[UE4] [WIP] FF7 Cloud Strife

stororokw

Hello everyone. I am working on Cloud from the final fantasy series. My main aim is to start learning UE4 and try come up with some sort of workflow.

Last week I bought a new gfx card so now I can run UE4 with good settings. So, for now I am going through the basic tutorials on UE4, if you have any good tutorials you can recommend to me please feel free to post them.

I am aiming for a style similar to the remake/ffxv.

Please help me along the way.

stororokw

Some zbrush blockouts of the body and face. Please critique.

stororokw

I have been going through the learn tab, and content examples the past week and researching methods for creating hair, I am currently just trying to hand place them, but they feel flat, have harsh transitions and its cumbersome. Does anyone have any tips? I am using 3dsmax.I'm wondering how to achieve soft looking hair like the hair examples below. 

artofmars

can you post a photo of what your alphas and normals look like for your hair textures?

stororokw

artofmars said:

can you post a photo of what your alphas and normals look like for your hair textures?

Heres a link of the alpha i am using (link). I am not using a normal map since it doesn't make sense as an input to the material.

Are there too many strands per clump in my alpha map? Does anyone know if its better to have fewer, but thicker strands or lots of thin strands?
Looking at some close up image of the stands of hair it seems to be quite sparse and have more gaps inbetween.

More tinkering about, Heres a outdoor scene to better evaluate it.

stororokw

Still playing around with the hair. I was able to get some colour into it and also tried added some subtle wind. As for the hair alphas I think its best to have a mix of thick and thin hair.

stororokw

I started to block out the clothes and made sure that the export from zbrush was at the correct scale since you never know what your going to get sometimes. Also made sure his didn't look as goofy next to the Samaritan who is about 190cm.

artstream

Hey nice progress so far! Only feedback I have is his left forearm look like it's getting funneled and shrunk into the bracer. If you thicken it  just a bit, I think it will read more accurately.

Keep it up!

stororokw

Thanks for the critique. I will make more changes once I start refining.

stororokw

This is kind of a crappy update, but I am trying to update once a week. I have been mainly focusing on refining the anatomy since it seems to be the case that having a nude base is the most straightforward approach for adding in different clothes. I will probably do one more pass through the body then try to finish the hands, feet, and face.



references:

Unreal Engine 4 - Modular Pawn / Cloth System - Part 8: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yQ3tBLq3_U0
UE4 How to Synch Animated Armor: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bE0g_djR12s

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stororokw

@JoshuaG
Thanks for the critique. I will take a look at it once I have finished with the body.

@TeriyakiStyle
Thanks for sharing the video; it is always interesting to see other people's workflow for hair. hair and fur + instanced geometry I will give it a try when I start to work on the hair again.

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I started working on the low poly model for the head + body and did some test with maximo rigger to check for problem areas. I was originally aiming for a triangle count of 15k, but it seems like it will probably end up at 20-24k.
I am having problem with the latissimus dorsi that goes from the back all the way to the front as seen here. I think its important to be able to represent the walls of the axilla, so I was wondering if anyone had any ideas on the toplogy for that? You can see it stretching too much when the arm is being raised from the image below.
I will probably have to redo the topology for the arm since its deforming strangely.
Some animation tests.

References:
Tips for believable character deformation and animation
HippyDrome's topology for articulation

stororokw

Weekly update.

• I fixed the issue with the arm by changing the topology.

• Started doing some test bakes and played around with the eye material. 

• Added the mouth and eye bag to the hires sculpt to stop artifacts in the bake
• Sculpted the teeth and tongue, also did some mouth shapes to try to place the teeth correctly inside and to ensure the mouth bag was against the teeth.

I was wondering if it is better to project the hi-res details onto the game res model in Zbrush and then just work on that instead?

One thing I noticed was how easy it is to see the edges of the silhouette that make up the nose, ear, and chin, so I am going to try adding in more topology there and hope the UVs dont mess up.



References

Placing the teeth: http://www.chrisevans3d.com/pub_blog/the-jaw/

stororokw

I started working on the textures for the head and tried to improve the transition from the eye to the head. I am also not too sure on how to create the roughness map. c&c welcomed. This maybe the last update for this week since I want to start learning how to rig things.

stororokw

I did a second pass on the head texture and worked on the hair material. I will work on the hair next week.

Kiyamlol

Wow awesome stuff, looking forward to the progress

stororokw

@Kiyamlol Thanks for the encouragement.  
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3dsmax
While searching for tutorials on hair I stumbled upon some resources below which I used to help divide the hair up into more manageable chunks and guide the hair flow. Currently I am at the stage below where I have planned the overall direction of the hair and I will start over redoing each section.
Any C&C or tips on the hair is appreciated before I begin the tedious part of placing lots of hair cards.

I think the image above is the old noctis from versus not ff15.
References

http://www.jp.square-enix.com/ff15/special/fankit/reference/

Kiyamlol

you need more hair planes and do it in layes, a thick layer underneat and lighter ones on top. Did you do it on top of your polygonal meshes? Or were you just eyeballing it. Also I would paint the scalp darker. It helps trick volume and cover unwanted gaps.

stororokw

Kiyamlol said:

you need more hair planes and do it in layes, a thick layer underneat and lighter ones on top. Did you do it on top of your polygonal meshes? Or were you just eyeballing it. Also I would paint the scalp darker. It helps trick volume and cover unwanted gaps.

Thanks for the tips. That was just to general shape of the hair so it has no layers. I was just eyeballing it. I am still stuck placing the cards, how do you approach it?

• I projected the low poly on the highres mesh in zbrush now so I could get a cleaner bake.
• Starting to learn rigging. I really want a rig like this http://www.3lateral.com/projects/unreal-engine-demo-the-kid
• I am getting some strange shading problems around the eyes in UE4 even without a normal map. Does anyone know why it is happening? You can see in the video it is causing dark lighting artifacts around the eyelids.

Eye rom test

stororokw

Hi all.

I added the following since the last post:

• Jaw and mouth controls.
• Created the visemes, just gotta figure out a way to get all the phonemes from them and need to learn some basic scripting so I can store them.
• retop'd and UVd the teeth and tongue.
• basic mouth/jaw rom test.
  

I have pretty much finished the face rig, but still have some problems with the skinning and the outliner is a mess, so I amprobably not going to spend too much more time on it besides trying to figure out a way to make it scale nicely. 

stororokw

I had some technical stoppers with the rigging, so I am going to have to redo it. Some things I learnt though:

• Model the limbs straight and fully extended for rigging purposes (IK).
• UE4 uses z-up.
• The body rig is more complex then the face/head, so make sure the joint hierarchy for the body is complete before working on the face rig.
• Make sure the upper and lower portions of the eyes/mouth have the same number of loops.
• Ensure there is enough of a gap between the jaw and neck for it to bend.
• Whenever a joint is moved it must be reoriented.

I started working on the in-game resolution models for Cloud's default costume. I have tried to keep the silhouette of the surfaces and for now I am just throwing on some UVs to test the bakes. I will probably try using tillable normal maps for the cloth details.

• Should the textures be packed based on the type of material e.g metal, cloth?
• Where and how can I improve the topology?

stororokw

I stopped working on this project during the past two weeks so, there is only a small update. I did the UVs and started learning substance painter.

• I decided to pack the entire costume into one UV map.
  

There are a few things that I am finding strange with substance painter.

• It's not possible to hide a mesh so you cant paint on the mesh underneath it. e.g. sweater and belt.
• Cant paint across multiple texture sets.
• Cant import more then one mesh.

Feels kind of backwards, but it beats painting on the uvs directly.
How can I improve the uv map? I was mainly aiming for low distortion and consistent texel density. I am keeping the texture resolutions at 2048x2048.


For the textures I am trying to go for someone who is well travelled since he is a mercenary, grimy, beat up, and overall use dark muted colours which will hopefully fit him into ff7's dystopian society.

KingKellogg

his stomach needs to be a bit thinner. Cloud is a pretty thin dude. Otherwise looking good.

stororokw

@KingKellogg Thanks for the critique. I will try to make him more skinny when I have some free time to figure out a way to do it, because it seems like a rather non trivial task to move the high-res and low-res with many pieces all at once without things going wrong.

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Since I usually don't like posting without updates. I will have to redo the boots, left gloves and figure out a way to bake the bolts without it doing strange stuff because they all share the same uv space.

stororokw

Another update. Almost (?) done with the costume. Now would be the best time for any critiques before I have to manually merge all the textures into a single sheet.

• I made him thinner by using transpose master in Zbrush. It doesnt work with many subtools, but I am not sure how I would have done it otherwise.
• I also just baked the bolt separately to avoid any strange stuff happening.

stororokw

Slowly making progress.

• I painted the hair on the scalp from Kiyamlol's suggestion.
• I did a normal map bake for the head and body (they are two separate meshes), but I am getting seams between them that I need to resolve.
• Costume is probably done.

stororokw

Finished the buster sword today. I went for a design closer to the original with a mix from dissidia and smash bros 4.
Is it usual to have so much free space in the UV map, or should I scale everything up to fit the space?

Tomtegubbe

It's too late to comment on this but it appears his upper arm is a bit too long, usually the elbow lines up with the ribcage.

stororokw

Tomtegubbe said:

It's too late to comment on this but it appears his upper arm is a bit too long, usually the elbow lines up with the ribcage.

@Tomtegubbe
Thanks for the critique. You have a good eye. I scaled a scan next to the model and rotated the arm to the same position and the upper arms are definitely too long. I will make the changes.
Where did you learn that the elbow lines up with the ribcage? I always thought it lined up with the external oblique.

Tomtegubbe

Just google human proportions, this for example.
http://www.drawinghowtodraw.com/stepbystepdrawinglessons/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/ideal-proportions-various-ages.jpg

stororokw

@Tomtegubbe
Thanks. I will keep that in mind when sculpting in the future.
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Only a small update.

• Made the upper arms shorter.
• New hair material. There are some problems with the hair flickering as the camera gets further away (textures needs padding?).
• Fixed problem with incorrect roughness, and metalness from the exported substance painter texture. You need to turn srgb off in the texture settings for it to be interpreted correctly by UE4. https://forum.allegorithmic.com/index.php?topic=6849.0
• Added nipples.

Hopefully I will be able to work over the weekend to finish this up.

Tomtegubbe

His hair looks a bit patchy, it doesn't appear to have much volume. Have you baked normals for the hair, maybe that will make it look better. The arms look much better now, nice work.

stororokw

@Tomtegubbe
Thanks again for the critique. I think the problem may have been the dithering from the temporal AA or the texture mipping. I have the tangent maps baked for the hair.
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• Toned down the dark circle around the eyes
• Updated the hair to be more like the original.

Tomtegubbe

Looking great, some seams on the arms though, not sure what that is. Also what's the brown thing at his shoulder, is that a shirt? But his hair looks much better.

stororokw

Tomtegubbe said:

Looking great, some seams on the arms though, not sure what that is. Also what's the brown thing at his shoulder, is that a shirt? But his hair looks much better.

Thanks Tomtegubbe. Its a normal map seam issue that I am still having from one of my previous post. I was trying out different texture baking software (xnormal, handplane and ZBrush) to see if it resolves the issue, but unfortunately it did not. I think using substance painter fixes the issue though because it uses a synced workflow with UE4.

The brown thing was just a problem with the UV map when I export from ZBrush... not sure why it happens, but I have to manually merge the UVs together in maya to fix it.
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• Polished the face around the lips/mouth area. I felt that the face in the previous posts looked like he was placing his bottom lip over the upper one.
• Redid the normal maps using substance painter instead of xnormal.