Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite WIP
polycounter lvl 6
Hello everyone! This is my first post on polycount. I'm part-way through a personal project, to create one of my favourite Magic: The Gathering characters in 3D. That character is Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite. I've been posting some work in progress images in the Ten Thousand Hours Facebook group, who have been lovely and given me some useful pointers. My friend @tda told me I should put them here too because you guys are awesome at giving great crits. This is the model as it stands currently, lit in Unreal Engine:
I'm an environment artist professionally, so this project was to push myself out of various comfort zones - to try making a character, learn how to use blender (I'm a Max girl), to learn how to use Marvelous Designer, to learn how to rig a humanoid and to use Substance Painter to make materials not usually found in environments and props.
Here's a dump of the WIP in chronological order so you can see how it's coming along.
Modelling in Zbrush:
@tda helped me loads with this one, figuring out what was wrong with the chest, hips and legs. I also altered the headplate and limb lengths.
Some remodelling later, and I had an acceptable high poly model.
A quick test pose done with ZBrush's Transpose Master to check it looks ok:
I used Blender to make the low poly retopo (about 55k tris). I think I captured the form ok but a lot of my edge loops don't make a lot of sense when it comes to rigging. Having not rigged a character before, I didn't know why it would be important until I tried rigging and posing her, if that makes sense? It wasn't ideal but it was workable so I stuck with it, did my normal and ao baking with XNormal, and I was onto the part I was most excited for...
Substance Painter
I'm planning to come back to the materials and work some more on the fleshy parts - when seeing her posed and lit and comparing to the original card art, it's obviously too light in colour. It also doesn't quite look gory enough - definitely on the "to-do" list.
I made the fabric train with Marvelous Designer, used ZBrush to make tweaks and add details, and make a quick low poly retopo to bake to. Texturing again in Substance Painter.
I'm currently working on the background characters that hold up her fabric train. The main reference for them is from the card Priests of Norn. I would love any comments on the overall form before I start getting carried away with modelling details on them.
All C&C welcome
I'm an environment artist professionally, so this project was to push myself out of various comfort zones - to try making a character, learn how to use blender (I'm a Max girl), to learn how to use Marvelous Designer, to learn how to rig a humanoid and to use Substance Painter to make materials not usually found in environments and props.
Here's a dump of the WIP in chronological order so you can see how it's coming along.
Modelling in Zbrush:
@tda helped me loads with this one, figuring out what was wrong with the chest, hips and legs. I also altered the headplate and limb lengths.
Some remodelling later, and I had an acceptable high poly model.
A quick test pose done with ZBrush's Transpose Master to check it looks ok:
I used Blender to make the low poly retopo (about 55k tris). I think I captured the form ok but a lot of my edge loops don't make a lot of sense when it comes to rigging. Having not rigged a character before, I didn't know why it would be important until I tried rigging and posing her, if that makes sense? It wasn't ideal but it was workable so I stuck with it, did my normal and ao baking with XNormal, and I was onto the part I was most excited for...
Substance Painter
I'm planning to come back to the materials and work some more on the fleshy parts - when seeing her posed and lit and comparing to the original card art, it's obviously too light in colour. It also doesn't quite look gory enough - definitely on the "to-do" list.
I made the fabric train with Marvelous Designer, used ZBrush to make tweaks and add details, and make a quick low poly retopo to bake to. Texturing again in Substance Painter.
I'm currently working on the background characters that hold up her fabric train. The main reference for them is from the card Priests of Norn. I would love any comments on the overall form before I start getting carried away with modelling details on them.
All C&C welcome
Replies
The Priests of Norn seem to have extremely thin upper arms on the card, as opposed to the fleshy look you're using on your model. You sure you want to keep going that way? Because that'd be a much more interesting shape in my opinion.
I considered making the arms like the design on the Priests of Norn card, but the background characters on Elesh Norn's card have more normal arms so I've decided to go with a more humanoid anatomy for them.
Also one last remark I'd give you is that you can push the contrast on the veins on Elesh's body a bit more since the detail is a bit lost in the overall pic, experiment with lighting and shades to make them stand out (or put some occlusion in the specular if that really requires it)
I'm going to 2nd Rikards thoughts too in that the muscly sinewey dudes definitely have really interesting shapes going on in their crazy muscles and silhouettes (in the illustration you showed me), i think you could probably work some of that in to what you have while still keeping him more normal human looking like you want to.
Looking forward to seeing this all finished up! Keep on crankin' away
@tda Yep, recycled the hands and they need work. I'll see what I can do about the arms today.
Main points are mentioned in the pic above. My thoughts were based primarily around the concept you sent me (http://i.imgur.com/kSiWfYU.jpg).
I feel like these guys don't look beefy enough, like, in a strength way not so much in a roid-y muscle way. They have a large frame in the concept which i think you could push more. I know you don't want to match the concept 1-1 with their crazy bone/sinew upperarms, but i feel like the exposed muscle forearm is more visually interesting than a flat plate like what you have, but that's your call. What i'm not a huge fan of though is the little pipes hanging down, they read a little like saggy muscles which fights against the aesthetic i think you should be chasing with these dudes.
As i mentioned in the pic too I think you need to push the the non-flesh pieces that are intertwined with the muscles, really make them stand out. The hard surface / flesh juxtaposition is really nice, especially in the crest of the ribcage and at the base of the neck.
I didn't have time to go over the legs much as it's home time now but if you want some input there i'd be happy to take another pass! Hope this helps, lookin' badass so far
Don't forget to resculpt the lower back area, I see a bit of stretching there.