[Fan-Art Gothic I] Thorus

Yoji · Aug 2016

Hey there, I decided to finally make that one big character for my portfolio so I chose Thorus, the guy with the coolest armor I first saw in my favorite PC game: Gothic.

So I decided to take baby steps and go from assets to character and I started off with his sword.

(fandom alert) I had to take in game screenshots for the "clearest" reference and I even extracted the in game textures to be as accurate and true to the concept and the original model as possible.

Here are a few of my reference shots.

and the original sword next to one of many iterations.

I already finished the sword so I'll just post a few times and pretend like I was posting so this won't turn into a giant wormpost @_@

Yoji · Aug 2016

So yeah, Thorus' Sword.
I took very few liberties with it just in the places where it was clear that it was a polygon budget choice.

I'm going for a Witcher 3 quality model so I went through quite some number of iterations to get the topology right.
Old iterration LP - HP:

After A LOT of contemplation and some writing on world of players - Gothic forums I was trying to decipher what the text on the sword was...

I even wrote to a dev on the forum but there was no answer. So I went with "For a Short Life we stand by Gomez". Seemed somewhat fitting. I was dabbling with a sculpt for the decor in the ricasso but I decided it's just gonna be an alpha so I took some time in ps and used it as a mask in spainter. original:

mine

After making the leather piece for the handle in MD and Zbrush here are the final versions of the Sword mesh.

and my UVs

Yoji · Aug 2016

So yeah, I textured the sword, the part I badly suck at

.
Used Marmoset for the turntables and render.

The textures:

I would really appreciate some feedback on the texturing cause I really wanna nail the look, so I really need the practice and some advice.

Cay · Aug 2016

I think you could easily use more geo with this sword. It might seem like a lot of geo for the size, but right now it's very boxy. Geometry is no issue as long it's improving the shading and all.

dlinzp · Aug 2016

oh my God! this is one of my favorite games! subscribed on your topic, good luck with creating!

Yoji · Aug 2016

Hey guys, thanks

.
Next up is gonna be his Light Crossbow!
@Cay , yeah I was thinking about that a lot and it went through a lot of iterations. I finally decided that about 3k would be enough for the sword and the crossbow because Thorus himself will be somewhere around 10-15k and I didn't want to pass the 20k barrier without the hair, but the option is still open after I finish the whole character

Yoji · Sep 2016

So I started the crossbow. Here's my in game refs + orig texture

Here's my IRL ref.

aaand here's what came out for the moment for the High Poly

After making the ref boards I realized I made a combo of the trigger systems by mistake, so I added the spring, aaaaand I improvised on that metallic brace for the prod cause I never saw it was an actual ring like the one in the right corner of the irl ref. This way the stirrup ring can be added or just be a rope. But I don't wanna take that liberty, even if it doesn't look that great I still wanna keep the original concept, I'm not butchering this Dragon Age style.
Also I had a looong discussion with a friend about the stock and stirrup, because the game says it's a light crossbow and in the animation they: shoot, reach to pocket, place bolt, cock with the hand and shoot again. Wiki also says "Very light crossbows can be drawn by hand, but heavier types need the help of mechanical devices."
I also had a crossbow when I was about 10 and I was loading it with my hands, granted, with some effort.
I imagine someone who walks around wearing 30-40kg of armor and wields a two hander all day could cock that crossbow effortlessly. So I call it legit on that part.

What do you guys think? Is the model ready to go on?

Yoji · Sep 2016

I remade the crossbow with more attention to the ref. and the original texture; lot's of things got cleared up, and I fixed the trigger system too, now it's a release trigger type.
I think it came out much better. It may not looks impressive as a crossbow, but light crossbows usually don't.

Yoji · Sep 2016

I finally finished the Low Poly, and the complete remodel.
I managed to extract the original models from the game. Seems like I managed to keep the proportions fairly close even with all that distortion from the screenshots. I'll be posting a before and after shots sometime later cause now I'm a different PC.
So here's 2 shots from painter for now.

Just a quick texture mockup.

Yoji · Sep 2016

I'm stuck on texturing this because of that stupid decor on the bowstave.
I swear, people could get away with too much in 2001 and it still looked cool.
I used the Iray renderer inside painter.