FMP: Alfodr, The Wizard - Polycount, rigging and presentation

One thing I need to clarify before moving forward with this project is the polycount. In the FMP proposal I specified that my budget limit was around 80k. I was told by my tutors that I might need more than that and that I could go over a little. However, 5k was definitely not enough, so I started adding hair cards until I was satisfied with the result.

I made some research, but I couldn't find technical specifications of other (similar) characters. So I went back and removed hair cards until I reached my target polycount limit. I wanted to see if the extra hair cards added made a significant difference and whether or not I should keep them.As you can see in the image below, there are several bald spots in the 80k model. I also had to delete the smaller braids in the beard. I tried to cover the base mesh of the fur, but at some point I simply gave up, because I was not happy making this compromise.

I decided that I would hand in both versions. I'm aware that in games performance is more important. However, I put a lot of work into manually placing all those hair cards and the tought of getting rid of half of them breaks my heart.

I rigged the character in 3ds Max using the biped system as I always do. At some point during this semester I tried learning how to rig in Maya, but I think I need a bit more time to adjust to the program before that.
Rigging is always a long and tedious part of a project that I would much rather skip. This time I didn't have much time to spend on the rig. There were issues I didn't have the time, knowledge and patience to solve, so I transformed the model into an editable poly and edited the rest manually. Here are a few different poses to prove that the model was actually rigged.

Last but not least, I went through a lot of different lighting scenarios, backgrounds and different poses in Marmoset. It was quite hard to choose one, but in the end I settled for a basic setup with a main light, a filler, and a few rim lights to make the character stand out from the background.

 After establishing the position of all the light sources I was still not entirely happy with the lighting scenario. However, I couldn't really put my finger on what was bothering me. I then started asking around for feedback, and one of my peers suggested that I should try and give the lights a slightly coloured tint. So I gave the main light sources and fillers a light Cyan tint and a subtle yellow/orange tint to the rim lights. I loved the result - the cold lights helped making the scene look moody as if the character was the middle of a meadow covered in snow.

FMP: Alfodr, The Wizard - Texturing, Feather creation and Hair textures

Texturing was quite a long and tedious part of the project. I spent roughly two weeks working on them and even though I'm quite happy with the way they look, there's still room for improvement.
One again, I gathered a bunch of new references, this time to see how other artists approach old/worn out objects/textures.

I began by setting up a base material for each surface: gold, leather, cloth, etc, consisting of just colour, 2/3 layers of colour variation, base roughness and height. I generally leave roughness variation as the final layers and this was my approach this time as well.
Since my character is wearing several leather pieces, I tried to differentiate each one, not only  to make them have a different feel and materiality, but also to make the objects read better. At the same time, I tried not to go overboard with the hue variation from object to object.

For the skin I used reference pictures to establish the overall tone. Slowly built up more variation with additional layers - red tints, blue, yellow, orange, brown moles, darker moles and small veins. It took a bit of cleaning time until the skin stopped looking blotchy and I could finally start working on the roughness and SSS. After bulding up the roughness as I'd usually do, I added an additional layer with a much lower roughness value and used a mask with a fill set to "cells". I liked the effect a lot.
There are a few more adjustments that I'd like to make on the skin textures, however towards the end my project got corrupted. Whenever I try to export the textures for the skin material the program crashes. For all the other materials it works just fine.

After the texturing part was done(or nearly done), I started generating the textures for the hair cards in XGen. I separated all the hair onto 2 texture sheets: one for the long hair, eyebrows and eyelashes, and the other for the beard and fur. After generating all the maps in  Maya: albedo+alpha, direction, AO and normal, I created an additional map in Photoshop to use as specular.

After generating the first set of maps, on the following day I intended to use tht project as a base and just tweak the hair guides and modifyers to get a different result. Unfortunately for me the project got corrupted and I could not open it anymore, so I had to start from scratch.

When creating the feathers I followed a tutorial from ZbrushCentral. So, I made them in Zbrush using Fibermesh. Then, I exported the feathers into 3ds Max where I applied vertex colour on them. I made a plane, unwrapped it, then baked the feather onto that plane in Substance Painter. I applied a simple dark grey texture, with a 0.5 roughness value for the barbs and something similar for the rachis. To get the greenish reflections I had in mind, I set the specular value to green in Marmoset.

After I had everything in place texture-wise, I started placing the hair cards in 3ds Max. At first I tried using curves and applying the Path Deform modifier, but somehow that didn't work. As I couldn't figure out what the problem was, I started placing the hair cards manually. This is my progress so far:

FMP: Alfodr, The Wizard - Retopology, UVs and Baking

The retopology was done in Zbrush and 3ds Max. I started out in Zbrush using Zspheres, and I tried to do nearly everything there, since I've had a lot of troubles lately using the conform brush in 3ds Max. When I finished doing the base topology, I imported everything in Max, mirrored and adjusted each and every bit. The poly count was 52k triangles.

When everything was done, I started unwrapping, focusing on straight edges with as little deformation as possible. I divided the objects onto texture sheets as following: skin (2k), eyes (512), leather and metal with no transparecnty (2k) and textures that require transparency (cloth, chainmail, 2k) 

Retopologizing and UV mapping took me around one week.
By the time I started baking and texturing, my university had closed due to the virus pandemic. Ever since, I've been working a lot slower. My PC handles all the programs I use quite decently and although I know I might face some issues when setting up my UE scenes, everything is good for now.

My first attempt at baking the textures came out with a few errors. Luckily for me, they had an easy fix and all I needed to do was to adjust the pants and give the belt buckle more topology.
Still, I couldn't make the vertex colour work for all the objects. Some of them, the ones that required transparency and had no underlaying geometry didn't bake correctly. For example, I gave the high poly chainmail a blue vertex colour - the colour didn't draw a shape on the low poly plane underneath as expected. Instead, the whole plane was blue. Duplicating the low poly and attaching the copy to the high poly geometry seemed to fix the issue, but there was still some deformation left on the chaimail. Instead, I decided to use the Substance painter Chainmail material and tweak it a bit.

FMP: Alfodr, The Wizard - Sculpture

For my second project I chose to do a concept with a Norse/viking aesthetic. I have long been passionate about the subject, and I finally felt confident enough that I could build a compelling character in this particular style. When I first started out I was planning to convey the style and feel of God of War characters. The idea proved not only hard to execute, but also unrealistic for my lack of experience and little time I had.

I started out as I usually do, building up a base mesh in Zbrush and gradually make all the clothing and accessories.
Most of the parts were done in Zbrush, aside from the base of the horn, sword and leather bag. I simulated all the cloth parts and boots in MD.

 I decided to leave out some of the jewellery he is wearing since the concept might be a bit over-designed, at least to me. After discussing with my tutors, I decided to give up on the horns as well. Even though they reminded me of Mimir's horns and looked quite interesting in the concept, the idea did not translate well into 3D as it is. They would have required some adaptation, but in the end I thought they would simply not work on a human character.

The overall shape of the body was quite a tricky part. I started out from very defined muscles on the arms and abs, but ended up smoothing everything and working on a more subtle approach. I somehow wanted to find a middleground: realistically, there wouldn't be much definition in an older man, but I also wanted him to look strong.

The face was another big challenge. I worked from a bunch of reference pictures, until one of my tutors pointed out that the concept artist used Mark Hamill's face in the concept. However, a likeness sculpture would have taken me a lot of time, since I have never tried to do one before. Generally speaking, face anatomy is one of my weakest points and I will work to correct that in the future.
I stopped tweaking the features the moment I got a decent looking result and started building the secondary and tertiary details.

After all the major forms were in place, I went on to refine them. I spent quite a lot of time adding wear and scratches to the leather, knowing that I wouldn't be able to add  them in Substance Painter as precisely. I tried to take each individual bit and think about how that piece would age/ where I should add the wear. For the metal decorations (such as the ones on the chest) I made a mesh using an alpha, dynameshing and zremeshing as needed. Overall, the sculpture was a long and fiddly stage, but one that i very much enjoyed.

Final version of the sculpture:

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 I haven't updated my blog for quite a long time, since I've been struggling with some health issues. Everything began back in February when I started having troubles sleeping and occacional episodes of sleep paralysis. Things have gradually gotten worse and one night I had to go to the ER, because I was sleep deprived and having a panic attack.

 The clinician at the hospital, as well as my GP suggested that everything, including the occasional arrythmias I was experiencing are most probably related to stress and anxiety.

 I knew that I pushed myself very hard this year - there was no clear boundary between work and spare time, thus more often than not I ended up working 10+ hours a day, even on weekends. Everything, just to make sure I make the best out of my time in university and not miss the opportunity to develop my skills.

I never felt overwhelmed and I never suffered from anxiety before. But soon I realized that no matter how unexpected and surprising, all the stress I've been through has drained me and I needed rest.
As a consequence, during the quarantine I took my time and worked at a much slower pace. I also tried not to stress over keeping this blog up to date, knowing that I could take a few days off later on and go through all the processes I have completed.