Soulbreaker [WIP]

DanaosC

Hello beautiful community of Polycount! In yet another effort to practice and get better at what I do, I decided to tackle another concept and make it into a 3D game Character.
As an aspiring 3D Character Artist I think it's important to challenge myself and always step it up a bit with each work.
Last time I did this guy which was such an interesting design, I even tried rigging and some awkward animation!

This time I'll go ahead and make this spectacular design, called "Soulbreaker" by "Gpzang".



What really drew me in, was the big ass sword at first with the crazy little details. I also haven't sculpted armor details in forever and thought it'd be a great opportunity to test some new hair workflow in Maya's xgen.
His anatomy is quite stylized at times but I love how buffed and dangerous he looks.
For this one I'll go ahead and make some facial rigging with blendshapes which I've never attempted before.

Excluding the obvious ones that are proper shapes, sculpting, low poly, texturing, for "Soulbreaker" I want to make great looking eyes for once, discover more workflows in creating hair and their texture, properly rig him for any array of movements he may do (Along with eyes and partial mouth rigging), animate him and even throw him in Unreal Engine 4 for the first time and not just Marmoset Toolbag!

I've collected a bunch of reference that I think would really help me in the clothes and armor



This is a new and exciting challenge for me so I hope I deliver!

I've already retopologized his body and made some quick rough tests on how I'm gonna use layers to help me with the blendshapes.



Any feedback and constructive critism is very appreciated as I wouldn't be able to improve at without your feedback all those years  dear Polycount!
I'll keep updating this thread when I have an update. Godspeed me!

Kind regards
-Dan

DanaosC

I started blocking out the shapes of the props on the character. I used to focus too much and sculpt a lot on each part before moving on and that ended up in the scale and analogies between objects being off. So for now I'll just place my low poly bases before I start sculpting.
Progress was kind of slow and to be honest it always is at the start, but now I should start picking up the pace.

DanaosC

Here's most of the props and the base of the sword blocked in. Everything else (cloth, chains, chainmail thingy) can be put anytime and after I make sure the analogies are correct . What do you think of it? I'll work more on the anatomy of the guy but I want to be sure about the scale/position of the props before moving on. 



Now the fun part will begin so expect more frequent updates! 
I've also been streaming the process the last couple of days and will keep on doing so, so feel free to drop in and say hi!

DanaosC

Update on the progress of the sculpt! What's left is to finish the boots, fix some of the anatomy and sculpt the skin details and finally detail the sword. Then retopology is next!
Feedback is very much appreciated!

Go2frag

This is awesome! I imagine how much patience it needs to make it keep it up!

DanaosC

Go2frag said:

This is awesome! I imagine how much patience it needs to make it keep it up!

Thanks man! Indeed some of the detailing of the metal parts and leather is exhausting but I enjoy it and it's all worth it Will do my best Cheers~

grimmrobe

Love all the detail you have going on here to define the various surface qualities, skin, leather, metal etc... Looks great!

DanaosC

grimmrobe said:

Love all the detail you have going on here to define the various surface qualities, skin, leather, metal etc... Looks great!

I'm glad you like it dude! More details to be sculpted in, especially for the skin! Will do my best not to disappoint~ 

DanaosC

Now with the boots done, all of the props are done. I also finished the sword and now only some of the skin details remain to finish the whole sculpt!

DanaosC

Hey guys! Before moving on I want to make sure that the basic landmarks of the anatomy and the face/head analogies are fine. Any feedback for the head/neck area? Thank you!

Lucospade

One thing that sticks out for me is your neck anatomy. Look at this. 



Your neck muscles need much more volume so that they look "straighter" from the side and allow proper transition into the clavicle.

DanaosC

Lucospade said:

One thing that sticks out for me is your neck anatomy. Look at this. 



Your neck muscles need much more volume so that they look "straighter" from the side and allow proper transition into the clavicle.

Hey man! Thank you so much for the feedback! Yeah actually I thought of toning down the neck, make it look more fleshy and less tense. I'll definitely fix that. Any input for the the face/head? Cheers!

Lucospade

I did a sketchy AF paintover using my mouse. It's only as good as I could get done on my lunch break but it might serve as a launching off point.



Things to bear in mind:

The corner of your lips will be in line with the pupils from the front view.
Your eyes should be halfway up the head.
Your ears should fit between the brown and the nostrils.
You should have an eyes width between your eyes.
The width of your head from the front is roughly five eyes widths wide. As in you can fit an eyes width between the eyes, and one on either side of the eyes to make the width.

There's still some weirrdness with the chin I can't put my finger on.
I also tweaked the size of the head compared to the body.

Here's a freebie, have this up when you sculpt, preferably using projection master so you can overlay and compare.





GLHF.

DanaosC

@Lucospade
What a madman! Thank you so much for the time you took to do the paint over! I really appreciate it
I'll go ahead and correct everything I can and have in mind what you wrote while fitting it to my concept art.

Have a good day mate!

DanaosC

Hey everyone! I finished with the Artstation challenge so I'm back on this guy, I'll be updating the thread frequently from now on
Thanks to everyone for their feedback on the head, both here and on Slack!

Here's the update on the head, I am definitely more happy with it that I was before the challenge but I want it to be correct before I move onto detailing, so if you have any feedback and critique, lay it on me!

DanaosC

Alright, alright, alright...!
I corrected some anatomy issues thanks to the community feedback and went on to do some finer detailing. Regarding that I still have to do some stuff (like the frown wrinkles which I did just now). Hope I didnt go overboard with the expression as I want to do facial rigging with normal blending.

I'll keep em coming! 

DanaosC

First proper try with xgen and I'm fairly happy with it! Gonna use it and make the hair cards from it 

DanaosC

More progress on my Soulbreaker project.
irst time I properly used Xgen for character hair and Im quite happy with them. They'll be used to make hair cards so the shape and look can be adjusted.

Alemja

You're going to have to touch up on your back anatomy a bit, it's not that it's bad you have most of the shapes there, it's just that it's going soft in areas where bone and tendon should be. The red-ish purple is the bony outline of the scapula, and the solid blue is tendon, which generally doesn't gain mass unless muscle underneath pushes it out (like the abdomen). The photo example is a rather extreme case of low body fat, but it's good for showing those areas. I hope this helps and keep at it this is looking great so far!

DanaosC

Finally, retopology is done! Such a nice feeling.

Body/Face topology is pretty dense as I used the 2nd subdivision level. I want it to be smoother than usual, so both the textures and animation look less jaggy.

Still with that the Character is at 76k tris without hair! So I'm expecting him to go well over 100k, but that's just as planned .

Sword sits at 12k tris.

Onto unwrapping! Updates should be more frequent now.

DanaosC

Texturing is going pretty smoothly, I still have to jump back for a few changes but here's quick rough render from inside Toolbag. 
A lot of things left to do, such as hair cards and their textures, the sword, make a couple new maps, rig, pose etc. But it's getting there!

DanaosC

Here's a quick video with the hair and beard. I still have to do the eyebrows and eyelashes and I think I can call the character done. Then into rigging and posing.
Hair was never my strong suit and I did many revisions but probably this is the best I can for now. Of course any feedback is greatly appreciated and I'll do my best to follow it.

https://youtu.be/X-pcZrWYDc4

Edit: Will post full character shots once I rig and pose him

DanaosC

And it is done! I know it was a long journey but I hope I did the design justice

2 years ago, when I first start 3D game art, I had this design bookmarked just to look at it and say "Yeah that's something I can't make, it's just too hard", but here we are.





A lot more on Artstation! https://www.artstation.com/artwork/mPR1a

Thanks everyone for the feedback and the support