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[FINISHED] Dishonored 2 bust

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greentooth
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Ouran greentooth
Hey polycounters !

I'm opening this wip thread to share my progress on a character bust. The concept I will be following is an artwork by Cédric Peyraverney for Dishonored 2. Anyone wishing to comment or critique my progress is most welcome :)



For this project I have three major objectives:
  1. Uping my game in terms of technique. This will be my first PBR piece and it will be a great opportunity to tackle a number of subjects which are still alien to me (mainly, PBR workflow/software and hair cards).
  2. Finding the pleasure again. For too long I've been doing work because I felt I had to rather than because it was what I really enjoyed. Time for a change !
  3. Engaging with the community more. I have a tendancy of working on my stuff in an ascetic way and it's something I want to change. FB is great but clearly the people here are a lot more involved and this is something I'd like to be a part of.
So why this concept ? I really like the way the Dishonored franchise portrays human beings. Their faces are broken in a way that reflects their inner sanity (at least to me). This character in particular is interesting to me because of her subtle asymmetry, the scar and the tatoo that point to some interesting history as well as her mysterious gaze. What is she thinking about ? What is intriguing her outside of the frame ?

I also chose it for it's "simplicity", meaning there aren't 72 elements to model here. Therefore, I'll be able to take my time and give it the required polish while exploring new software. I'm not giving myself any deadline here since the goal is to learn and have fun.

Reference



Overall, I'm looking at all the Dishonored artwork to study how they treat anatomy and form. I'm also looking at the result in game to see how they translate it to 3D in both games. Clearly their process evolved from Dish1 to Dish2. It looks a lot less handpainted now. I'm also looking forward to discovering the character from the concept in game since I haven't seen her yet in the trailers.

One other thing I noticed is how much she looks like Tilda Swinton. I'm guessing she was the inspiration for this design. I'm also very excited for the Dishonored 2 to come out so I can take a closer look at the characters in game.

Progress



Here's my current progress after a few sessions. I've started from zbro's head basemesh to which I added a mouth cavity. I decided to quickly break symmetry because of how defining of a caracteristic it is to this character.



For the hair, I quickly blocked in a few strands which I matched to the concept view angle. Obviously, they don't work from the other angles so I'm going to have to tackle this soon. Hair is usually my pet peave so I want to make sure I resolve it asap instead of staying in my confort zone and polishing the face for too long.

Thanks for reading this and feel free to engage. If you have questions on my process, I'll do my best to answer them. If you have remarks and comments, don't be shy and help me grow :)

Cheers !

Replies

  • Ouran
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    Ouran greentooth
    Here's a new version of the haircut. I used Dylan Ekren's hair brush which I found to be a fantastic tool for building this character's hair. The next step will be to detach fly away hairs from the main strands and figure out how to treat the sides of the skull.






  • liso
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    liso polycounter lvl 4
    Nice ! I'm not the only dishonored art fan here ! 
    What software you want to use for the texture ? 
    I can not wait to see more
  • Asura
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    Asura greentooth
    This is hella solid :D! I'm just getting into the series myself.
    Only crit about the model so far is I noticed that they use a somewhat hard surface/ marble sculpt approach to their characters. Your model currently is really close and a few flattened planes along the underside of the cheeks would help to push that look. 
  • Ouran
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    Ouran greentooth
    @liso: Thanks liso ! I'm planning to try both Substance and Quixel in order to learn as much as possible. For the skin, I might just polypaint though.

    @Asura: Thanks ! Yeah you're right. The face is still in early stage I'd say and I intend to do just as you said ^^
  • Ouran
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    Ouran greentooth
    Hey there ! I'm letting the hair rest for a little while and decided to tackle the eyebrows. It's basically the same method as the hair, using Dylan Ekren's hair brush and placing strands one by one.




    Also rebuilt the jacket quickly in topogun to get some clean topology to work with and continue refining the face. Not sure how far I should go there before jumping into detailing. Any crit is very welcome on that aspect !


  • chrisevansart
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    chrisevansart polycounter lvl 9
    Looking great! Going to be a nice piece! :) 
  • Ouran
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    Ouran greentooth
    @chrisevansart Thanks a lot man ! I hope so too :)

    Sunday update with some more work on the hair. I reshaped the upper volume and then spent litterally hours placing smalls strands on the sides. It's a super tedious process and I'm not even sure I'll be able to use these in any way to create my final game hair but hopefully they should allow for some nice clay renders.





    There's still quite a long way to go to cover the back of the skull but it should be faster than the temples.
  • CaesarAlbertus
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    CaesarAlbertus polycounter lvl 8
    Really nice love the details on the face thanks for the tip pn the hair brush
  • Mateus
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    Mateus interpolator
    It's looking really good.
  • Ouran
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    Ouran greentooth
    @CaesarAlbertus Cheers! Dylan definitely pushed an amazing tool our way and I'm merely promoting it because of how helpful it is to me.

    @Mateus Thanks :)
  • Ouran
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    Ouran greentooth
    Weekly update time ! I'm getting very close to being done on the hair and face now. Overall, I kept refining the facial features and did a big overhaul of the neck & chest area. I think I'll try to finalize the face next meaning one more general pass on 2ndary forms and then diving into tertiary forms and detailing.

    Also couldn't resist throwing her into keyshot to play with lights. Please feel free to comment and critique :)





  • JamesMeader
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    JamesMeader polycounter lvl 9
    Really loving where this is going, I also adore the character style of Dishonored and rather looking forward to the sequel. 

    I'm really excited to see the texture work!
  • ajg
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    ajg null
    This looks really cool, good job on the sharp angles of the cheekbones!
  • o0_themilkybarkid_0o
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    o0_themilkybarkid_0o polycounter lvl 2
    This is fantastic, I really love how you've done the hair
  • Leb
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    Leb polycounter lvl 6
    The hair on the back of his head is awesome! Please don't tell me you didn't place that one by one :P . One thing I would say is the definition in his neck is a bit strong for me personal. Kinda looks like he is tensing his neck. Keep it up though! Looking at awesome Dishonoured art will hold me off til the game :)
  • Ouran
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    Ouran greentooth
    @JamesMeader Thanks James ! I'm a big fan of their art direction as well and I can't wait to find this character in game to see how they did her.

    @ajd Thanks ! The face definitely needs a bit more hammering in some areas (ears/neck ?) to keep the consistency with the cheekbones ^^

    @o0_themilkybarkid_0o Cheers :)

    @Leb Actually I placed the small strands at the back 5 by 5 and the ones of the side one by one. I made a little custom brush for it which I'll release once I ask Dylan Ekren's permission (since it's based on strands created with his brush).

    Concerning the neck, I've found some ref of really thin women with something close to that and decided to go for it, knowing that it'll be softened by the SSS. I'll go with it for now but if it becomes a problem I'll go back to it and tone it down a little ;) Thanks for the note !
  • Spacemanchuck
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    Spacemanchuck polycounter lvl 14
    Great sculpt!

    You mentioned that you aren't sure if you will be able to use some of the hair for your final in game piece.  Have you decided on how you are going to approach that?

    I am having a similar issue with some assets I'm making for work.  I have a cast of characters I'm making for a VR project so I am wanting to limit alpha draw...  I decided to dynamesh my hair into the head entirely, then I did a projection to get the details from the hair onto that single mesh.  It's helpful for selling the transition from the scalp to the hair.  It also leaves me needing to do the eyebrows sculpted as well.       

    Anyways.  Great sculpt, and your hair work is rad.   Looking forward to seeing how you move toward your in-game asset.
  • Ouran
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    Ouran greentooth
    @Spacemanchuck Hey Charlie ! First of all thanks for your kind words :)

    To be honest, this is something I think about more and more and I believe it's going to take me some trial and error to figure out a proper way to make this hair.

    The first thing that came to mind is, like you said, to get all the short hairs into the bake of my head texture. Maybe that will suffice but I'm pretty sure I'm going to have cards on top anyways. Testing will tell.

    For the big major strands, I'm pretty sure I'm going to have to redo them from scratch as haircards. That's ok for me because I'm in love with clay renders which I consider as a piece of their own. Also I'm giving myself no time limit on this piece.

    Now regardings the eyebrows, I believe I'll be able to break them in groups of strands and bake them to separate cards. To that I will add more cards and that should do the trick, in theory. Let's see how it pans out when I get there !


  • nikkiPito
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    nikkiPito polycounter lvl 8
    Wow, such a gorgeous sculpt! I love the details, the slight asymmetry in the facial structure, hair, and wrinkles really brings another layer of depth and beauty. I have yet to play Dishonored but everything I see from it and inspired by it is has such a gorgeous style, I need to find time to play it now haha. Anyways, amazing job with that stylization, your forms are so crisp. Can't wait to see more! :smile:
  • volaille
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    volaille polycounter lvl 12
    this looks fantastic ! it's a goal for me to be able to produce a sculpt of that quality one of these days ;)

    for your game hair, I have a suggestion . it all happen into maya, but it's rather easy to pull off. take your long strand of hair into maya, palace 3 curves on each strand and use GMH plugin. it will help you generating hair and a geometry to project them on . like that you'll have your fantastically shaped hair and the render of maya hair all projected on your polys.

    Usually it give out great results
  • Antone_m
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    Antone_m polycounter lvl 9
    keep them coming man ! can`t wait to see some textures 
  • Ouran
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    Ouran greentooth
    Thanks so much guys. It's a pleasure seeing this thread coming to life :)

    @nikkiPito Thank you ! It's definitely one of the few AAA games out there with a very strong artistic authorship. Make sure you play it slow and enjoy the world :)

    @volaille Cheers ! I am not a Maya user. Therefore, it's ahrd for me to visualize the technique you are refering to. If there's an article or a tutorial about it somewhere, I'd gladly give it a look !

    @Antone_m Thanks Antone ! Can't wait to start texturing as well. It's always a great moment when I can call a sculpt done. By the way, your GoG fan art is one of my favorites ^^
  • volaille
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    volaille polycounter lvl 12
    GMH2 is a plugin for maya, but this is the kind of things it can do : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eFludVPn36Q

    hop it can be useful to you. if you are interested, I'll try to gather more precise info on the workflow ;)
  • Ouran
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    Ouran greentooth
    @volaille Holy cow that looks powerful ! Where are you Max version ?
  • volaille
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    volaille polycounter lvl 12
    sadly I don't know an equivalent for max, but if you need, I can help you through maya and this plugin ;)
  • Suba
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    Suba polycounter lvl 5
    This is awesome! You really managed to get that Dishonored semi realistic style. Can't wait to see the next step.

    volaille said:
    GMH2 is a plugin for maya, but this is the kind of things it can do : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eFludVPn36Q

    Damn, that really works? I'll have to give it a try too.
  • volaille
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    volaille polycounter lvl 12
    yea ! the idea is to get maya hair baked into a texture, it's really handy when you work with poly plain hair. you can also use it to shape some actual cg hair and it's wai more user friendly than any comb brush.
  • Ouran
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    Ouran greentooth
    @Suba Thanks man !

    Quick update here. A couple of ZBrush screengrab to show the first pass of alpha work on the skin. Up next I'll be going in manually to rework some of these details. Also did quite a few fixes on the face but I'm pretty sure they're too subtle to notice.

    And Dishonored 2 is out and I'm having a fantastic time with it. Still haven't found this character in game but I hope I will ! If anyone spots her before me, let me know :)



  • Loutrattitude
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    Loutrattitude polycounter lvl 6
    I think the skin pores don't work very well, given the very stylized art direction you took. If you look at your references sheet, you'll see that details like this are mostly absent, or used very scarcely (bottom left of your ref sheet).

  • Ouran
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    Ouran greentooth
    @Loutrattitude Thanks for your feedback ! I think you've got a point. The reason I went with a more realistic detailing is because it seems that they did something similar when transitionning to Dishonored 2. Here's three examples: Ex 1 - Ex 2 - Ex 3.
    However, I may be completely wrong and I hope to check some of the game model files soon in order to look at their textures myself. If needed, I'll just redo the detailing entirely :)

    Alright 2nd pass on this. Did a bit on the jacket as well and finally added that left earing.




  • Nuclear Angel
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    Nuclear Angel polycounter
    Your sculpt is really good looking so far, id say though that you probably should make your tertiary details more pronounced.  On the images you shared the tertiary details are quite large and visible, especially like wrinkles and skin imperfections are quite the opposite of subtle. So I think if you want to nail the look like they got in the images you shared, that you ought to amp up your details both in size and strength. On the chest it is fine, but on the face and forehead I can barely see the pores. 

    Your collars fabric is a bit thick as well. 

    Also those examples from the game look damn cool! That they successfully kept the dishonored feel on the characters yet the new rendering techniques is amazeballs.  

    But good luck with your model. It is coming along super nicely! 


  • Ouran
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    Ouran greentooth
    @Nuclear Angel Thanks for your critique ! I'll check that collar thickness asap.

    Regarding the skin, I think I'll just go with what I have and see how it ends up looking in engine. I'll make decisions from then on. I have all the detailing on a layer so it'll be easy to push it or remove it at will. Hopefully the game models will show up on the net sometime soon and I can study their work furthermore.
  • Ouran
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    Ouran greentooth
    Beginning polypainting process yay ! This is my underlying layer which I'll cover up with more appropriate skin tones. Next update very soon :)

  • Ouran
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    Ouran greentooth
    What do I do when I play games ? I stalk and sleep dart characters so I can drag their body around the city and snap pictures of them in different lighting scenarios !

    So.... I've found 2 characters in game that ressemble the concept I'm going for. They're not one to one with the concept but close enough to give me a good idea of what to shoot for. Clearly they have pretty realistic detailing which conforts me in the idea of at least trying what I have right now in engine.








  • Jeff Parrott
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    Jeff Parrott polycounter lvl 19
    Nice job on this already! Might be the render but the polypaint feels noisy compared to those shots.
  • Ouran
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    Ouran greentooth
    @Jeff Parrott Thanks Jeff ! Yeah you're definitely right. Hopefully the update I'm posting today helps knock back that noisy feeling.

    So here's my first pass at covering the subdermal mess I posted before. First screengrab is with zbro viewport skin and 2nd one is using the flat shader. Most of the work so far has been on the center part of the face. I feel the forehead is a tad too orangy compared to the rest or maybe it's the other way around ? At this point I'm slightly unsure what is the recommended workflow. Should I put this in engine, see how it reacts and work from here or keep on painting in ZBrush ?



  • Ouran
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    Ouran greentooth
    Sunday update !

    I continued working on the skin to a point where I'm fairly happy with it. Now, I'm going to wait before it's in engine before making further changes.



    Also did a bit of work on the coat because I thought it was a little simple/boring. Straps, buckle, button, seamlines, leather panel on the back...they should all contribue to making this item more interesting. I also folded one side of the collar in order to break the symmetry.





  • Wolves
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    Wolves polycounter lvl 2
    This is looking really good! I really love the hair :D Gonna try that hair brush you mentioned too, thank you. :) Looking forward to seeing this completed!
  • leopenaranda
    Great work man! love the progress, I would love to see more!
  • NNKD
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    NNKD vertex
    Really loving the sculpt and progress! You did a great job with the pronounced / blocky dishonored look and the eye sockets and cheekbones are mesmerizing to look at. Also like everyone else, I like the hair, especially how the short hair and eyebrows turned out.

    I'm curious to hear about what you've learned about how they treat anatomy and form.
  • Ouran
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    Ouran greentooth
    @Wolves Thanks man ! I contacted Dylan about the small hair brush as well so I might be able to release it soon :)
    @leopenaranda Cheers :) More today !
    @NNKD Thank you very much :) It would definitely be super interesting to have some of their top art people talk about it. From what I understand, it's all about letting out that inner personality of each individual. Features are exaggerated but rarely to the point of complete difformity. Asymmetry also seems to be an important touch to many of the characters. There is also this edgy structure which helps the forms read very well (most characters have very strong primary forms). Also, something they pushed in the 2nd game compared to the first one is the size of the hands. Characters in Dish2 have huge hands that reinforce their rough look.

    Hello there, time for a new update !

    I've done the low poly mesh for the face by dropping the high poly to subdivision 2 and then modifying it. The neck and chest had to be rebuilt entirely since they were very stretched. The polycount for this mesh is 8.9k triangles. I also did the UV's where I gave the back of the head a smaller pixel ratio than the rest. Not sure how that will turn out, especially if I end up having the short hair be textured on the head itself.





    Then proceeded to baking a couple of maps. I was getting errors around the lips so I went back and opened the mouth slightly on both high & low poly. I still have minor projection errors but nothing I can't fix in Photoshop. I'm not sure what went on with the baked Height map. This is a part of the process where I'm not super comfortable yet so I'd be very welcome to have some feedback on this :)


  • Asura
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    Asura greentooth
    The skin so far is killer! Cant wait to see the finished model :)
  • leopenaranda
    Awesome man, the skin is looking great and with sss shader will be awesome. are you planning on makeing hair cards for it or how do you plan on doing the hair? pretty cool overall man!
  • Ouran
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    Ouran greentooth
    @Asura Thanks a lot Asura :)
    @leopenaranda Cheers ! Can't wait to see it with proper materials as well. I'm not really sure what technique I'm going to use for the hair but hair cards are definitely first on the list of what I'll try.

    Times are busy with freelance work taking me hostage again but I'm happy to share both my Short Strands brush as well as a couple of renders from my finished high poly.  The brush is free and I'd like to thank Dylan Ekren who was kind enough to give me permission to share it :)

    VM_IMM_ShortStrands: https://gumroad.com/l/jFfB#




    High poly keyshot renders:



  • Ouran
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    Ouran greentooth
    Finally found a bit of time to make some progress on this. Here's the low poly with bakes and scene ready to go in Painter !




  • Ouran
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    Ouran greentooth
    Here are my humble beginnings in Substance Painter. I'm learning the software as I tackle the clothing. I'd call this a first pass which will now let me move on to the skin.

    Any feedback is most welcome :)




  • Rav3
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    Rav3 interpolator
    It's going really great just keep it up! Nice job! :)
  • Ouran
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    Ouran greentooth
    Thanks a lot Rav3 :)

    Here's a first pass atthe skin and eye in Toolbag. It's really fun to mess around with all the cool new sliders. I'm probably going to add a few more skin color break ups in painter. Also, I want to try to achieve a metallic/almost perly effect on the eyelids. If someone has a tip for this I'd be happy to give it a shot.


  • Ouran
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    Ouran greentooth
    Exported all maps from Substance and started balancing the maps in Toolbag. Made the eyes following Peter Zoppi's amazing tutorial. Upper eyelid makeup is quite heavyhanded for now as I'm struggling to get the metallicity I'm looking for but that should be fixed soon. Next up will be the neck tatoo ! Can't wait to actually get some hair on this :)



  • OtterBlotter
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    OtterBlotter polycounter lvl 2
    I actually wanted to try and sculpt that concept out myself sp I'm very happy that I've stumbled upon your work, Vincent - I don't think I could make it justice the same way you did! I just wanted to commend you on a job well done and show my admiration.

    Could you, by the way, elaborate on where did you do the skin in the end? I understand that you wanted to up your PBR game with this project, which makes Substance Painter a natural fit, but according to your updates you used ZBrush. Or did I misunderstand you?

    At any rate, really enjoyed watching your progress on this and hope to git as gud!  
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