Sketchbook: Wil Hromek

wHromek

Hello! I am a new member and I wanted to start a sketchbook thread in order to get feedback on my work.

This is my most recent sculpt:

For the body, I used images of Inca mummies and Otzi the iceman, and for the face I used sculpts like this, this and this as reference without trying to copy any one piece directly. I am not entirely satisfied with the current direction this sculpt is heading, and I wanted to get feedback before I moved too much farther.

wHromek

Additionally, this is my most recent face sculpt from about two months ago:

For this sculpt I used this photograph as my main reference.
Here is another recent sculpt I made for an Artstation contest:

I did not use any photographs or major reference images when sculpting this face (as it was intended to be painted over later), but I feel it is important to include for critique purposes as it is the only sculpt I've textured.

All these sculpts are created and rendered in zBrush, unless otherwise noted.

wHromek

Over the last month, I've been taking a step back from sculpting to develop a better understanding of hard-surface modeling and rendering. Here is a Marmoset Toolbag render of a suit of armor I made. It's around 30k tris, and still needs some refinement but it was a good exercise in learning to make a more game-ready model.

wHromek

So, for September I've decided to create a character in order to build my portfolio and teach myself Substance painter. After looking at countless troll/ogre sculpts, I've decided to make a female one to stand out a little. Here's a quick Zbrush render of my current work (with a female basemesh included for size/proportion comparison). I've begun by blocking in the muscle and proportions while maintaining accuracy and realism.

Once I've reached a point where I think the base sculpt is ready, I'll move this character's progress over to the 3D Artwork section.

wHromek

Here is today's improvement over yesterday's sculpt. I decided to focus on better mapping out the muscle forms in order to make sure I had enough mass & definition for the final model. I hope to finish the muscle blockout and add in skin & fat layers by the end of the week so I can move on to the face and detail modeling.

wHromek

Since last week I've smoothed out and finalized the muscle forms and overall silhouette of my character. In order to get a better topography to make the final sculpt easier, I decided to retopologize:

It's probably too early to do at this current stage, but following through with it was a good learning experience.

In a similar vein, I've also began to work on the character's overall costume. Since this character is supposed to be a cross between the classic sword-and-sorcery style heroine and a God of War-style giant, she's not going to wear much. Therefore, it was important to iterate as much as possible on the few things she will wear:

I hope to finish her costume blockout over the next few days.

wHromek

In order to teach myself how to use Substance painter, I modeled a club-like weapon for my character. It was a great way to learn Substance Painter, and it helped me get a better grasp on how to best create UVs for more complicated objects.
Here is a quick Marmoset render:

Additional render with wireframe (~1,600 triangles):

wHromek

Only a small update, here's the final design layout for my character:

These last week I've been working my way through learning zModeler and how to lay out cleaner geometry for Zbrush.

wHromek

Another update on my character project:
I've remodeled a lot of my initial blockout in order to get better topology, but I feel like progress has been good. I threw on some test colors to make sure the design was balanced. I will most likely do another color pass once the final topology is in place.

wHromek

Small update on the chest armor:

I think I'm doing some of my modeling inefficiently. I'll try to avoid that while refining the other parts of this character.

wHromek

Another small update on the waist armor:

I've also began adding more little details like these supplies to better ground the character in reality.

wHromek

Another small update:

I figured out how to create bandages/wrappings in zBrush so I've began blocking those out for the final hipoly model. I also used some of the feeback on my last weapon to create a new flail weapon as a prop for my final scene.

wHromek

Today I learned how to use the Nanomesh function in zBrush:


I also began another character project to take advantage of this. I'm trying to decide on whether I should my previous character's armor to better utilize this sort of lamellar armor or if I should work on this new character instead.

wHromek

Another small update:

I'm moving back and forth between my new character and my old one to make sure armor pieces and props scale correctly between the two. Here is a quick mockup of the scale difference between the two.

wHromek

Another small update:

Further refining the basemesh and blocking out the weapon props for this guy. The nanomesh is giving me some trouble, but I'm making much better progress so I'm pleased.

wHromek

Decided to spend this week on refining the mask and adding a few final touches to the basemesh.

wHromek

Redid the mask, fixed the base meshes of the props. Started experimenting with asymmetrical layout.

wHromek

This character is coming along very well. I'm pleased with the current blockout, and plan on finalizing it by the end of the week.

wHromek

Today, I made a mace:

I think I've made these models in such a way that baking detail may become a headache later down the line, but I'm glad I caught the issue early.

wHromek

Happy Halloween! I decided to take a break from modeling yesterday to step back and plan out how I'm going to proceed with my character. This is my first realtime character project using zBrush, Substance and Marmoset so I wanted to make sure I didn't get overwhelmed.

During the weeks of November I hope to fully finish the sculpting portion of this character. In order to make good progress I've divided up my character into "parts" that I can focus on one at a time. Here is a breakdown of the different "parts" of my character:



Additionally, I have begun working out the specific textures I'll need. In order to figure out what details I actually need to sculpt and which details I can leave to texturing, I've created this material breakdown:


I have also started a thread in the 3D Showcase & Critique forum in order to get feedback on my progress.

wHromek

I completed a prop this week for a future project: a human brain

Creating this prop was a good learning experience in retopology and texture baking. It is also visible on my Artstation.

wHromek

Been working on graduate classes & personal projects during the quarantine. I wanted to get a better grasp on PBR rendering/Marmoset Toolbag before jumping to another huge project

The bottom four spheres are materials I've made in Substance Designer compared to four of Marmoset's default materials. I think mine need a little more work until I'm satisfied.

wHromek

Here's another texture I've been working on for a new character project:

This eyeball was created entirely within Substance Designer using a Spec/Gloss workflow.

wHromek

Here's a small showcase of the various assets I've been working on. I hope to finish both my current armor project and a small scene to show off everything in by the end of summer.

wHromek

Lighting experiment with some of the assets I created.

wHromek

Modeled an estoc for a future project:

DavidCruz

 start a sketchbook thread in order to get feedback on my work.

Real cool, i think you are about ready to make a demo game, out of these works, they look like they would all go well together so i'd say why not? crazy challenge to take on but you got an arena looking environment 2 posts back, give it a go.
Maybe continue this theme and work your way out into some sort of game.  I'd say more but then i am basically making it with you, but i can see some cool thing. 
Work looks good for what it is, otherwise.

wHromek

Thanks @DavidCruz! I've thought about making a game, but it's too daunting of a task for me at the moment .
Here's a small preview of my current project for October:

wHromek

Here's another small update, with a rough hair blockout/emissive map blockout:

wHromek

Another small update. I downsized the textures, added some colorID information and finished the arms and legs:

I still want to push the hair texture further, and fix some of the values on the armor set to add better visual contrast.

wHromek

Here's a weapon I'm making as part of my November-December project:


The current polycount is around 3.5k triangles. I'm trying to push myself further with higher-poly models, but this one still has a few baking and normal errors.

wHromek

Here's a Marmoset render of some materials I'm working on for a future project. I'm just posting them here in case anyone can give me advice on making these look a little more realistic. I'm pretty happy with them so far, though.

wHromek

After a bit of tweaking, I decided to put these materials on my Artstation

wHromek

Happy New Year! Seems like I've got my work cut out for me. Here's a small thing I've been working on during the holidays:

I sculpted the initial forms in zBrush, then used Substance Designer to add more details and create a trimsheet out of my sculpts. Hopefully I can use this practice on my next project.

wHromek

Here's another material I've been working on for a future project:

I've been trying to replicate the parallax effect seen in this thread, but I haven't been able to wrap my head around it. I think the base textures of this material could use more work too, as right now it looks less like wool and more like a dirty towel. Just need to keep trying!

Eric Chadwick

Hey these are looking great. One thing that helps velvets look more realistic is to use a normal map to bend the microfibers. If you make a grayscale texture of hand-smudges, you can flip/rotate the red/green channels in different directions, this will make a kind of "bend" normal map, which works pretty well for velvet.

A recent example. I worked on the materials for this model, to showcase real-time sheen.

wHromek

Thanks for the tip, @Eric Chadwick ! I downloaded the normal map from the model you provided and applied it to my velvet material as a test:

There's definitely an improvement with the additional normal map. I'm going to try building my own during my next pass on this material.

Eric Chadwick

Looking good. Might want to try tiling it less. The hand-brushing marks tend to work better at a larger scale, in my experience. And I have to tweak the strength as well.

wHromek

I haven't posted here in a while. I put up a new project on my artstation:

I've been making a lot of non-hero/low-polycount assets, so I wanted to try making something with a higher budget while still keeping within a reasonable limit.