little bit of texture work on the saree. still miles to go before I sleep but it's a start. pretty undecided on what designs to use so making a lot of different things in photoshop and just trying it all out. My photoshop game has definitely risen a few levels so far. Designing as you go like this isn't good for meeting a deadline, but it's great for learning. Redoing things so many times and constant experimentation really gets you better with the technical side of things.
Now I don't want to hear anybody tell me I'm wasting texture space!
Pretty simple to do the textures though. Draping the saree was a pain but I
can't imagine texturing it any other way. So I can actually just follow
real world saree patterns with it layed out like this. The bottom right
would connect to the upper left. Where the border stops is where the
pallu will begin. So far I've been grabbing bits and pieces of designs
from lots of sarees and just playing around to find a look that will
work. Many designs feature paisley or floral patterns, which can be beautiful... other designs are purely geometric, but can be a bit busy and I can't get super intricate without things blurring together... so i'm looking for a design that feels kind of strong and bold with a good balance between empty space and readable detail. Probably some spaced out floating mandala's and am upwards creeping vine floral design is what I'll go with. The pallu will be crazy detailed like the collar and crown.
Work is split 50/50 between photoshop
and painter. Photoshop for making designs and patterns, painter for
applying them along with normal and roughness and all that other good
stuff. Newest version of PS has a mandala symmetry mode -- fucking perfect for some of these designs. You can waste some time playing with it though, too much fun.
Calling it here on the sari textures. Not entirely in love with the pallu and the border transition but I've got to get this project wrapped up and it's purely a matter of taste so, moving on. I decided that, considering the blouse will be fully embroidered along with all the bling-bling, it might be best to keep the sari somewhat simpler in design. I tried out some repeating patterns along the length of it but it was just too busy.
I am not replicating perfectly realistic silk here but I don't care so much about that -- Durga has to explode your eyes with magnificence so I wanted something really dynamic looking. I went a little higher with the metalness and added a secondary reflection with high glossiness. I gave a touch of color to the secondary reflection color as well.
Next up I'll take a break from fabric texturing by skipping the blouse for now and instead start retopoing the collar, crown, and belt and getting them baked. This will require careful organization as I must separate the many gems to receive different types of textures.
game ready things so far. next up will be the crown.
I do have the head textured, but am putting off the eyes and eyelashes and brows for now so will post that later. Also the reflections from the jewellry is pretty intense so once it's all done I may end up tweaking the skin textures anyway so they don't get washed out. The final scene will have the tiger in it as well and probably an actual geometry floor, so I'm not sure how I'll handle the GI and lighting to get everything look it's best -- as such I'm prepping everything for easy maintenance down the road.
The big jewels are just baked on right now but I will replace them actual geometry as they'll need a unique shader to look right. They'll be red and white as well, not green.
Got the crown and jewels done. Will probably switch up the colors a little but most the day was just figuring out the shader.
Next up is just the little jewelry bits, and that's the last of the annoying retopo. Then just the blouse to do and then I can finalize head and skin and finish out with the hair.
But it won't be done just yet. Still have the extra arms and weapons, and then lastly lastly I want to redo the tiger. It came out pretty well but I feel the sculpt is weak and I think I can improve the texture workflow a bit so just gonna do it again.
Just did a test bake of the white bead-strands though and results aren't so hot. These are baked onto a plane basically like you would a hair card. Geometry would look best of course, especially from certain angles, but I think that would just be overboard. We are already pretty high on the polycount already. But I really like the look of these beads. If I can't make this work, I'll try some other solution to keep that nice white pearly color in there on top of the hair cause I think it's really nice, especialyl once I get some real hair in there. No idea what though.
I think a good result can be had from baking but I'll have to work at it some more. Maybe just bake onto a single poly-strip and then do something like an imposter? I'm not sure that would look appropriate for a character like this but I'll test it out and see.
one thing i'll need to do is make a little indention in the faces normal map where the nose ring inserts so it looks realistic.
these last couple of updates are gorgeous. the only thing standing out to me is that the crown looks a little ill fitting, like it would slip down the front of her head with all that weight
Yeah I actually just scaled the crown up slightly as I was kind of fitting in my proxy hair and definitely agree with that. I do want it to be canted just a touch to give some subtle imperfection to feel a little mroe real, but yeah right now I agree it's a little too much and seems like it should fall down to her nose.
About to hit homestretch. Played with tons of designs for the blouse but ended up keeping it pretty simple. I did the design by hand in photoshop and I don't feel super confident about it -- i'm not so great at reproducing these mendhi designs -- but i think it looks good enough from my camera distance.
Also added in a proxy environment because I'll probably do something with that in the end, even if it's just a floor. Feel like it makes the scene feel better -- would be weird to have durga and her tiger just floating in space.
Coming up this week I'll do the eyes, touch up the face, and give her actual eyelashes and brows before diving into hair. I'm a bit apprehensive about that as this will be my first time trying for really high quality hair, but I've got plenty of good instruction, and I'm three weeks ahead of schedule, so should be able to do something decent.
Here's what I did for those beads. Just like they do "imposters" with trees. A single plane just rotated around so it looks like 3d from various angles. Not super lightweight but less than having hundreds of little spheres. Could add it to the hair card budget I suppose since I'll be a little lighter there due to using a braid rather than loose hair.
got the eyes done. i had been using somebody else texture so i just replaced that with my own. went with darker brown and made the iris more clear and distinct. just looks better i think.
First pass on the eye lashes and eyebrows. Just focused on the shape and position. Seems like I'll need to get in there and place each card smartly otherwise it just seems messy. I dunno, maybe just me.
Had a small epiphany. Speed in production doesn't come so much from clicking fast and telepathic hotkeys, but more from simply not making mistakes. Realized I waste a lot of time by doing dumb shit like not saving a new SP project I used to make some quick edits. Then I realize my eyebrows are in the wrong position so I got to go back and reproject all this shit rather than just scooch a mask. Little shit like this eats up lots of time -- don't ever throw nothing away, not even your throw-away stuff.
There is pore detail but it's very subtle. I can easily adjust how prominent it is by playing with the cavity and SSS depth though.
I've been trying to keep it feeling realistic but also give her a sense of "photoshopped perfection."
But yeah, in the direct light it gets totally washed out. I think I had my secondary reflection a little too much as well. I tweaked that down to get rid of some of that excess shine.
i agree completely. Should get those things fixed up tomorrow. I am just using some placeholder textures so far to try and get a feel for what I'll need. Definitely too thick right now and the eyebrows are acutally just using the same cards as the lashes. But I think they should get their own rather than using like 100 tiny little cards.
About the skin, it's something I am continually playing with. I kind of feel the same way -- not 100% happy with it yet. One thing that may be throwing you off though is that she actually has gold dust speckled on her face. I noticed in a lot of Durga depictions that she is almost golden. Rather than just give her Simpsons skin, I figured a subtle "gold dust" makeup effect might be a nice touch. So that does change the reflective quality a little bit.
Here is a differnet lighting and tweaked the textures as well. Seems to feel more natural and if you can see the metallic speckles in there better.
Took a full ass ten hour day to get these right but I think I like it. Eyebrows, lashes, and also touched up makeup textures around the eye. Changed the eye texture too a little -- brightened it up. Was feeling kind of murky.
Please continue to share any thoughts/critiques. It really helps even if it's small stuff. I'll start hair tomorrow. Woohoo.
7 march -- got textures done using fibermesh and got the main volume layer blocked in. Slow going with lots of experimentation as this is my first time attempting high quality hair.
I watched through Adam Skutts hair tutorial using xGen but... xGen is fucking complicated and seeing the end result I realized I can get as good a result using fibermesh. The process doesn't have quite as much control or flexibility, but as long as I know what I want it's just a matter of working with layering and manual tweaks rather than playing with procedural sliders. In this case it's mostly straight hair so pretty simple.
In his tutorial Adam Skutt shows a way you can make a normal map multiplier in photoshop. The first image has a 2x multiplication, but I feel that makes the hair look too coarse.
This seems better, but still feels a bit coarse. I've thought about using fewer cards to increase the texel density and may give that a shot.
Update : original hair textures on left, new on right. I reduced the total number of cards to bare minimum and increased texture size to 4096x2048. This made perfect use of space and the results are much nicer. Nevermind the colors that is just playing around.
8 march : Reworked textures so figured might as well start over clean with the blockout. I don't really like going back into a mess and trying to fix it -- usually faster to just start fresh. So here is a base volume layer and gonna start with a breakup layer and finally a detail layer later this wekeend. Should have this do finished in a few days if all goes well.
Well I think that's it for the hair. Kind of seems like it should take longer but I'm not sure I can do much to improve it. I might poke at the fuzzy bits on the neck just cause it looks a little too random, but... I think that's it basically.
Please share any critiques about the hair. Or anything. I'll take a look at some other peoples hair just to be sure.
(i do know about the back of the crown receiving a big blurry pattern -- that's just part of a mask I missed and will clean up)
Well that's just about it then for Durga. Gonna redo the embroidery on her sleeve because it's ugly and indistinct. After that start with the weapons, props, and she's missing a few rings for her fingers.
Well that wasn't quite that with Durga. I did a pass over all the textures as they felt a bit flat. A lot of dodge/burn mostly. Redid the blouse entirely.
Also started getting a bit more serious about the lighting as I wanted to go ahead and put this on artstation.
Tomorrow I'll start the chakram, then we'll have some swords, spears, bow's and arrows, a lotus flower.... enough shit that I should be qualified for a prop artist job if it comes out looking ok. Haha.
I'm pretty happy with Durga so far. Compared to the quality that was my
goal it is like a C+, but it's still a major improvement from my
previous works. It has simply been too complicated for me to redo things
as many times as I need, but I think with one or two more slightly less complex characters
after this I'll be where I want. Anyway, I'll do a full after action review after the action.
Should be just a few more weeks and this will be all wrapped up. I'm thinking about doing a stream for the weapons and props as it will be pretty simple and not require my full brain power to stay organized. Anybody who wants to pick up some tips for Maya modeling and such can join in (or teach me a thing or two.)
Chakram. I made it extra big and propelled by magic. Because it just seems silly that Durga would spin it around on her finger.
I did start a stream but even for very simple things like this I find it hard to concentrate if I'm broadcasting. I'm not really comfortable with my workflow enough -- I still need lots of slow experimentation and iteration but if I'm streaming it makes me feel too impatient for that. So no stream for now.
yeah... really nice to do some fast turn-around props at the end like this. Almost done with the sword already... getting itchy fingers for my next project.
Great work! You may want to lower the shoulders a tad in the pose, I'm thinking it might add something. You mentioned you used fibermesh for the hair, so its not hair cards?
damn, those shoulders are kind of shrugged a bit too much aren't they? I am actually changing the position of the arms a little bit right now so it's a good time to fix that.
the hair is hair cards. I just baked the maps from fibermesh. Rather than xGen which seems to be more popular. But even doing simple stuff in xGen is kind of complicated and it's really hard to troubleshoot when things don't go your way. It gives finer control and faster iteration than fibermesh, but fibermesh is easy and I already know how to use it. And I only needed very simple straight hair textures, so it worked fine.
Ah, so did you bake the fibre mesh onto a plane and then used that texture on the cards? Sword looks great! I like the detail on the handle! Are your skin textures final?
haha. It's got henna on it -- that's the red color. now that you've said that I don't think I can unsee it though. I think it should be darker, if it were realistic henna, but in most the artist depictions of Durga she has like bright red henna on her palms and i just thought that looked neat. But in most of my renders you can't really even notice it.
@NikhilR , that's right. Although baking is only required for the normal map. For the alpha, albedo, and AO, just render and export the document. Then the specular is just built from the AO in photoshop. Very fast and easy which is great for a beginner like me who needs to do lots of testing to find the best result.
I wouldn't say anything is final, though I didn't have anything more planned for the skin. If you guys think anything could be improved, please let me know.
Got some in-depth critique from one of my art heroes and made a lot of improvements based on that over the weekend. Basically all of the textures have been overhauled, the face has been completely rebuilt, and the presentation improved a bit as well.
Now I'll continue on with the extra arms and weapons. I'll be running a
Twitch stream for much of the process, which will be a good channel for
any noob modelers to get a sense for overall game asset production. I'll be making complete weapons and props in about 1-2 working
days, so if you have trouble with all that in-between stuff tutorials never show I can help you out. link :
Great presentation and posing! I like how well the sari turned out and top notch work on all the little detailing. I do recommend you render in unreal 4 realitime, using the digital human shader on the skin, it does subsurface far better than marmoset in my opinion.
I will for my next character, but this one is so complex I don't feel liike transferring everything over for Unreal. I had to spend half a day just reorganizing my project folders as it was getting out of hand.
Next character will be a bit simpler so I can focus more on material and sculpt quality and also get better with Unreal. I like the ease of working with Toolbag but probably until I get a job I should strictly work with ggame engines from here on out.
Lotus flower. Kind of looks like plastic -- have to look up some info on displaying plants. I have no clue. I did some SSS and small amount of translucency but I dunno, just feels weird.
Working on bow and arrow, but my brain is becoming very stupid. Probably time for a day off. Coincidentally, Sekiro just came out...
Hey Bigtime, you've got lots of intricate details going on! How much more do you plan to push the model? I see you've started this character in August and you set a timeline of 3-4 months. I think it's time to startup another character and incorporate all the work you've learned from this model.
I don't think it's good to sit on a model for this long, I mean this with only the best intentions. Cheers
She's got to have her weapons finished. You don't come this far and quit. Time line was just my estimate how long I'd think it would take.
Good thing is the wide variety of props I am making is essentially the same as making new models. Not like I am just tweaking the same shit over and over again. So plenty to be learned.
Golden Cobra Bow with golden arrows and also sword/axe hybrid. Kind of like the spork. Kind of rushed through the texturing but I'm low energy today.
Originally I was gonna do a realistic ancient Hindu bow design, but didn't really fit, I felt.
Most of these props I just block model and texture. Little to no normal map baking.
Tomorrow gonna replace the Lotus with a conch. There are many interpretattions of Durga and many weapons, so I'm gonna give myself a break and do an eight arm version and nix the Lotus for the Conch. This way I don't have to fuss with rendering flower petals correctly.
Then I'll do the magic arm ends FX. I'm thinking smoke and/or fire, but it could be a sun shaped ball of light or something like that. Also I'll clean up the ugly finger curls.
Nice! love all the different weapons! Is that henna on her palm? since it looks a lot more red like paint. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henna And given the dominant warm colors of the model, I would go low on the yellow lighting. The background color works very well, so perhaps the lighting can be more white to light blue.
Well, the real reason it took so long is because I'm never just making something the first way I can think, I usually try two or three different ways. Although this is portfolio project I am still a beginner in training so I always try and find the simplest way to create something rather than just any way.
My first hunch was dynamesh sculpt and then retopo, which mostly worked but I was having trouble keeping the spiral nice and clean looking while also getting consistent curvature down the spine. So it seemed like block modeling would be better suited, but trying to build topology for that shape from scratch wasn't so easy. Zbrush has a good primitive called spiral which takes care of a lot of the work, but still going from there seemed more difficult than necessary.
So finally I just went back with the dynamesh sculpt, but allowed it to be rough and lumpy, then retopo'd in maya and finished out the shape by subdividing in zbrush and working the subD levels. Pretty standard workflow I usually end up doing for most things. Get the shape quickly with dyanmesh or a base model, retopo, refine with subD levels.
Basically gonna call it here for Durga. This isn't final presentation but I'm not gonna do any more with her model or textures. Only thing is to figure some VFX to blend the ends of the floaty arms. That's next week, along with improvements on Tiger. Final scene should be posted by next Friday or a few work days later.
I changed the weapon layout to something a little more symmetrically pleasing, I think. This meant dropping the chakram but I think it's worthwhile.
Lesson learned... with this many hands, I should have kept them in a-pose, made a rig, set some basic positions as set-driven keys, and then duped them around. Tweaking all the fingers was a pain and kind of sloppy to do without a rig. Live and learn.
I think the hands look pretty great as they are. Good idea to have the lance in her main hands, really helps with the composition. One thought I had was perhaps having more of the multiple arms showing, meaning upto a little above the elbow so they can extend outwards a bit and you can bend them at the elbow.
Haven't repositioned Durga's arms yet. Tried some hacky fake VFX for her arms but I dunno... may be best just to only have like one back shot and just photoshop some fire or smoke on the ends. Not really looking to dive into VFX, I just want a nice presentation.
Been updating the tiger. I wanted a little more secondary forms, better shapes, better anatomy, and also make a second pose for the face. Can't make a tiger without a fearsome tiger snarl.
Also gonna redo the rest of the tiger pipeline from here. I stupidly put a UV seam down the center of the tigers face, thinking it wouldn't be any issue -- and typically I don't think it would -- but because of the way I had to bake my fur in many chunks and then stitch all those normal maps together, it was really hard to hide that seam. If lights direct on it, it's fine, but from certain grazing angles it is very obvious. Obviously a no-go for a game asset.
That kind of shit I can cover up in a static portfolio render, but I don't like to make that a habit so I'm just gonna do it better.
Just got the mouth pieces and claws left to texture, then I'll do fur cards. Gonna do a lot more fur cards this time around. I want to get some nice chunky fur on the neck and chest, and also the pretty curved furs on the front of the legs. The challenge is blending and matching colors, because the tiger body textures are a range of colors, so if you just have like three different colored alpha cards it's hard to blend. At the same time, I don't want like five textures just for the cards -- well, we'll just see what can be done.
So the initial Tiger took me 3 months to complete. With 2.0, I have rebuilt everything (except I started from same base mesh) in 3 days. Haha, really makes a difference when you know what the hell you are doing. I also improved efficiency in the materials. Went from four 4k materials to one 4k and one 2k, so basically cut the materials in half.
I also managed to do the baking in one clean swoop, rather than exporting chunks of fur at a time. This makes my fur workflow much more viable for future projects. Not good to work in a way that makes revisions a PITA, so glad I was able to find a better way there.
Should have tiger done by end of the week, then next week I can pose her and make the final presentation and be done with this shit. Move onto something new.
Compromised a bit on tiger design... thing about doing fur cards all
over is then you really got to do them all over, and having 200k tri's
of fur cards I think really isn't feasible for an animated character. So
I did similar to before, just in select spots for the silhouette. But
it's still pretty realistic for the Bengal tiger, which has fur almost
as short as a lions.
I matched colors by drawing the fur cards onto the live mesh with quad draw, then baked the albedo onto the cards. Took me a lot of experimentation and fussing before I realized I could do that.
I've beefed her up as well. I think sometimes you got to exaggerate a bit, as we are reducing a majestic creature to a small thing on a screen. If you saw a tiger up close in real life -- no question about the size and power. But seems like you can't get that sense digitally without some exaggeration. I dunno, just a hunch I get.
Only things left to do is VFX for the floaty arms, and a floor piece. Now thaht I uploaded though I think my tiger is crosseyed a little.
Thanks everybody whose taken the time to follow along, share advice/critiques/encouragement. Really means a lot. If you take more than a moment to glance at somebodies work on here, it can be a big boost to their confidence and motivation to offer them compliment and advice. Say whatever you want about tough-guyisms, but sometimes an artist needs that. Especially when they are new and very uncertain about what they are doing. Not a matter of stroking ego's -- just helping carry each other to the finish line.
It's
not perfect nor quite what I wanted it to be, but it's pretty cool and
I'm proud to share it anyhow. Over 2,000 hours went into this scene.
If
you enjoyed or learned anything following along, please visit my
artstation and push those special buttons. It will help up the visibility which
may help recruiters find my work. I'll be applying to jobs now that I
have something decent in my portfolio, so you'll be helping me in a big
way if you do that (and if you scratch my back, I'm happy to scratch
yours): Full presentation at Artstation HERE
Maybe I'll make a proper after action review later. For now, I'll just say that my next project -- which I've already begun -- is going to be another Hindu deity, however this time much less complicated. The focus will be on anatomy and better material definitions -- less stuff so the focus can go into overall higher quality.
If it's your first time doing something, multiply time estimate by three. I've said it before, and again it has rung true. I estimated 3-4 months, took me 9.
Not working directly from concept is big challenge. If you design as you go, prepare to do things over many times.
Always prepare for flexibility in future. Don't operate on any hunches. Save everything, file everything, assume you'll need it again and need it fast.
On complex project, daily cleanup is important. Don't let your project folders get out of hand, it will weigh heavy on your day to day and cause burnout.
Initial plan called for VFX on the extra arms, but couldn't find a good solution. So had to change the way I presented. Kind of lame, so just be sure to scope things out more carefully. Under-promise, over-deliver.
Explore your programs. I discovered so many nice, time saving tools inside Maya. Things I used to go to zbrush for I discovered can be done better inside Maya.
Zen out, enjoy your work. The magic happens in the tedium. Don't try to avoid it.
Self critiques --
BIG --
For all the time I put into Durga, her overall presentation leaves me a bit underwhelmed. I wanted an A+ like the artists I strive to match, but I only reached C+.
Tiger is strong, but can still be improved. A focused study on single animal will help.
SMALL ---
Durga's face is slightly off, I think stemming from eye area.
Sari reads a bit underwhelming. More subtle detail in the normal map may have helped it pop a bit more. One suggestion I got was to make it read more like cloth, to give strong contrast with all the metallics. That probably would have helped. But dressing Durga in anything other than silk simply is a no-go. Maybe not sacrilege, but close.
Hair can be better overall. Didn't warrant a ton of time as it's not very prevalent, but in 2019 all character hair should be awesome.
Replies
Eyebrows look uneven and "caked," like the mascara was applied sloppily.
You mentioned you used fibermesh for the hair, so its not hair cards?
Sword looks great! I like the detail on the handle!
Are your skin textures final?
I like how well the sari turned out and top notch work on all the little detailing.
I do recommend you render in unreal 4 realitime, using the digital human shader on the skin, it does subsurface far better than marmoset in my opinion.
I don't think it's good to sit on a model for this long, I mean this with only the best intentions. Cheers
Is that henna on her palm? since it looks a lot more red like paint.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henna
And given the dominant warm colors of the model, I would go low on the yellow lighting. The background color works very well, so perhaps the lighting can be more white to light blue.
Did you make the conch in 3ds max, might be easier to sculpt it in zbrush.
One thought I had was perhaps having more of the multiple arms showing, meaning upto a little above the elbow so they can extend outwards a bit and you can bend them at the elbow.
I also managed to do the baking in one clean swoop, rather than exporting chunks of fur at a time. This makes my fur workflow much more viable for future projects. Not good to work in a way that makes revisions a PITA, so glad I was able to find a better way there.