Demon Creature - WIP

Rsylke

Demon concept by Baldi Knoijin.  https://www.artstation.com/artwork/JqlRD  
Would love critiques and draw overs as I progress! 

Tits

Nice start!

Rsylke

Stambot

Off to an awesome start! Are you doing the hard surface stuff in zbrush?

Rsylke

I blocked out the bracelets in 3DS Max. Trying to find a way to keep the low poly as a cage for baking.

Stambot

The easiest way IMO would just be to maintain your 3DS max modifier stack.

If you make the low-poly, then add a new edit poly modifier for additional changes, turbosmooth, etc without collapsing, then you can make a cage later by duplicating the object, removing those modifiers, and using a push instead so the low-poly is inflated to encompass the hi-poly.

Let me know if any of this is unclear and i can make a quick example (at work ATM).

Rsylke

Awesome, Yea that was basically the idea. My only concern is to make sure not to changed the overall shape when I go to sculpt in detail into the bracelets. Thank You! and if you got time to make a quick example, I would love to see it. 

Rsylke

Still blocking stuff out.   If anyone has a great tutorial on the polish and fine detail phase, I would love to see it.  

Rsylke

Decided to block out the neck piece today and few other things.  

robscaife776

looks great so far, only critique would be i feel like the knuckles etc in the hand area should be sharper and stand out bit more 

Rsylke

Thanks!  I'm def going back through the hands and body and adding more detail. 

Rsylke

Adjusted the leg length and blocked out the cloth wrap. Sized down the neck piece and started adding more details to the hands and arms. 

Rsylke

Little progress on the cloth wrap. 

Rsylke

Rsylke

Rsylke

Adjusted the hands and started Retopo this week. 

Rsylke

Thank You!  Hopefully the texturing will go smoother than the retopo. 

Rsylke

Getting close to finishing the retopo. Head and teeth are really throwing me off. 

Rsylke

It's been awhile, so here's an update.  Manage to finish the retopo and bake and started texturing today.  Critiques are welcomed!

Rsylke

I've seen ppl use sphere to reference shader information, but I'm not sure what I'm looking for.  Exposure? overall environment temp? 

Rsylke

Still grinding at the texture. 

polygons

I think the logo on his head is a bit thin in yours compared to the reference. I think the skins looking good but overall it could use more variation and contrast. Your reference is more a dark saturated purple while yours has more of that pink tone to it so if you wanted to be more like your reference that's something to look into. I think putting more AO into the diffuse a bit might help as well. The teeth feel kinda put on instead of blended in so having them be a bit of a darker shade near the gums might help a bit. These are all my opinion and I think they should all for the most part be pretty subtle changes because I'm nitpicking you a bit but I think it could help him look even better.

Rsylke

Really appreciate the suggestions. I've been struggling with the purple/pinks, so it always helps to hear from an outside perspective. I also agree with the teeth issue. I'll have to paint in shadows to help make them pop and separate the teeth. 

Rsylke

Did some work on the teeth and horns. 

Alemja

I'm not sure if it's your lighting, but the textures look very washed out in your latest update. I have some suggestions that can help your presentation:

• If you can make the background a dark grey-ish blue it will compliment your model better.
• The metal isn't reading like metal, it needs to have more shine.
• I'm not seeing a lot of variation in the purples, having some hints of saturation like in the concept will greatly help.
• I think your textures might need to be little darker overall, but it might be the lighting, I can't tell

Here is a paintover for you:

I hope this helps!

Rsylke

Appreciate it! I'll def take a look at the lighting and also the colors/saturation. I struggle with purples a lot 

Rsylke

Small Update.  

Made some adjustments to marmoset scene and materials. Going to go back and rework the textures this week. 

Rsylke

Small Update:

Working on gradients and fixing a lot of areas. Also have been playing around with highlights and trying to get things to read better. 

Rsylke

So I scrapped my Textures and decided to paint a base in 3D coat. Working on highlights and shadows, before I start adding base color. 

Rsylke

Little update:

Still working on the 3D coat base and eventually want to take it into substance painter as a base diffuse and see if I can create PBR maps.  

Rsylke

New PBR on the left and the flat diffuse on the right. Going to be working on the metal parts this week.  

lotet

looking really nice!
I would maybe try pulling a bit of the focus to the face, maybe drop some saturation on the legs and feet or something.

Rsylke

Thanks!  I've been struggling with getting the textures to read better, but I'll have to try the saturation. Screenshot below has the Emissive on his head, which helps a little. Still gotta fix the metal this week. 

Rsylke

So I added an overall gradient to help draw the eye to the face. I think I'll darken the horn tips a bit more and then Start working on the metal. 

lotet

Looks a lot better already. 

what is your main goal with the textures, are they supposed to be PBR or hand painted? because you cant make one texture that will work for both.

Rsylke

I wanted to do sort of a stylized pbr shader. I was struggling to paint the base colors in substance, so I painted the base diffuse in 3dcoat and worked with the shaders in substance. 

Obviously the shaders are turning the blue-ish purple into a more pink and I'm at a crossroads. 

Should I just make this a hand painted character? or is there a way to make the pbr model work. (Overwatch style of pbr possible)

JordanN

Rsylke said:

I wanted to do sort of a stylized pbr shader. I was struggling to paint the base colors in substance, so I painted the base diffuse in 3dcoat and worked with the shaders in substance. 

Obviously the shaders are turning the blue-ish purple into a more pink and I'm at a crossroads. 

Should I just make this a hand painted character? or is there a way to make the pbr model work. (Overwatch style of pbr possible)

The trick with PBR and stylized art is to be observant of your lighting and a little knowledge of color theory. 

With the exception of a subsurface scatter material, the colors you textured your base model with should not wildly change under any lighting condition. 

Here is a resource that does a more in depth explanation of what I mean:
http://www.itchy-animation.co.uk/light.htm

Look at the last two images of the dog ornament. The textures are the same, but different lighting conditions forces the dog to look more "orange" than in the other shot.

Rsylke

Ty for the tips Jordan.  I forgot I had a screenshot of my scene with all the lights turned to a neutral white color. Def helps.  I'm sure there's some yellowish ambient light from the HDRI Plate also. 

I've recently been reading about Color theory and how artist apply it to hand painted characters.  Link below. Great Read!
https://www.theseus.fi/bitstream/handle/10024/107534/Thesis_ZuzanaBubenova.pdf?sequence=1

Rsylke

So I've decided to start over on the texturing again. I kind of screwed up trying to take a hand painted texture and use that as a base diffuse. The pbr version wasn't displaying correctly in most HDRI plates. 

Rsylke

New session in Substance Painter. Completely pbr and everything was painted in Substance. Going to keep working on it this weekend, but critiques are welcomed!

Olenka

Hey Rsylke ! Cool model Here are my suggestions :
- maybe you could blend the teeth a bit more with the head like in the concept to have a smoother integration ( and maybe you could do that to the claws too )
- add a liiiittle bit of blue-ish shade in the purple ( a bit more of subtle colors variations )
- right now it looks like you have some kind of brown AO and it makes the hands and feet looks a bit dirty, maybe tweak this a bit to make it more purple, less dark
- add the ankle and knee details by painting directly in the normal map ?

That's what I would do, but take what you need and what you think is relevant. Happy texturing !!

lotet

Looks so much better!
make sure you have more Ao in the mouth area, its looking a bit bright at the moment.
you could also probably bump up the glossiness in selected materials quite a lot, like mouth, metal parts, teeth, that kinda stuff.

Rsylke

Thank You so guys!  Here's a small update. 

• Adjusted teeth using a baked light filter. I'll prob try to add a little bit of darker shades towards the gums.
• I added a little bit more blue to the base skin.
• I reduced the gradient overlay to help with the legs looking too muddy. 
• I darkened the inside of the mouth & added more gloss to the teeth, claws, toes, & metal.

I feel that maybe the lower half is a little too bright and my eyes are fighting between the head and the feet, but It's hard to tell. (been staring at this for hours )

Rsylke

Added some lights to the render. 

Rsylke

Olenka

That's way better, I think we clearly see that the head is the focus point now !   Now I would try to put a bit of green reflections on the metal part like in the concept. Good job !

priderice

For my taste, there should be more teeth gum visible, there should be a transition of Teeth and Jaw. I think you already did have some gum but removed it. Nice Work man !

Rsylke

I've adjust the metal parts to give off more reflections and adjusted the teeth/gum area. I went ahead and rigged/posed the model and I'll be working on some sort of small environment for him to sit in. 

Rsylke

Final Render.  I'm going to call this one done, so I can move on to my next project. Thank you guys so much for the critiques and I think it really helped. Plenty of things I wish I had done better, but overall I'm happy with it. I'll be posting more shots on my Artstation later tonight.