WIP - nextgen Survivor game character

avagoyamug · Jun 2016

Hey there!

It's been a while since my last personal project and I decided to get off my lazy ass and out of my comfort zone once again..

My goal is to achieve a photorealistic (yet sliiightly stilized) AAA quality character bust in marmoset.

I started with a character sketch I did some while ago. I still liked the charisma of the piece and decided to take it to zBrush once again to give it another pass of realism and detail.

Please let me know what you think, any critique is very welcome!

Regards
Thilo

emomobile · Jun 2016

The hair could use some work, but I think the face is fantastic. He's got a lot of character/personality. Again, just work on the hair a bit.

avagoyamug · Jun 2016

Hey, thanks! The hair of course is still placeholder - I plan on building up hair with alpha planes and hopefully achieve somehthing nice.. I don't have much experience with character hair, unfortunately.

For the face now, I'll fix some things today, mainly add some rougher skin texture parts, like bigger pores on the cheeks and nose, and give some more volume to some of the wrinkles..
Maybe also the zygomatic bone needs to come out a little bit more, since a couple of people already said, something was wrong about the side view..
The ears also turned out a bit "inflated", I will fix this today.

Let me know what else you guys think!

avagoyamug · Jun 2016

Little update, after some veeery subtle tweaks...

Image: https://us.v-cdn.net/5021068/uploads/editor/05/s3dp13s4pq32.jpg

musashidan · Jun 2016

I like it. You've struck a great balance between realistic/stylised. Anatomy is solid.

For me, I think the ears could do with some love. Still a bit of 'jujitsu-ear' going on.

And also, I preferred the lower lids/eyebags in the first post. I think they looked more natural. The updated ones just seem too craggy and don't really blend as well.

Look forward to seeing more of this.

avagoyamug · Jun 2016

Hey, thanks for the comment!

Your where right, today I focused on his ears a bit.
For the eyes, I think what felt off about them was that they seemed to be much older than the rest. I tried to retouch the rest since I wanted to go for a little bit older character... (may have been to subtle on this, though)

I also started on the Torso, still pretty rough though, will have something to show, tomorrow.
The heads not finished yet, I just need to get away from it for a while to come back with a fresh view on it..

Image: https://us.v-cdn.net/5021068/uploads/editor/au/fbzz8ctgtsl7.jpg

gfelton · Jun 2016

I really like this sculpt, the anatomy is good while at the same time being ever so subtly stylized. Can't wait to see the final sculpt!

avagoyamug · Jul 2016

Hey there, haven't had much time to work on this lately, but sculpted a torso today to load into Marvelous Designer and experiment with cloth simulation a bit. Never tried this bevore, but everything I sculpted looked out of place, compared to the head.
So this is a first go, could propably use some tweaking in MD, but I might stick with it as a base since I plan to use only the very top on final renderings...

avagoyamug · Jul 2016

Put some more time into the shirt, will start sculpting some memory folds and tertiary detail on it tomorrow..

jacopoS · Jul 2016

Wow I just love this. The anatomy looks very solid!
So are you not going for a full character?

avagoyamug · Jul 2016

Good question!

I keep changing my mind back and forth, the last days.
I'm having so much fun, I might as well - but on the other hand I don't have much of a concept in mind besides the bust I wanted to do.

I would love to try sculpting realistic hands though, so I might end up doing the hole character after all...

avagoyamug · Jul 2016

Worked a bit on the shirts secondary and tertiary details...

Image: https://us.v-cdn.net/5021068/uploads/editor/we/e09xsu7m229o.jpg

avagoyamug · Jul 2016

Made a bit of progress on the head today... finished retopo and baked all the maps, then started to set up textures and materials in Marmoset Toolbag.
I find this quite hard to get right, what do you think of the skin material?

Image: https://us.v-cdn.net/5021068/uploads/editor/l9/ndomjw8truqd.jpg

avagoyamug · Jul 2016

Yet another small update, tweaked the textures a bit and added dirt and wounds..
I also broke up the symmetry of the model, to give it more charisma.

Image: https://us.v-cdn.net/5021068/uploads/editor/g6/ktjv92bls2tf.jpg

artofmars · Jul 2016

updates look good! i feel like you got the tones of the face right! Do you plan on doing any subsurface scattering for this model?

avagoyamug · Jul 2016

Thanks mate! You're the second one now to ask - it actually has SSS already, noticable on the ears! I might have to tune it up a notch..

avagoyamug · Jul 2016

Just proof I haven't been lazy - retopo and bake for the shirt is done, setup material but no albedo yet.
..then I started on the hair... and struggled since!

Apha card hair for realistic characters is SO much more difficult then I thought!

Nothing yet to show, I still experiment and build on my hair-atlas. I start punching some cards in and keep throwing it away, because I'm not satisfied with the looks...

Image: https://us.v-cdn.net/5021068/uploads/editor/kw/jrc06ree3l4h.jpg

avagoyamug · Jul 2016

first peek on the hair.. about 30% hair set, I would guess..

Image: https://us.v-cdn.net/5021068/uploads/editor/tf/t7w5a6vl5snq.jpg

avagoyamug · Jul 2016

...adding secondary hair cards (fine, chaotic hair with more transparency)

Image: https://us.v-cdn.net/5021068/uploads/editor/e7/9l9zxonecdvh.jpg

avagoyamug · Jul 2016

added shirt albedo...

Image: https://us.v-cdn.net/5021068/uploads/editor/27/eu48d7nukozq.jpg

avagoyamug · Aug 2016

Started sculpting the arm today, still a lot of work, but let me know what you think about the overall anatomy!

Image: https://us.v-cdn.net/5021068/uploads/editor/ck/9ef79oe9nxzy.jpg

jonnydjango · Aug 2016

Looks great! Can you post a screen of the haircards? And how many different Textures for the hair do you used?

avagoyamug · Aug 2016

Hey, thanks for your reply!

I used 9 different haircards (see below), and only 2 textures - Albedo and Specular
I experimented with normal map and glossiness map, but got the best results with a quite simple setup.

I will come back to the texture and material in the end for another polishing pass though..

Image: https://us.v-cdn.net/5021068/uploads/editor/jo/n9w29b94lc6t.jpg

Image: https://us.v-cdn.net/5021068/uploads/editor/vk/rj5ff5vlxwgm.jpg

artofmars · Aug 2016

The messiness looks great!

avagoyamug · Aug 2016

Thanks! I might have gone a bit to far with this in the underlying hair structure though - I'm afraid the hair is somewhat missing a general flow to be believable.. I will try to fix this in the texture, later on.
Glad that you like it though!

musashidan · Aug 2016

Glad I checked back here. This is coming along great. Nice job on the hair.

avagoyamug · Aug 2016

Thanks mate!
Scupted some more on the arms, will start retopo tomorrow...

Image: https://us.v-cdn.net/5021068/uploads/editor/4r/739caux23pmp.jpg

Image: https://us.v-cdn.net/5021068/uploads/editor/u9/k8nmcceq945c.jpg

avagoyamug · Aug 2016

some progress on the hand material and textures..

Image: https://us.v-cdn.net/5021068/uploads/editor/9k/nlg4tnsevyj5.jpg

MikeWal · Aug 2016

Just walked through the whole thread, and i have to say you got really nice progress there, good job! Hope you'll finish him as full character.

avagoyamug · Aug 2016

Thanks MikeWal! I pretty much made up my mind about finishing the full character - I'm having way too much fun with this to stop now!

started sculpting on the shoes, meanwhile..

Image: https://us.v-cdn.net/5021068/uploads/editor/4f/6munfe2bvp2d.jpg

avagoyamug · Aug 2016

Finished sculpting the shoes, of to retopo and baking again..

Image: https://us.v-cdn.net/5021068/uploads/editor/07/g4q5znpw1rdu.jpg

vavavoom · Aug 2016

nice character are the hair cards done in Zbrush, or other program?

lotet · Aug 2016

Really like the hair. also those shoes are looking really sweet.

avagoyamug · Aug 2016

Thanks for your comments guys. The hair is painstakingly punched together manually in 3ds max.
I tried getting cards from zbrushs fibremesh and put a lot of Research into how the pros dp this and came to the conclusion that good hair is a lot of manual work...

avagoyamug · Aug 2016

shoe materials set up and started tweaking

Image: https://us.v-cdn.net/5021068/uploads/editor/re/sl5pk96v66vc.jpg

avagoyamug · Aug 2016

started sculpting on the jeans today.. mainly polished the mesh I got from Marvelous Designer, still a lot to do..

Image: https://us.v-cdn.net/5021068/uploads/editor/sc/atdtk4ksvv85.jpg

jfitch · Aug 2016

Just a quick recommendation for the hair, right now I can sort of see the cards in the textured version so I might try transferring the vertex normals from a spheroid shape. There's an example in Tom Parker's tutorial @ step 14.

slosh · Aug 2016

Looking really good so far man. I think his head shape feels a bit stylized. Not sure if that's what you're going for but the materials feel like you are going for realism. Mainly his jaw and neck feel really wide and thick so they give off a very stylized vibe. His hair is looking great but I think could use a bit more volume and his eyebrows look odd to me. I think it's a combination of the flow and maybe the breaks in them look too abrupt.

avagoyamug · Aug 2016

Thank for the comment and feedback, I actually baked the head normals onto the hair-cards, meanwhile and tweaked the material a bit after reading through a naughty dog presentation. Also imrpoved the iris with normal maps.. It looks best in motion, but heres a glimpse:

avagoyamug · Aug 2016

Hey slosh, thanks for the comment, almost overlooked it...

You're right about the stylized look, I'm still really struggeling to let go of it - it's kind of a bad habbit since I mostly work on very stylized projects in my dayjob. I started off with the intention to make a 98% realistic character but I kind of like his apearance now and feel like every step toward more realism gives away a huge portion of charisma. But I will look into this again when I come back to polishing the head and hair.

And for the hair, I totally agree - I will come back an propably change a fair bit, later on, mostly add more flow (it looks way to "fuzzy" now) and a lot of volume.. I also still need to tweak the specularity. It looks good in motion now, but kind of dull on the screenshots...

Thanks again, good feedback is much appreciated!

avagoyamug · Aug 2016

Sculpted detail onto the jeans today:

Image: https://us.v-cdn.net/5021068/uploads/editor/rd/22v8k1dqb1mt.jpg

avagoyamug · Aug 2016

finished texturing the jeans for now - off to a prop-set!

Image: https://us.v-cdn.net/5021068/uploads/editor/r2/czs1cc8rjimf.jpg

avagoyamug · Sep 2016

Holy Crap, these Props take a while! Finished the highpolys, off to retopo now..

Image: https://us.v-cdn.net/5021068/uploads/editor/0p/hjmxya17ik9q.jpg

Image: https://us.v-cdn.net/5021068/uploads/editor/io/caz0wcx7j6yq.jpg

avagoyamug · Sep 2016

Sorry for not showing a lot here lately, meanwhile I was busy with retopo, baking and setting up the material for the all the props, so something new to show now..
next up: adding dirt, fixing some normal issues and soon posing the whole character!

Image: https://us.v-cdn.net/5021068/uploads/editor/o8/z4uv5cb380a5.jpg

avagoyamug · Sep 2016

avagoyamug · Sep 2016

Sooo, skinned and posed the character and started coming up with ideas for the lighting..
what do you think?
I always feel very uncertain about lighting since this is about 90% of your presentation and unltimately decides if all that hard work will show in your final images...