Grim(m) Reaper: Creature Model / Diffuse Only Practice / RWBY-esque Art Style Study
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Howdy.
While I've been busy sending out applications / looking for the next freelance opportunity, I thought I'd kill several birds with one stone for one of my newer projects. (Make a new piece to show, Improve my handpainted/Diffuse-only skills, and brush up on breaking down and following an established style/aesthetic)
Note: I'm definitely not a concept artist - But I'm a firm believer in having concept art to model off of if at all possible.
Initial Considerations:
- After studying existing creature examples from the show, they all clearly follow the same basic color scheme (Black for the Main Body, White for Bone/Armor/Structural Elements, and Red/Orange/Yellow for Eyes and Decorative Lines). There aren't really any exceptions to this pattern.
- Because Scythes are given a fair bit of emphasis in the show, and several existing creatures draw from folklore/mythology (Griffins, Dragons, the Nuckelavee, etc.), the idea of a Grimm Reaper was too tempting to pass up. (Well, that and the obvious pun...)
- The common thought of the Grim Reaper (Hooded Human Skeleton with Scythe) is very iconic, but also a bit too obvious. However, drawing from folklore/mythology, there are many examples of various birds being considered omens of death. (This influenced the face-plate, the feathery protrusions from the head, and gave great inspiration for the decorative elements of the scythe)
So in the end, the final concept became this odd bird-human skeleton hybrid.
First Step: Scythe Modeling
Most of the Scythe was modeled out in Maya (using the Concept Art as an orthographic). The only exception was the bird skull, which was quickly sculpted and retopologized in ZBrush.
The "Veins" on the blade were made by drawing out Curves in Maya using the Pencil Tool, and then extruding a Cylinder along each curve with adjustments to the Division Level and Taper values.
Second Step: Scythe UV's + Texturing
The UV's were simple - a standard Planar Unwrap, delete half of the mesh geometry, lay out the pieces, then Mirror the Geometry to double the UV's. (Because a full square ratio was a waste of texture space no matter what happened, it was scaled down by .5 horizontally)
I'm planning on using up some of the blank space for one or two smaller weapons, just to improve efficiency.
From there, it was passed over to Marmoset Toolbag, and I baked out Ambient Occlusion, Position, Curvature, and Object Normal maps.
After painting Base Colors, these maps were then placed over and tweaked as follows:
Ambient Occlusion - Multiply (40%)
>Object Normals: Green Channel (Grayscale) - Overlay (40%)
>Curvature - Multiply (40%)
>Base Colors
Scythe: Textured
The bottom talons were quickly posed using Transpose Master in ZBrush to get a rough "Base" Position.
(I believe I may want to push up the contrast on the bird skull to give it a bit more impact later on...)
At this point, I moved on to start blocking out the rest of the Reaper in ZBrush.
As of this post, I have the Game/Animation-ready Mesh retopologized, but not UV'd.
I decided to push myself early into retopology, and do everything I could using Maya's Quad Draw Tool - up until now, I've only ever done Retopo with ZSpheres in ZBrush - to be honest, after this, I think I prefer Quad Draw. (Although I think adding Topogun into my pipeline at some point over the next few weeks might be a good idea)
So, for right now, this is pretty much where I'm at with this one.
Any comments/critiques/feedback is greatly appreciated!
~ArkOfDarkness
While I've been busy sending out applications / looking for the next freelance opportunity, I thought I'd kill several birds with one stone for one of my newer projects. (Make a new piece to show, Improve my handpainted/Diffuse-only skills, and brush up on breaking down and following an established style/aesthetic)
Note: I'm definitely not a concept artist - But I'm a firm believer in having concept art to model off of if at all possible.
Initial Considerations:
- After studying existing creature examples from the show, they all clearly follow the same basic color scheme (Black for the Main Body, White for Bone/Armor/Structural Elements, and Red/Orange/Yellow for Eyes and Decorative Lines). There aren't really any exceptions to this pattern.
- Because Scythes are given a fair bit of emphasis in the show, and several existing creatures draw from folklore/mythology (Griffins, Dragons, the Nuckelavee, etc.), the idea of a Grimm Reaper was too tempting to pass up. (Well, that and the obvious pun...)
- The common thought of the Grim Reaper (Hooded Human Skeleton with Scythe) is very iconic, but also a bit too obvious. However, drawing from folklore/mythology, there are many examples of various birds being considered omens of death. (This influenced the face-plate, the feathery protrusions from the head, and gave great inspiration for the decorative elements of the scythe)
So in the end, the final concept became this odd bird-human skeleton hybrid.
First Step: Scythe Modeling
Most of the Scythe was modeled out in Maya (using the Concept Art as an orthographic). The only exception was the bird skull, which was quickly sculpted and retopologized in ZBrush.
The "Veins" on the blade were made by drawing out Curves in Maya using the Pencil Tool, and then extruding a Cylinder along each curve with adjustments to the Division Level and Taper values.
Second Step: Scythe UV's + Texturing
The UV's were simple - a standard Planar Unwrap, delete half of the mesh geometry, lay out the pieces, then Mirror the Geometry to double the UV's. (Because a full square ratio was a waste of texture space no matter what happened, it was scaled down by .5 horizontally)
I'm planning on using up some of the blank space for one or two smaller weapons, just to improve efficiency.
From there, it was passed over to Marmoset Toolbag, and I baked out Ambient Occlusion, Position, Curvature, and Object Normal maps.
After painting Base Colors, these maps were then placed over and tweaked as follows:
Ambient Occlusion - Multiply (40%)
>Object Normals: Green Channel (Grayscale) - Overlay (40%)
>Curvature - Multiply (40%)
>Base Colors
Scythe: Textured
The bottom talons were quickly posed using Transpose Master in ZBrush to get a rough "Base" Position.
(I believe I may want to push up the contrast on the bird skull to give it a bit more impact later on...)
At this point, I moved on to start blocking out the rest of the Reaper in ZBrush.
As of this post, I have the Game/Animation-ready Mesh retopologized, but not UV'd.
I decided to push myself early into retopology, and do everything I could using Maya's Quad Draw Tool - up until now, I've only ever done Retopo with ZSpheres in ZBrush - to be honest, after this, I think I prefer Quad Draw. (Although I think adding Topogun into my pipeline at some point over the next few weeks might be a good idea)
So, for right now, this is pretty much where I'm at with this one.
Any comments/critiques/feedback is greatly appreciated!
~ArkOfDarkness
Replies
Spent all of yesterday doing the UV's in Maya, and most of today working on Texturing.
(Warning: Photo Dump Incoming)
I was also able to squeak out a bit more polygon reduction (about 1,800 Tris in the hand bones that weren't really doing anything useful).
I'm aware that there could probably be some texture tweaks (I'm not super happy about having a seam running straight through the symbol on the forehead, and I feel like the face/mask is less defined as the rest of the body), and I definitely want to pose and/or animate it a bit to get it out of the boring 'A-frame' stance.
I'm also curious if there are any suggestions/recommendations for improvement.
Generally, I'm feeling pretty pleased with how things are shaping up - but that's no reason to get complacent, especially if anyone can point out something that could be done better!
~ArkOfDarkness
Made some minor Texture Adjustments, which boiled down to adding a few additional gradients to certain areas, as well as a few light and dark lines to push some of the edges a bit more.
Pretty standard posing process - I just made a ZSphere Rig in ZBrush, posed using Transpose Master, then did some light tweaking and corrections back in Maya.
model
Overall, I'm probably sitting at about 30-35 hours in. (I fiddled around too much during Sculpting - definitely something to work on for the next project).
As always, comments/feedback/critiques are always appreciated!
~ArkOfDarkness