Gunslinger WIP

OutlawHue

Hi everyone,
 I am enrolled in CGMA Next Gen Character Creation. I decided to create Gunslinger Roland from DarkTower series.  Right now I am working in Maya and Zbrush. I have some textures from Texture XYZ that I used in this image. Tips and crits are very welcomed. Adding textures from Texture XYZ is somewhat cumbersome in Zbrush:

MMattice

This is looking pretty cool so far! I am currently reading the series (on book 5 right now), and its really cool to see that you have really brought Roland to life! I would suggest looking at the Marvel comics to see how they made his clothing (if you are going to model that), that might be a good reference point, and remember that Roland is missing some fingers on his hands (again, only if you were planning on modelin his whole body).  But wow this is cool man! Another character that would be awesome to see is Rhea of the Coos!

BakertheGameMaker

Looks great so far! I have read the series several times. To add to what MMatice said, I would only suggest that he would likely be much more scarred. As you may recall from the books, he had a pretty spartan upbringing. He was constantly beaten in a variety of ways. His nose has probably been broken more than once. Some of his scars would have been from wounds that were poorly/hastily stitched up, or not even attended to at all. Maybe he even has a tiny chunk of his ear missing or something from a bullet that flew too close, his hawk biting at him, etc. But yeah, what you have looks great so far. Can't wait to see more.

OutlawHue

@MMattice - Thanks, I may go into Marvel's interpretation. I have seen cover art from the series. I think my interpretation is very different to the team of that comic series. Man... I am going back in forth in my mind about Roland's battle damage. I am really going for Book 1...but showing Roland after being attacked by the "Lobstracities" would be pretty cool to do. Right now he has all fingers and toes. I love Rheas grotesque description in the books. Definitely something I would like to tackle in the future or at least see someone else create!

@BakertheGameMaker - Wow you paint a pretty grim concept of Roland. I like it a lot, but I believe staying true to the books, Roland never really scars until the Lobster Monster attack. He seems to be able to keep his face out of harms way so far. However, I'm in book 5 now and this might change,

 This will be full body. I am currently working on his arms now. Fingertips causing me a bit of grief Comments and Crits always welcomed

OutlawHue

More hand work this morning. I gathered up references for rugged hard life hardworking hands. I am surprised a bit on how "inflated" they look in comparison to the average desk working hands.

OutlawHue

Returning to the bust to retop. I am using 3D coat. 

MarcoAntonio

Wow! Nice work OutlawHue! Organic modeling is not my thing (so I don't have tips to share) but I have to admit that you have done a good work (it looks good to me at least). 

OutlawHue

Thanks @MarcoAntonio!
 I'm currently revising the retop work for the 3rd time. I'll share soon

OutlawHue

4 times attacking the retop work on this character's bust. I'm happy with the resuts now. I'll move on. Here I am showing 5k, 22k, and the reference mesh

OutlawHue

A lot of changes have happened to the character creation pipeline. My original idea of using fibermesh to hair curves was squashed. I have Maya LT and it doesnt do curves. SO, I created hair cards. I have a good deal of adjusting to do on them, but they are pretty decent for the shape of the hair I need. My maps are kicked out with Xnormal. I use Quixel suite for  normal map work mainly. C and C always welcome:



 Polypaint work in Zbrush HighPoly

 

With hair cards in UE4 (realistic character scene) Lowpoly

OutlawHue

 I had some real issues with getting the haircards right in UE4. I  am at a decent place I can stop tweaking them for now. I want to get the rest of the character in and then go into final refinements. I checked out UE4 forums and articles about haircards and I found the same difficulties. A few UE veterans seem to be able to get deep in the node behaviors and come up with some nice hair. I'm not interested in investing that much time in UE4 nodes and blueprint at this point.  Here is my current look (rendered in UE4):

Now from one thing to another. I'm back in Zbrush. I have some clothes I made in Marvelous Designer for my character. Marvelous Designer is a very good tool but I'm not quite sure if I want to invest yet. I know I will eventually, but it takes a good deal of time to learn and integrate (as most software).  Tweaking the clothes imported from Marvelous Designer also takes a little time to do. Most tutorials I have found have the same process. Tweak the mesh a bit - Zremesh it - Tweak some more until it looks right - Then retop. If you know of a less manual way to get the job done, let me know (thank you in advance!). I didn't get to far on the clothes in Zbrush. I think I'll side step and try to fix the clothes in Maya and import that to Zbrush. I'll let you know how it goes:

Brian "Panda" Choi

Have you tried transferring normals from a proxy hair volumee meshh onto the hair mesh you have to even out the low poly normals?

OutlawHue

Hey Brian - no I haven't tried that. Thanks for the tip I'll definitely give it a try!

OutlawHue

Before I get back into the hair issues. I'm going to complete the remaining highpoly sculpt for the Gunslinger. I noticed some issues with the shirt that forced me to rework the mesh a bit. Fix it before it can become a real problem.

The fixed shirt

OutlawHue

Long time no update. I spent the last few weeks working through Gunslinger model. I was able to make some real gains on the shirt mesh. I found Marvelous Designer does a decent job with all the nifty wrinkles and folds, but at this point it leaves me with a lot of clean up in Zbrush. So, I modified my workflow for this. I created the MD clothes> Thicken and cleanup a bit in Zbrush > Retop the mesh>Project the details onto the new retop'd mesh> now I have a new highpoly mesh to sculpt on and my low poly mesh for animation in one subtool Here's where I am. I'm taking a break for a few weeks to tackle another project but hope to be back on the Gunslinger project soon: 

OutlawHue

Moving right along...added reop'd pants. Boots and accessories are in work

OutlawHue

Little update

OutlawHue

Revised the trademark Gunslinger Excalibur-Hand Cannon. I stylized the Western Colt Dragoon pistol. Give a Excalibur feel (not fantasy overly decorated Excalibur) and archaic look. More to come

OutlawHue

 The highpoly Gunslinger is finished. Here's the final look. Now I'll go back into retopo work for low poly:

OutlawHue

Brian "Panda" Choi said:

Have you tried transferring normals from a proxy hair volumee meshh onto the hair mesh you have to even out the low poly normals?

 Brian, thanks for this info. It didn't work for UE4 though. I will be trying this method ( https://polycount.com/discussion/187749/ue4-hair-tutorial-using-fibermesh-and-3ds-max ) next also enrolling in CGMA for hair. I'll post the results.

OutlawHue

Signed up for Hair Creation for Games. It helped a great deal to push my Gunslinger character even further. It’s still a work in progress. I had some great C&C on it at GDC. C&C always welcomed

OutlawHue

Decided to revise the hair and here is a new hair render in UE4

Ashervisalis

Looking great!

OutlawHue

Thanks @Ashervisalis!