[WIP] Elrend - Cursed Boy

Chris Bruin

Hi all, I'm back with another character after a bit of a break since my last character. 

The character is based off of Andrew Domachowski's concept work: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/GrJ34
I am deviating from the concept a bit, I am going to make his face that of a normal boy, instead of the pushed proportions in the concept. Just my personal preference in the kind of work I like doing Will be rendering in Vray, and will also do a spinoff for Unreal 4, seeing how far I can push myself. Rendering children/young people in CG always looks weird, so it's going to be a good challenge.

I will be streaming my entire process on Twitch, so feel free to follow me on there and pop in while I'm working You can also check out the videos from today to see how I started the character.

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Latest Progress - Vray Render Tests

bkost

Nice start! Your block in looks decent, but really focus on your primary forms and large shapes. The proportions look off and he looks more like a young adult than a kid. Double check his height and work from there, I believe it's mostly in the legs being a little too long. Cheers

Chris Bruin

Moved the first post down here to keep the thread organized (bkost's post is referencing these images)

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I started today, just got the blockout completed, and worked out the face.

Chris Bruin

Spent the week on the face redoing proportions based on Snyders 1977 anthropometry data http://mreed.umtri.umich.edu/mreed/downloads/anthro/child/Snyder_1977_Child.pdf, this is a fantastic resource I found, since anatomy reference for young people is almost non-existent.

Here's where I'm at with the head now. The small specular highlight flecks around the skin will get resolved in the final render, more render time is needed. Will probably tone down the blemishes on the skin, since he's pretty young, but he's also a bit worn too. Using a skin shader based on Digital Emily's shader.

Just using an HDRI from the Marmoset Iceland pack.


And with a single area light for the face

Chris Bruin

Did more work on the body, I have redesigned some elements of the vest, the hood into its own thing with a proper gambeson on top of that.
Polypainted preview

Will color match the face and arm later, since the arm just has a flat polypaint on it.

bkost

Hey Chris, you're making great progress on the clothing! Your skill in MD is inspiring. So how much is it MD vs. sculpt?

This character is extremely interesting and it looks like you're doing the concept justice, if only he had a backstory to explore!
This may be the direction you're headed towards, but I think the head is too 'pudgy' and could be more triangular. He also looks like a teenager instead of a young boy. Right now it's a chubby older version of the concept piece.

For further critique, posting a horizontal lineup of images is much easier to digest than scrolling. Cheers

Chris Bruin

bkost said:

Hey Chris, you're making great progress on the clothing! Your skill in MD is inspiring. So how much is it MD vs. sculpt?

This character is extremely interesting and it looks like you're doing the concept justice, if only he had a backstory to explore!
This may be the direction you're headed towards, but I think the head is too 'pudgy' and could be more triangular. He also looks like a teenager instead of a young boy. Right now it's a chubby older version of the concept piece.

For further critique, posting a horizontal lineup of images is much easier to digest than scrolling. Cheers

Not much remains from the MD sim anymore, I did a full sculpt pass over mostly everything. The only callouts I can give the sim are the general padding sections on the chest and back of the gambeson, and the upper part of the left leg above the ropes. Everything else was either sculpted, resulpted, or scanned with a sculpt pass.

I'll definitely be revisiting the head, I don't think it's true enough to the concept, I did a rough paint over with my head and the concept, and it needs some love, as you can see:

Color tones will also need some serious adjusting to better match the paleness of the concept. I'll tweak this later on, I need to move onto the body texturing and lookdev in the next week or so. 

Here's this weeks progress update, almost done with the sculpt, unless if anyone has feedback

(If you cant zoom in, right click and open in a new tab for the full resolution)


Knife detailing:


Still have to make the amulet too!

Wendy de Boer

Really nice costume work so far! I think you should tone down on the skin texture and coloration, as it's making him look way older than he should. Preteens have very smooth, near perfect skin.

Chris Bruin

Wendy de Boer said:

Really nice costume work so far! I think you should tone down on the skin texture and coloration, as it's making him look way older than he should. Preteens have very smooth, near perfect skin.

I'll be going back to the face sculpt for sure, same with the albedo map, I'm not totally happy with his proportions, I think he needs to look a tad more like the concept.

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Todays update, done the body model, unless if anyone has last minute feedback!
Moving on to lowpoly for the body, should be done this week, then straight to texturing.

Uncompressed and full sized images
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/0yx3qsh7tfkhbnq/AADJOn3evSYcxVy35ADAy7_Ca?dl=0



Turnaround (full res on the dropbox)

Chris Bruin

First pass of the texturing has been started. Still have to work on both of the arms, just have a super rough first pass of the dragon arm at this point, looking for ideas if you've got em  

Have yet to start on the scales on the face, some ropes, the metal bits around the body, and amulet and knife. Will adjust the skin based on previous feedback, but will do this closer to render time to make sure it plays nicely with the lighting. Everything rendered in the Substance Painter viewport.

Chris Bruin

Big update time! Been a while since I posted anything, been busy dealing with my indie game project which took up some time.

Spent a week or so increasing my knowledge of Vray skin shading and trying to push the quality as far as I can. I still have more work to do on the face, notably on the integration of the eyes, but this is where I am at right now. Single spotlight on the face. I will also be adding an additional dirt pass on the face. Everything below (asides from the hair) is rendered in Vray.


The eyes, especially the caruncle, aren't integrating particularly well. I have an SSS ID setup for each eye with their respective caruncle, so it should blur the two objects together in the SSS pass, but it's not really doing much... Any thoughts on how I can integrate these together better?


This is what the entire body looks like in context with the head currently.
I NEED HELP: I am unable to render out larger images in Vray, my machine is running out of memory during the render. If anyone knows how to render out large images and could help me trouble shoot, that would be incredible!
Here you can see my Vray Forum post detailing my technical issues. https://forums.chaosgroup.com/forum/v-ray-for-maya-forums/v-ray-for-maya-problems/1034838-pc-is-hard-locking-when-rendering-semi-large-ish-resolution-images



And I also have started the first pass of xgen hair tonight, the hair will take me about a week to complete. 




This is the amulet


It casts a pretty neat caustic effect onto surrounding surfaces


Some other shader look dev I figured people might want to see.

bkost

Hey Chris,

Nice update! The clothing and rock arm are looking sweet. The biggest issue that stands out to me is the Face SSS, you need to make a translucency map. It looks like now you have it applied to the entire face which is incorrect. Thinner parts of the face/cartilage receive more SSS than other areas.

Also the rocky patch on his face is not sitting well, it needs an AO pass and some texturing on the face to help set it in. The skin is too clean where the rock patch is attached. How would it fuse to the skin? This reminds me a lot of greyscale from GoT. You can find some great reference of it from the show. Seems like this is where the concept artist got the inspiration.