[Wip] Naga Warrior Realtime

Druwed

Going to make this character based off of the general idea of a Draconic Naga, i came up the the idea after a long seassion of warhammer totalwar as the Lizardmen.

Basing the caharcters off of these references:


Left for his pose and armor and using the right image mainly for the anatomy and face design.
Following some of the time-lapses of Ryan Ribots Stylized creature sculpting course for some of the body anatomy

Druwed

Working on his body anatomy

Druwed

Druwed

Druwed

Druwed

blocking out some armor pieces

Druwed

Skinner3D

It looks a lot like he is wearing a sculpted armor plate on his chest. The hard definition of the lines are messing with me. The chains make some sense if this is the case, but they don't necessary make sense for a bare chested creature. (at least not without other body piercing or something)

DavidCruz

Hi,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fzI2XyZfROs
This link shows a process on how to use an imm brush, its one way to go about adding the scaling to your design.

What i would do to have more control would be to mask off 1 of the shell / scales seperate subtool it with the extract option and mold it to a somewhat final state, then clone it across the body till i was finished and if i wanted each to look differently i'd retouch them each seperately to give it a more organic feel.

Like how the shoulder pads look as if they are a seperated subtool object, do the same for everything that is not apart of the body or would need to have an appearance of elevated slightly from the body.  Having them a seperated subtool allows you more control over how the object looks and is helpful if and or when something doesn't look right.

Best of luck.

Druwed

Skinner3D said:

It looks a lot like he is wearing a sculpted armor plate on his chest. The hard definition of the lines are messing with me. The chains make some sense if this is the case, but they don't necessary make sense for a bare chested creature. (at least not without other body piercing or something)

Hey there, thanks for the critique,  what is making the chest look like sculpted armor? He is supposed to be bare chested.
if its the sharp falloff after the pecs, ill soften that transition.
After getting critiques from others i believe that i am fusing way to many different designs into one and i'm going to go back and make him closer to 1 single design, instead of an Amalgam of many.

Druwed

DavidCruz said:

Hi,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fzI2XyZfROs
This link shows a process on how to use an imm brush, its one way to go about adding the scaling to your design.

What i would do to have more control would be to mask off 1 of the shell / scales seperate subtool it with the extract option and mold it to a somewhat final state, then clone it across the body till i was finished and if i wanted each to look differently i'd retouch them each seperately to give it a more organic feel.

Like how the shoulder pads look as if they are a seperated subtool object, do the same for everything that is not apart of the body or would need to have an appearance of elevated slightly from the body.  Having them a seperated subtool allows you more control over how the object looks and is helpful if and or when something doesn't look right.

Best of luck.

Thanks for this info! I did not know it was this easy to make IMM brushes in Zbrush.
I'll go back to the drawing board ad try to re-design the tail with this in mind.

Druwed

Spent some time refining the neck and torso area to make it seem more natural
Also refined the lower Jaw a bit
Going to re-work the tail next

Druwed

Skinner3D

He does look more like a continuous being now, however I think only the ribline needed smoothed. I liked the detail you had on the arms and sides of the torso.

Druwed

Remade the tail with IMM brushes to have more control over each scale,  also think this design is cleaner than the previous one

Druwed

Skinner3D said:

He does look more like a continuous being now, however I think only the ribline needed smoothed. I liked the detail you had on the arms and sides of the torso.

I removed the armd etail just so i could have more control when refining the arms, i will add the back to the model after i refine the hands, since they are still lacking in quality compared to the rest of the arms.
When you mention the side details. are you talking about the chains/piercing or the muscles?

Thanks for the critiques

Druwed

Skinner3D said:

He does look more like a continuous being now, however I think only the ribline needed smoothed. I liked the detail you had on the arms and sides of the torso.

Made some quick adjustments based on what you suggested

Druwed

more progress

Druwed

Some basic Poly Painting before some final tweaks and moving onto retopo

Druwed

Refined the polypaint, also changed and added some scales

Druwed

Almost done with retopo
Current model has around 30k triangles

Skinner3D

I like that you reduced the number of scales, but i think you will have to sculpt some detail into the smooth sections of the tail.

Druwed

Skinner3D said:

I like that you reduced the number of scales, but i think you will have to sculpt some detail into the smooth sections of the tail.

I'm planning on adding detail to that area inside of substance painter, with a mixture of materials and hand-painting.
If that is not enough i'll go back and sculpt more details in Zbrush.
Thanks for taking the time to critique my work!!

Druwed

Baked the texture maps, and started texturing, still need to refine the back of the tail and refine the textures and the render/light set-up
rendered inside of marmoset
Going to make a basic rig to pose him before coming back to the textures

Druwed

Some test poses with a basic rig.
Need to fix some of the weights on the tail, and refine the marmoset render set-up.
Going to do a final texture pass before starting to put the finishing touches on him

Druwed

Made some quick fixes to the rig.
Now to refine the textures and make a better pose and a base for him to stand on.

Druwed

Another test pose, and refined the textures.
Going to make a rock so that he can coil it`s tail around it, and i`ll also probably extend the tail a bit(it`s feeling kind of short currently) and refine the rig some more, since there are some areas in the tail and scales that are deforming weirdly due to a rushed weight painting

Skinner3D

I would look at King Cobra and other naga reference for the tail. I think the white part needs to be on the ground, and it has to twist and curl more laterally. That is the whole point of the specialized scales on the underside, it is their propulsion system

Druwed

Updated pose and added a rock base 

Crazy_pixel

Very nice progress, I like how you refined the design of the character!

The texture looks currently like a "base" because when I compare your references with your model I'm missing colour variations and depth made by shadows and highlights. Also a top down gradient would lead the focus to the upper part of the body where the most interesting parts are.

A nice place for stylized paint jobs can be found on painted miniatures, the "age of sigmar" for example has a dino species .... I bet there are a few nice references to push your work further.

Keep it up! 

Druwed

Crazy_pixel said:

Very nice progress, I like how you refined the design of the character!

The texture looks currently like a "base" because when I compare your references with your model I'm missing colour variations and depth made by shadows and highlights. Also a top down gradient would lead the focus to the upper part of the body where the most interesting parts are.

A nice place for stylized paint jobs can be found on painted miniatures, the "age of sigmar" for example has a dino species .... I bet there are a few nice references to push your work further.

Keep it up! 

Thanks for the feedback, I went back tot he textures to try to add some more color variation and polish them up.

Druwed

Some pose tweaks and updates trying to make him feel more balanced