Neverwinter Nights White Dragon

Selaznog

Hello!
I'm a part time Photoshop instructor at Vanarts for the Game Art and Design Program. One of the assignments for the term one students from another instructor is to make a dragon. From Zbrush to low poly to Marmoset...In 7 days. Since I don't have any other work right now, I'm gonna give it a shot as well and spend some time with the students to help guide them through.

I admit now the sculpt isn't going to be crazy amazing. I'm going for speed...The quality I'll be aiming for is current gen mobile devices.

Attached is a super duper rough time estimate. The high poly stage will take up around half the time. I've done the first item in the list which is to plan.

Selaznog

Including the ref gathering, I'm 4 hours into the project. Better than my estimate, considering the wings are blocked in which I didn't think would happen that fast. The extra time will be nice to have so I can properly model the hands and feet in maya...right now they are so poopy. The wings were done in maya and everything else was zbrush with a sphere and dynamesh +zremesh. I'll be remodeling the tail in maya with some fancy scale duplication and taper.


36 hours remain.

CrazyMoon

Cool challenge Can't wait to see more of the progress!

Selaznog

More progress! Only 30 hours left... Redid the feet, added teeth, worked on head and started scales. Ho boy...

Selaznog

Scales are taking forever...really going to have to speed through on the wings and feet which sucks.

Selaznog

Been awhile... Heres da low poly. Just under 10k tris

Selaznog

Texture update:

Kid.in.the.Dark

Just a suggestion... Although it is lovely to have absolute control over the overall look of every scale by doing each one individually... I'd say it's very inefficient at the same time, why haven't you gone about using alphas to do this? or the use of features like ArrayMesh? I'm definite they would have some heavy use in aiding you during the development of this.

In terms of critique, I'd say the head's a tad bit large... in the concept the head is probably just about the size of one pectoral area of the dragon as yours could virtually cover both.

Either way, this is looking very nice though

Selaznog

Thanks Kid in the Dark! I agree about the head, thanks for calling that out. Definitely needs to be a lot smaller now that I look at it.

I tried using alphas but I just couldn't get it looking as nice as I would have liked. Just so many different sizes and shapes, and I love scales so I wanted them to look awesome : P In the future, I'd probably use alphas or pick a dragon without massive scales everywhere.

Selaznog

Also I shrunk the head as suggested. I think these textures are almost done. Next step is creating a base!

Selaznog

Finished!

Marmoset viewer link: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/4lkB2