Lloth's lot of learning

Lloth

Hi everyone

After landing a job I found myself spending too little time on personal projects. I think these are vital to learn and improve. So after lurking Polycount for ages I think it's time to start posting a little.

I tend to juggle several projects at once:



One of many assets I'm preparing for a small diorama in UE4. Extra points for people who recognize where it's from I'm wondering if I should add mesh for the bolts and such. They looks fine from a distance but it might be worth modelling these in for up close.



Years ago I worked on a Ironman's Whiplash sculpt. After watching The Wrestler, I decided to take that sculpt and see if I can create a cool low poly model of the Ram instead. I'm about to start texturing this guy. This is with some base colors and a tiny bit of skin detail in Marmoset Toolbag 2. I'm not really into wrestling, but I genuinely love that movie. If you haven't seen it, give it a go.

Any comments or critique would be very much appreciated. Thanks!

Lloth

A quick update on the wrestler. Blocking out some colours and slowly building up the detail in the textures. Wireframes for the people interested and place holder eyes to make him less creepy

Lloth

Hello Polycount!

I've been researching and tweaking hair last weekend. For now I've been focussing on the silhouette and the overall feel. I've been creating hair planes with a basic normal map, spec and flat colour for now. Any comments or critique so far?



I also added some early stage eyes to make him look less dead
Onwards to texturing him properly now.

Hazardous

I really like the 'straight to wavy' look you've got going on on that hair man, did you just paint that wavyness straight into your alpha?

Lloth

Thanks Hazardous!

I baked maya hair down onto my alpha planes. So by tweaking those I got a lot of control over where I wanted the strands to go + free alpha masks. Downside to this is that I had to do a lot of rebaking to get it to look okay.

Lloth

I'm still tweaking hair planes and adding textures to the wrestler. However, I need to get some hard surface practice in:



This is part of one of the hovering government propaganda screens that can be found in Hillys (Beyond good and evil) I'm reworking these to make them look a little more modern and military

Lloth

An update to the propaganda screen I'm working on. I found this reference image online (I'm at work and can't get to my reference folder) This is what they look like in game:


Made the high poly of the base structure over the weekend.

Lloth

Quick update. Been having some fun crunching the low poly



Got to try some baking and see how these meshes hold up. I actually rounded some of the screen corners already as they are too low poly right now

baking soon

Lloth

Finally got around to texturing this asset. Starting to get a bit more comfy with the pbr pipeline





Any criticism? I've been staring at this for too long

mats effect

Screen looks pretty nice I think good amount of detail. Could you post the maps as well?

Lloth

Yes sir, will do so when I get home this eve. Cheers

nickcomeau

I would say that you're low poly is way too high poly IMO. I'd suggest trying to cut it down a bit especially in the middle area. A lot of that information can just be baked into the textures. Your textures/materials look great right now by the way.

Also, the face of your Wrestler is pretty good, great job with that. And the hair cards look well placed and clean as well as accurate to the character. Keep up the good work!

Lloth

-Mats Effect: Got the maps here. Thanks for watching
-Nickcomeau: Thanks for the nice words! I might do a lower poly version at some point. I should be able to crunch quite some polys like you said. Thanks!

Add3r

His vert distribution is great for a LOD 0, especially when actual geo is dirt cheap these days with the new console constraints and PC mirroring those constraints (as usual... sadly). He could have actually used a tad bit more geo in areas depending on scale and how close the player gets to the object.


Nice job with the asset

CharacterCarl

Good work! Wouldn't have thought the hair is just flac color + spec & normal.
Also, you surely got my attention with that propaganda screen. I wish there was more fan work based off of Beyond Good & Evil.
Are the textures done just with baking + Photoshop?
BTW, what exactly does the cavity map do? I heard it can be used to enhance shading in detailed areas, if I recall correctly.

Lloth

Add3r: Thanks man!
DerRazputin: Yeah, Beyond good and evil deserves more love I used the cavity map to block the specular reflection in small crevices (there is a nice slider to tweak that in Marmoset 2) It enhances the reflections a little. It's not extremely noticeable, but it does make the details pop a little bit more

shadownet752

Love the maps, definitely helpful to see how you got such a great result!

Cheeky_Pickle

Them unwraps are sexy! Great assets

Lloth

shadownet752, Holly Melllor - Cheers! Thanks for stopping by

I'm about to wrap up the Wrestler. But due to being very busy at work I couldn't get myself to tweak shaders yesterday eve. Picked up a project I've had on the back burner for quite some time. Been having some fun with hair. No alpha planes this time though.

Hair is very much WiP. Any criticism is welcome though. Regarding hair or likeness if anyone spots who she's meant to be

Lloth

I've been neglecting to update this for a while. I got the wrestler to a point where I'm happy to park him for a little. A friend of mine is about to rig him so I will pick up shading and texture tweaking by the time I've worked out a cool pose

WIP - needs material and color tweaks still



In case someone is interested in some of the hair planes. The normals are a bit of a mess at the moment, but getting there:



Aaaand a new bust I'm working on:

Lloth

I've been playing around with Keyshot this eve Managed to actually wrap up a bust for once.

Nuclear Angel

That bust looks great, is it fibermesh in the hair? And what matcap are you using for presentation?

Lloth

Thanks! I started using fibremesh but felt I didn't have the control I wanted. I drew the beard and sideburn hairs by hand using a IMM brush on a reference model. For his long hair I used maya hair that I converted into mesh and smoothed out in Zbrush

No matcap here, I used a few default materials in Keyshot and overlayed them in photoshop later

dimosM

Lloth wrote: »

shadownet752, Holly Melllor - Cheers! Thanks for stopping by

I'm about to wrap up the Wrestler. But due to being very busy at work I couldn't get myself to tweak shaders yesterday eve. Picked up a project I've had on the back burner for quite some time. Been having some fun with hair. No alpha planes this time though.

Hair is very much WiP. Any criticism is welcome though. Regarding hair or likeness if anyone spots who she's meant to be

Truth is she reminded me of khaleesi but then i wanted to take a closer look so i opened the image in a new tab and there was the "Khaleesi_render_01.jpg". So i guess i was right
You should be more careful next time :P, it's really nice though good job.

Lloth

Thanks DimosM, you're right indeed. I was actually planning on updating her eyes, as they are off at the moment. But I got caught up in an art test I will have to postpone updating this thread for a week but hope to have some updates after

Lloth

Been inactive for a bit due to work stuff, but got at it again Tweaking update on khaleesi. Got some hair done and did a small overhaul on the face. The eyes are now less creepy



Any feedback on her likeness would be very much appreciated. Thanks!