Cyberpunk Baroque Bust

Alemja

Hello everyone! I'm ready to shake off some rust and make a new thing! My goal for this project is to tackle some things I've never done before like a realistic likeness, diving into more scifi and really trying to improve my presentations with better lighting. I wanna try and mix cyberpunk with some baroque designs, as I think it'd be fun and differnt.

So far I've got a basic blockout and trying to get general likeness and anatomy.

I'm thinking about leaving the back open to have exposed cybernetics, something like the live action ghost in the shell I think. Need to do a bit more concepting for that.

Anatomy so far

Here are some lighting tests, some of my older work is really timid with the lighting so I want to try and puch things a bit.

Face is referenced off of the model Godrey Gao, unfortunately I could fine only 1 image of him clean shaven, but I'm still gonna work with it. I might add stubble on my model later, undecided right now.

Crits and comments are always appreciated!

Alemja

Figuring out the concept, I think I have shapes that I want, though colors could change. One of the ideas I'm into right now is anywhere you would see lace on a baroque styled jacket, it would be a clear pleated plastic instead to give it a more modern feel.

bkost

Hi Alexandra, I'm loving these two different art worlds and the idea of smashing them together. You have some interesting shapes going on, I'm excited to see the rest. Adding some synthetic cyborg attachments on the face could be fun. The Cyberpunk 2077 gameplay trailer can offer some inspiration! 

@Alemja

Alemja

@bkost Thanks! Definitely think you're right on the face cybernetics as I was updating the outfit blockout I was thinking how they aren't as visible as I would like. I'll need to figure out the best way to approach that! I think I'm going to have to find ways to get some of the fun curly designs into the cybernetics.

Updated the blockout to fit the new concept, I think it's feeling much better

Alemja

Have the cybernetics blocked out! I think bringing them to the face head really helped

Alemja

Chipping away slowly but surely! I've been working on getting good geometry for all of the parts, I generally like to front-load a lot of work so I can hopefully do less retopo later, it will be mostly a deconstruction of the base meshes.

I took my test lighting and checked to see how it worked with properly shaped pleated plastic. There will be some future tweaking but I'm liking the results so far!

Here is the modeling so far in Max, the big shapes have been worked out and I'm going to start working on smaller details soon. My plan is to give the gold cybernetics etched baroque designs and the gold buckles on the front and sleeves will also have baroque designs.

As always comments and crits welcome!

Alemja

Face progress! No asymmetry yet

A gif with some earlier versions, definitely noticed some quirks I have

Alemja

Updates, getting more comfortable with asymmetry, I got a suggestion to slim him down a bit based on the build of the model I'm using for reference, I think it's working much better

Some gifs:

Comments and crits always appreciated!

Alemja

Detailing update, mostly worked on the leather and the decals on the gold plating

Closeups:

Alemja

Initial hair test, some spottiness and volume I need to work out more. I really enjoy making curly hair even though it makes it much harder

Using https://gumroad.com/l/hairtg-hairclumptool and getting my feet wet with Substance Designer, working pretty well overall

Alemja

Hair round 2, now with more floof. Need to add smaller detail strands but I think the overall shape is just about there

bkost

Hey Alemja, nice start with the hair work. I've been eyeing that HairTG tool, what are your thoughts on it? I'm using Xgen to generate textures atm, but it'd be nice to build all the maps at once without the hassle of xgen

I'd love to see your diffuse texture sheet! You've got some good break up going on, I believe the weakest view is from the front. Be careful with bending lowpoly cards, right now it looks like a few cards could use some more loops to give the hair texture a smoother flow. 

Also, how are you laying these cards? Hand placed or using splines? Cheers

Alemja

@bkost Hey apologies for not seeing your response earlier! I really enjoy the HairTG tool, I had no Substance designer experience and I felt like it was fairly easy to mess around with, the hair tile generator requires a little more effort but it's not too bad. The tool makes it pretty simple to mess around with all of the hair strands and you get to see the feedback of what you're doing pretty quickly, almost instantly in some cases. Then you just export and if your textures are all hooked up it's an instant update. If you've been meaning to get into Substance Designer like I have it's a good way to get your feet wet and get an understanding of the interface.

You're right about some areas having a little more angularity, I need to touch up those a little more. When I do a fly-away pass I'll touch up those areas. The diffuse is just the gradient mask that came from the tool, the color was adjusted in marmoset and some of the extra color is from specular highlights and lighting. Since he has darker hair I can get away with that method a little more.

For laying out the hair cards, I actually first started with tubes. I extracted some polygons from his head with the hope that I could get the roots at about the right closeness. The tubes where bent around and stuff into the basic shape, then for the unwrap half of the tube uses 1 dense hair strand and the other half uses another (split lengthwise) so that way about halfway along the tube I could split it and kinda wrap it around itself. The second layer of hair was extracted from the first and pushed out using max's push modifier. After that it was just a lot of manual tweaking, trying to fix up areas where cards were obviously cutting into each-other, smoothing out some polygonal areas (still needs more work as you noted)

Here is a single strand of the base layer isolated in case that didn't make sense:

If I was to do this again, I would probably make the tubes less round and more like a squished rectangle. While this was good for some areas that required large volume, on the sides that required shorter strands or were closer to the head it required a lot of nudging to stop parts from cutting into each-other terribly.

Let me know if you have any other questions!

I messed around with the shader of the hair because I was getting some feedback on how the specular was kinda flat. I think it's looking better, lighting was definitely an issue as well. Before I got to the fly-aways I decided tackle all of the facial hair elements, I think it still needs some more work but I should see how it interacts with the skin texture first since I can add subtle and such to help with blending. I'm thinking I might have to re-do the eyelashes too, I don't think they are working as well as they could be right now. Even so I'd be interested to hear some thoughts especially is some parts seem a little too repetitive!

Alemja

Finally have some bakes for low poly model!

Wires:

I haven't touched the hair since the last update, so that is going to need some more tweaks, but even still I'm happy I'm getting close to the end!

JohnnyH

The hair is looking super great!

Alemja

So I put my nose to the grind and wound up finishing it, really happy with how it turned out! You can also see it on ArtStation https://www.artstation.com/artwork/VdWae5

FInal Neon renders:

More neutral lighting to better view the materials:

slosh

Great finish Alexandra!  This really came out nice.  You should be proud!

gurtperk

Great to see the progress on this, it came out wonderful!

Alemja

@slosh Thank you so much! And thank you for your help along the way, it means a lot!

@gurtperk Thanks!

MMKH

Very nice work

Evid

Wow great work!

NeusEV

It looks really nice! Great work! Really cool clothes btw

Alemja

@MMKH Thanks!

@Evid Thank you!

@NeusEV Thanks! I'm really happy with how the clothing design worked out!

Isunoj

Great work Alexandra!