
I also watched a Marvelous Designer video about pleats, which was quite helpful. It illustrates a few useful features and shows how the folds are made.
The thing I have to remember next time dealing with Marvelous designer is to change the particle distance from 2-5 so it's baking the clothing in high resolution. I've exported the blouse into Zbrush and started fixing errors. I smoothed the folds as they were very triangulated. Then I subdivided it 3 times and started enhancing it with more details. After these few steps, the blouse lost some shapes, for example, on the elastic bands.
After receiving feedback, I decided to adjust the blouse. The shape wasn't exactly as it was in my reference and I wanted to have a nice silhouette like there. Thus, I pushed inwards and created a curve look. Also, I've made a clearer separation between the sleeves and the main part.
Meanwhile, I've faced an issue with Dynameshing the blouse. I would receive a very ugly result with lots of holes when I tried to press it. I figured out that it could be a problem with existing holes in the mesh. I've been suggested to use SculptrisPro in order to squeeze those holes and erase them completely. This is a useful feature that can help you recalculate some areas and make them cleaner. Although, another thing to keep in mind is that it creates triangles and if you use it for the whole mesh you probably need to Zrmesher it eventually.
Now it's time to make a skirt. I tried to experiment with pleats but eventually liked the skirt without them. The second image shows my second attempt at creating the skirt. Honestly, it looks dull because of the pleats' scarcity. As a consequence, I decided to elongate the corners, so it creates more folds and looks more interesting.
This is the final version of the skirt in Marvelous Designer. In the end, I imported my character into program and placed the skirt on top of my mesh. Also I merged seams together, so there is no distinct separation and it looks complete.
I've started correcting the skirt by alligning it to the trousers and trying to make it more flared
While finishing up my garments I took a look at all my subtools. For example, I had to conform some belts or belt loops, so they don't have any weird gaps which will be an issue for baking.
Here is the final result of the sculpt:
Character retopology
The process of retopology came across very easily since I discovered Maya. This software seems to me less laggy and very intuitive with its Quad Draw feature. There are very useful shortcuts that facilitate a lot. The most tricky part was the hat as the borders of the hat are quite tight and close to each other, so I had to make some tricks in order to simplify the mesh. After I used the Retopologize feature on my decimated mesh I quickly fixed some loops as they were uneven and continuous which would possibly cause issues in the unwrapping. I finished retoping in about a week and a half and went for unwraps right away.
This is the time to go back in 3ds max as I'm more used to unwrapping there. I separated my objects into 6 (+ with hairdcards) texture sheets
Texturing the captain character
At first, I baked all the maps I needed. I used Marmoset Toolbag and sometimes substance painter. I chose MT because I found it much easier to try different settings, fix issues if required and see the result. Also, Marmoset can handle much higher-density models and won't really affect the baking time. As usual, baking never comes perfectly. Fortunately, there is a nice feature called " Paint Offset" which essentially allows you to paint over your mesh and pull out/in the cage so the artefacts are gone.
I started texturing the top part with the skirt.
Before texturing I've already chosen the materials I will be making:
The blouse is polyester.
The corset is different types of leather
The skirt is thick linen
Weaves 2 and Fibers are good maps to create a textile pattern which I used for the blouse. For the skirt, I used a few Anisotropic noises with a little offset which is also a good match when you want to create a linen texture. I finished up with stitches on the bottom.
References for the medieval blouse:
References for the leather corset:
References for the linen skirt:
Although I made a pretty plausible material in my opinion, I did realize that the shape of the skirt is not quite accurate for this specific material. The folds should go straight down, but my skirt looks more like it was made from much thicker material. I think this crucial change was made in Zbrush when I was aligning the skirt to the trousers and all the layers above the skirt. I am very upset that the skirt doesn't look the way I imagined it but I will keep this in mind the next time I'll do something similar.
The trousers and the boots are leather material. In order to not make everything the same texture, I didn't copy and paste the material, I tried to create the material from scratch, by using different grunge maps, having different roughness values for different parts and playing with height variations. Clouds 1 made a nice effect of clumpiness on the boots.
References for the leather trousers:
For the knife holster, I created another type of leather but also used Clouds 2 for clumpiness. The way I created the gold material for buckles was pretty simple. I took brass smart material, made changes inside the folder and removed some unnecessary stuff. I tried to create a damaged look, so I painted scratches by hand. Also, I put some grunge maps with orange colour and high-value roughness so it created an illusion of rust. In addition, I took the gold material from the buckles and altered it so it also fits the knife holder.
worn leather:
Here are additional references that I used for the knife holster:
Next, I've textured all the accessories
I believe that In order to make textures realistic you need to establish materials for everything and find the references:
Next what I textured were skin and eyes. I gathered references and watched a very useful tutorial on skin texturing. From looking through different skins pretty closely and using the tutorial I mentioned previously I managed to create a nice base for the skin. After that, I began enhancing the normal/height map with all the pores and skin texture I baked from my sculpt. What really helped me in skin texturing were high-resolution scans of people's faces by Daniel Boschung.
A few more helpful links:
I textured the eyes as well. I've decided to make heterochromatic eyes because I couldn't decide what colour fits her more and other than that it is a little highlight in her pretty appearance.
Also, it could explain why she wears an eyepatch all the time. In addition, I textured the eyebrows with hair alpha and made a scar on one of them.
One of the most important points I've learnt during this process is that skin overall contains so many colour variations and not only beige tones. Also, when turning on scattering, I faced the issue that my mesh looks too waxy and natural. This was caused by a lack of roughness variation. Turns out I created so many layers but most of them didn't have roughness mode on. After that, I fix it by checking the layers and turning on the roughness and also I put some more only roughness on layers with some noises like Perlin Noise.
After the bake, a lot of small details were vanished so I needed to recreate them again. For instance, I drew wrinkles on the hands and made the nails stand out with height.
I created a scattering map which I will put into the alpha channel of the base colour when I export all the maps. This creates a plausible illusion of subsurface scattering that will be more visible in the engine or in render software.
I've also noticed that she doesn't have fat below the lower eyelid. it seems that this area is flat, although it shouldn't be. I'm going to draw wit height in order to emphasize the area around the lower eyelid but I can't do much at this stage.
I baked feathers on two planes and created an opacity map out of a normal map in Photoshop.
Hair creation
I've decided not to leave my character bold and create hair. At first, I sculpted the base, I used a thin line alpha for sculpting hair clumps on the base. Then I made a retop in Maya and Unwrapped it in 3ds max. Due to the fact that the upper part of the hair is covered by the pirate hat, I decided to leave a hole there.
In addition, I've created a few hair cards that would breakdown the silhouette a bit. I simply extracted strips from the base mesh. For the hair texture I used Photoshop where I drew hair strings specifically on the unwraps.
This way I've created the opacity map. Originally, I had planned to create eyelashes, but due to the low resolution, such tiny objects like eyelashes looked very angular and unappealing, so I removed the planes.
Character's Presentation & Render
I've finished with texturing and am done fixing all the problems. That means it's beauty shots time. At first, I exported my character into Unreal 4 and set up all the materials. In order to create subsurface scattering in the scene I've created an SSS profile where I assigned my alpha channel from the base map. Before that, I watched the video on Character Lighting and Shading. This gave me more freedom in terms of settings, so after some tweaking, the skin occurred more plausible.
As now I've already been introduced to Marmoset Toolbag, I decided to use it for rendering. I imported all my maps and set up the materials. Then I placed three spotlights which created three-point lighting. I believe it's an ultimate lighting setup which creates nice lighting for the character or any other focal point. Along with that, I attempted to play with colours and different skies.
Another useful feature I discovered today was creating a backdrop and importing your image to it. In my case, I put a smoke image with transparent background.
As I played with various options, I discovered that enabling ray tracing significantly improves render quality. Without it, the face looks very dark and it doesn't give you much of a scattering. However, there will occur a few problems like performance slowdown and sometimes sudden software shutdown.
Hair cards
It's time to polish the projects now that I'm almost done. Hair cards were the last thing I wanted to explore for the character. Because of the lack of time, I thought I would have just a sculpt as the hair However after giving it some thought, I've considered putting more effort into the hair because the sculpt looked plastic. I've searched a few tips regarding making hair, and I have to admit that the amount of information is really intimidating. There are far too many various techniques, and it seems like they are all quite difficult. I've learned about Xgen, even though what I realised disappointed me a lot. Although the Xgen is pretty useful there still going to be a lot of work. I've given up on this idea since I would have to flip certain planes, add more loops, remove some overlapping planes, and adjust their positions. Manually placing hair cards seemed to be the most efficient and quick method for creating hair. I've decided to draw several variations of hair strands and put them into a material in Max, so I could see how it looks with an opacity map.
The way I created the texture was pretty simple, I just draw in Photoshop. For the Normal map, I generated it from the same map by going to Filter --> 3d---> generate a normal map. In addition, I created an AO map, by inverting values in levels and making tweaking brightness.
After creating the hair texture, I made a few planes and began using the line with the Path deformer in 3ds Max.
Since the hat covers the top of the hair, I didn't have to worry about how it appears behind the hat. Nonetheless, I still had to take care of it to prevent the hair from poking through the hat.
I made a material after importing the character to Unreal once again. In order to be able to control a material instance, I added parameters to the material graph. Specular, Scatter, Roughness, Emissive, and Backlit now have parameters. I integrated DitherTemporalAA into the opacity map plug to bring much better-looking transparency. I added lerp to the base colour, which includes a gradient and two colours. In this manner, I could adjust the hair's base colour as well as its roots.
These are the setting for Material instance:
Hair in Unreal:
To sum up, the hair looks fine but not perfect. I believe in order to create a much more gorgeous hairstyle I would need more hair cards and the texture created from a special software and not from Photoshop.
I imported my character into Marmoset and took beauty shots. In addition, I've created small spheres around the character that would imitate fireflies and give a bit of interesting light to the background.
Jacket. Project beginning
I search up various images of jackets to gain ideas before I begin the process. I initially considered creating a standard, oversized leather jacket without any unique details. However, when I saw images of cyberpunk-inspired jackets it forced me to reconsider. I liked the concept of creating neon signs for the jacket, but first I had to think of a unique base.
I created the foundation of the jacket in Marvelous designer. I wasn't pleased with the look and the pockets didn't match the cyberpunk theme.
I found a pretty simple but on the other hand, very fitting sci-fi theme jacket and the concept began to form.
Strong and geometrical shapes can be seen frequently in various sci-fi clothing. I created a second reference board for patterns and designs that may be used in sculpting.
Also, I come up with the idea of a multi-technology jacket that has lots of plugs and oxygen pipes which will provide oxygen for the body.
I changed the base and tried to create seams. Although it didn't work as I intended and I took this into Zbrush.
I decided to come up with a solid design so I can stick to it. Although, I know that I will try out more during the process. The only thing that will remain is the convex seams and loops around the jacket.
Next, I've extracted from elbows, shoulders and end of the sleeves. I though that would be a great breakdowns and I could make them a separate material.
I've created a few insert meshes using Zmodeler. I'll use them as sockets for pipes. Although I ended up using only two of them The last one I used only on the back of the jacket as it will be the main power socket that presumably will be connect to recharge the jacket.
Additionally, I've learned a really easy but effective technique for making pipes and other curved objects. I've only used a regular cylinder with extruded outer borders. Then, using this subtool, I effectively made another insertMesh and enabled the curve mode (Stroke panel).
I wanted to give the jacket an angular appearance while experimenting with shapes.
I've chosen to modify the pipes' shape because. Again I used a simple cylinder, but this time, every other loop was extruded.
In other to create thick seams-loops around the jackets, I've extracted loops, creased one loop in the middle and framed mesh. This way I apply CurveTube brush on these curves.
At this step, I had to polish and consider the material thickness in various places. To emphasise how the base is connected to the jacket itself, I used the Standard brush with Lazymouse to draw borders around the seams. Also, I've created insert plates that presumably will have emissive indicator signs.
Something that I didn't like about the pipes that they are very slim. I am going to change them later.
Additionally, I changed the jacket's shape by slightly narrowing the waistline. My tutor also suggested that I reconsider my design because the sockets for the pipes were located near the elbows, which would prevent any movement and disconnect the pipes. As a result, I elevated this patch and the pipes. Also, I've tried to establish some soft folds in the stretched placed.
Jacket Retopology&Unwraps
I have lots of things that are going to bake on textures. In order to have a nice clean bake I conformed every vertex to the high poly. It was hard to create a grid on the shoulder patches because they had sockets inside of them and I had to equalize them so it is neat. I tried to remain the density of the cylinders so it's not jagged on the bake. I think I did a pretty good job as It doesn't have much of a tris and it doesn't have sharp edges.
Jacket:
Mannequin:
Pipes:
For the slider of the zipper, I did simplier version. In addition, I've decided to bake zipper teeth on the planes, so I don't have to retop each element and it will take less tris.
Total Jacket:
Unwraps:
I used 3ds Max for unwraps. The way I placed my objects was pretty simple. I've considered each object size and my budget. This way I made 4 texture sheets.
Texturing
I'm glad to finally be able to begin texturing the jacket now that the tedious pa is over. I had to create two different versions of the jacket as the brief requires so. I assumed right away that the first version would look like in the references - black and the second would be the opposite and much brighter. Her is the result of the bake:
Since this mesh was compliant and had no bake faults, I immediately started working on the material. For the emissive signs, I've chosen a bright red colour. I believe that the colours red and black go well together. I chose a different colour for the indicator that displays the amount of remaining oxygen. Additionally, I'll make holograms that will be in front of these signs.
Although the texture appears very dark in Substance render, it is not really a problem in Unreal engine/Marmoset, thus I'm not going to brighten up the jacket.
The loops and seams were the first things I thought I could alter. Then I changed the leather pieces and the base of the jacket to white colour. Here is a brief iteration I created to experiment with various colour schemes.
As usual, I wanted to produce a worn-out, aged, grimy appearance. I find that working on an imperfect product rather than a clean one, in my opinion, is far more exciting. I used a lot of grunge maps and smart masks that conveyed sweat, mud, and dust to achieve this type of appearance.
Rendering the jacket
These specific beauty images were taken with Marmoset Toolbag 4. I began taking screenshots with a background that was entirely black. However, I've heard that using complementary colours will help the mesh stand out, therefore I should use those instead. I genuinely think it's true because before, the corners of my mesh would be extremely difficult to see as they would blend into the background. I made an easy gradient colour for that. In addition, I added a smoke effect to the backdrop, which I previously utilised for my character project. This makes it more complicated and breaks up the monotonous background.
I used pink/red and blue spotlights, which supplemented the background colours. I also googled cyberpunk backgrounds which gave me an idea of what colours were used the most. I've noticed it is purple, dark blue, and any neon colour.
I set up the scene in Unreal as well and placed the lighting.
In order to make the backdrop more visible in the screenshots, I also added a few lights that are directed at it.
Creating dynamic hollograms
Delivering a dynamic effect is another requirement for this project. Due to the cyberpunk theme, I've made the decision to make holograms which I think will perfectly fit into the atmosphere. I looked up a few tutorials and learned what nodes I would need to utilize to achieve a similar outcome. One of them is this tutorial that simply explains how to set up the material. Also, I needed to make this material customizable so that I could adjust the way the lines were tiled and other parameters like glow.
Here is a short video of how the holographic effect looks in the engine.
This how it looks in the note graph
Additionally, since I can't transfer this effect from Unreal to Marmoset Toolbag, I made a basic texture in Photoshop. Although it is not a dynamic effect, it can be a good replacement for renders.
Base colour Normal map