Samurai Jack! [WIP]

bkost

Howdy Folks,

I'm excited to share my progress with you guys with my first Zbrush Character... All I've done so far is anatomy studies. So come along with me, this will be an exciting adventure!

I'm extremely new to the workflow of creating a character :O So any critique/advice will be greatly appreciated.

**Final Update**



And here's a link to a turntable of him http://bkost.tumblr.com/post/119710282360/samurai-jack-turntable






Lets start with some inspiration that I'm taking from...





And here is the very basic mesh that I'm working on...


His calf/feet need some fixing up

TomGT

Hoo boy! Samurai Jack! Are you going for a realistic or toon look?

If you are going the realistic or even semi-realistic direction, I recommend finding an actor that might be suited to what you imagine he would look like.

Otherwise, be cautious of his silhouette since it looks like you're visualizing him with your own flair.

Looking forward to see how this turns out!

skodone

yeah feet bottom and hips i would recheck

bkost

@TomGT I'm going for a semi realistic sculpt of him, and thank you that's a great idea!
Maybe like a Bruce Lee stature


Here is some daily progress

Steve Schulze

TomGT wrote: »

If you are going the realistic or even semi-realistic direction, I recommend finding an actor that might be suited to what you imagine he would look like.

David Carradine in Kung Fu might be a good choice. I suspect that's where Jack gets his big chin and eyebrows.

nickcomeau

Right now id say his arms are very long, his legs are short, his waist is wicked small, his shoulders are very high/stiff, some of his muscle formations (like his upper back and abdomen) are off, and his feet are tiny. Those are the proportional issues I see right now at least. Maybe pence you fix one it'll change another but keep at it, it'll just all click into place soon!

Also, try to get away from this matcap. Try something like a basic material, it won't hide any mistakes and is much more readable. I love samurai jack this is a very cool project ^_^

bkost

@nickcomeau Thanks for all the info man, I read your post just before putting this up so I tried to tweak up some of the things you mentioned. I'll keep all of that in mind when I work on him

...More Progress!

skodone

things are getting clearer! follow this path
and really check on the head.. .faceplanes and all...
something about the shoulders also seem sa bit stiff

bkost

A bit more progress! I appreciate all the crits, keep them coming

Brian "Panda" Choi

Nice progress! If you're planing to get this rigged, I'd raise the arms to a T or A pose position.

skodone

i think the transition between shoulder muscle and triceps needs some better separation and the jaw of the guy seems too wide

bkost

Here's some more updates! Thank you for all the information you guys keep giving me, I truly appreciate it.

skodone

the shoulders look very good now
just the face keeps reminding me of an elf more then a man
the nostrils are quite high and somehow the mouth is also a bit up high
the forehead could be pushed further and try maybe to align the cheekbones to your
broad lower jar, which is sitll kinda massive

in fact i did a small paintover



the lower jar ends before the ear!
lowered the whole face and it look smuch more natural

bkost

@skodone Oh wow, I cannot tell you how much I appreciate the input. Thank you very much, I will take notes of all this when I work on him

bkost

Thank you again Skodone for the help with the face!

Here's my most recent progress... I'm quite satisfied and I'm wanting to go to the next step. Would that be making a low poly version of it?

Thanks!

bkost

Just finished up the Low poly + Normal bake. First time doing this, it's pretty exciting now that I've gone through them. But I was often running into problems and figuring out how to fix them, I was beginning to rip out my hair...

Next up is Polypainting in zbrush and taking that into xNormals

bkost

Here is my finished version polypainted in Zbrush!

I went through the texturing lowpoly with xnormals but it wasnt working with me too well.. I kept running into issues that were difficult to solve. I plan to do a full low poly with textures on a more simple model to get the workflow down.

skodone

may tell us your problems so we can give you some solutions? xNormal is really logic once you got the hang of it and ... actualy it hink your model is very simple if it comes to baking and texturing....

looking good btw, but check the silhouette of you renders and final presentation they will make the picture a lot stronger

bkost

@Skodone

Hi thank you.. If you saw the updated first post, there's a nicer looking render.

As far as problems I've been running into.. I figured out unwrapping and getting all the textures together. But when I appliead the color map it created obvious seams.

Like this

That's under the baking workflow http://wiki.polycount.com/wiki/Texture_Baking#Baking_Workflow

Another example

That's in Maya Rendering

I've been reading on how to fix but I'm not totally understanding it..

Alemja

Looks like your normals are flipped on the Green channel, you can fix this by opening up your normal map in Photoshop, go to your Green layer under "Channels" and invert it by pressing Ctrl+I

TomGT

It looks to me your face normals might be inverted on that particular area, since you might have mirrored the left arm and then merged it together. Select the mesh and go Display > Polygons > Face Normals and see if the pointers are all sticking outward.

If its not, select the faces of the arm and do a Normals > Reverse.

Hope that helps!

skodone

also i always see some seams in maya no matter what i do :P
thing is every software reads normals a bit different, so in one software you
have seams and then suddenly in the other one theyre all gone...