[WIP] Morrigan Aensland redesign (High Poly and Low Poly)
polycounter lvl 4
Hello everyone!
I'm doing a full 3D character for a final project for the university, and I would like to share some of the work in progress. I spend the most part of my time doing environment art, so I'm not used to sculpt anatomy as you will se here... For this project I decided to take for my reference a concept of the artist Zeronis because I love his artstyle. The one I chose is a Morrigan Aensland redesign he posted recently on Twitter.
My goal is to make the highpoly version in Zbrush, then the retopology and paint the character. If I have some extra time I would like to make the rig and pose her also.
Usually when I work I save a lot of copies just in case, so I'll upload every step done since the beginning to the final result.
Excuse my poor English please!! And all the feedback / critique is welcome!
Concept art reference for the project, from Zeronis
HIGH POLY
I started making the base proportions of the body, since the character is not realistic. Then, after a long anatomy study, tried to make the model with proper woman anatomy. And finally, adding some resolution and fixing some of the parts of the body and the clothes.
I started with a basemesh sculpting the basic proportions, keeping the model low in resolution, focusing on the legs to body ratio.
Next, I added some definition and started to polish some parts that were not so good, like the arms length or the hip width. I also put the feet in position for the shoes.
Once here, I started to work on the head. I'm really bad at making faces, they are my worst enemy. I started trying to make the face realistic, but without good references it was an error. Every time I worked on the face it looked more alienated and not realistic at all...
After adding more resolution and some more work, it looked like this. I was not happy with the result, but I decided to leave it like this and work more on the body anatomy.
After adding some more resolution, I kept working on the anatomy of the body, defining the neck, arms, knees and the front and back of the torso.
More head work. Every time I worked on the head it seemed worse for me... I was trying to get a realistic result but I wasn't able to get a decent result.
After a break and some feedback from my teacher, I tried to find some more stylish references and start over the face. I found Olya Anufrieva (https://www.artstation.com/he77ga), a stylish character artist, and she is awesome. At the moment I saw that faces, I decided to aim in that direction. I took some character faces to be my references and I started to sculpt the new face.
I liked the way this looked, so much better than the last try... I kept it and started to polish the body anatomy adding some more resolution.
Once at this point, I had worked on all the parts of the body to look nice. The hands are a nightmare. I spend a lot of time but they are maybe one of the hardest parts of the body to sculpt. The proportions looked cute and accurate, and I was ready to stop working on the anatomy and start with the clothes and the wings.
Wings done! I tried using a basemesh, but then discovered a technique where you draw a mask in a plane and then extract it, and you have the base shape very easy and fast.
Using masks and extracts, I started with the arms protectors, the boots and the base part of the suit. Also relaxed the surface to hide a bit the anatomy. (After all the work inverted on that... )
Clothes done!! After one extract more, all the clothes were done. A lot of fixing was required to make the edges of the clothes smooth and the shapes clear. It was hard making the back part, because you don't see it in the concept, so I had to improvise some cloth design. Next step, the hair.
Started with a mesh, because I've never done hair in Zbrush, and I didn't know if it was better to make planes, a full geometry or use hair brushes... But since the hair in the concept is so smooth I decided to go with geometry.
Hair done! I used the damStandard and the move Brush to give detail and form to the hair. Now I only have to make the neck detail I've forgot and fix some cloth details to leave everything smooth.
FINAL RESULT
Being this my first full 3D character done I'm really happy with the final result. I'm sure that there's a lot of things to improve, but the deadline is soon and time is running out. I would like to add some micro-detail but I guess it will have to be in the future.
Next step: Low Poly + Color! I'll be updating the thread with the steps of the retopology.
Thanks for reading up to here, be sure to leave feedback / critique / opinion if you want, it would make me very happy
.
I'm doing a full 3D character for a final project for the university, and I would like to share some of the work in progress. I spend the most part of my time doing environment art, so I'm not used to sculpt anatomy as you will se here... For this project I decided to take for my reference a concept of the artist Zeronis because I love his artstyle. The one I chose is a Morrigan Aensland redesign he posted recently on Twitter.
My goal is to make the highpoly version in Zbrush, then the retopology and paint the character. If I have some extra time I would like to make the rig and pose her also.
Usually when I work I save a lot of copies just in case, so I'll upload every step done since the beginning to the final result.
Excuse my poor English please!! And all the feedback / critique is welcome!
Concept art reference for the project, from Zeronis
HIGH POLY
I started making the base proportions of the body, since the character is not realistic. Then, after a long anatomy study, tried to make the model with proper woman anatomy. And finally, adding some resolution and fixing some of the parts of the body and the clothes.
I started with a basemesh sculpting the basic proportions, keeping the model low in resolution, focusing on the legs to body ratio.
Next, I added some definition and started to polish some parts that were not so good, like the arms length or the hip width. I also put the feet in position for the shoes.
Once here, I started to work on the head. I'm really bad at making faces, they are my worst enemy. I started trying to make the face realistic, but without good references it was an error. Every time I worked on the face it looked more alienated and not realistic at all...
After adding more resolution and some more work, it looked like this. I was not happy with the result, but I decided to leave it like this and work more on the body anatomy.
After adding some more resolution, I kept working on the anatomy of the body, defining the neck, arms, knees and the front and back of the torso.
More head work. Every time I worked on the head it seemed worse for me... I was trying to get a realistic result but I wasn't able to get a decent result.
After a break and some feedback from my teacher, I tried to find some more stylish references and start over the face. I found Olya Anufrieva (https://www.artstation.com/he77ga), a stylish character artist, and she is awesome. At the moment I saw that faces, I decided to aim in that direction. I took some character faces to be my references and I started to sculpt the new face.
I liked the way this looked, so much better than the last try... I kept it and started to polish the body anatomy adding some more resolution.
Once at this point, I had worked on all the parts of the body to look nice. The hands are a nightmare. I spend a lot of time but they are maybe one of the hardest parts of the body to sculpt. The proportions looked cute and accurate, and I was ready to stop working on the anatomy and start with the clothes and the wings.
Wings done! I tried using a basemesh, but then discovered a technique where you draw a mask in a plane and then extract it, and you have the base shape very easy and fast.
Using masks and extracts, I started with the arms protectors, the boots and the base part of the suit. Also relaxed the surface to hide a bit the anatomy. (After all the work inverted on that... )
Clothes done!! After one extract more, all the clothes were done. A lot of fixing was required to make the edges of the clothes smooth and the shapes clear. It was hard making the back part, because you don't see it in the concept, so I had to improvise some cloth design. Next step, the hair.
Started with a mesh, because I've never done hair in Zbrush, and I didn't know if it was better to make planes, a full geometry or use hair brushes... But since the hair in the concept is so smooth I decided to go with geometry.
Hair done! I used the damStandard and the move Brush to give detail and form to the hair. Now I only have to make the neck detail I've forgot and fix some cloth details to leave everything smooth.
FINAL RESULT
Being this my first full 3D character done I'm really happy with the final result. I'm sure that there's a lot of things to improve, but the deadline is soon and time is running out. I would like to add some micro-detail but I guess it will have to be in the future.
Next step: Low Poly + Color! I'll be updating the thread with the steps of the retopology.
Thanks for reading up to here, be sure to leave feedback / critique / opinion if you want, it would make me very happy
.
Replies
LOW POLY
I've started doing the face retopology. I'm using a really good reference to get a good face topology loops:
So far I have all the head done after a lot of work and fixing. Next step are the head wings!
Tried to make all the important loops in the face thinking in an animation point of view. Not really sure if I should get some more resolution on the face, currently it's on 1400 tris for all the head.
I'm finally done with the arms, it's been hard to adapt the retopology to the arm / hand protector and I have done a lot of strange loops... It's hard to get the perfect topology when you have to fit some cloth.
Also my polycount limit for the task is 60K tris, really high for a character but generous for my first time, so I'm giving to some places extra loops to get a smoother result.
Later I will fix some parts of the geometry and remove some triangles I had left behind, the priority now is to finish all the character.
Feedback is always welcome!!
Legs and torso are done! It's been tricky but I have solved all the problems the form has given to me. The overall polycount for the character (big wings left) is arround 15K tris, a lot less than I expected to have. Maybe once imported to max I'll optimize some zones to try to get arround 12K...
Very soon I'll post the full character retopology and will start with the UVs and the painting.