Tatsumaki Sculpt (One Punch Man)

mpej429

Hi there ! Here’s my take on Tatsumaki from One Punch Man anime! It’s still in a WIP stage for now but wanted to share and looking for some Critics on my latest work in order to improve. Thanks !

mpej429

Hello, I tried out some render settings inside Zbrush for a more anime feel. What do oyu think? How / What to improve ? Any tips ? Thanks for the following!

mpej429

Hi everyone! I’ve put aside some of the sculpt work and rather concentrated my efforts on the render side inside Zbrush. Because I want to practice more anime styled characters and have a render style that I like. Okay less talking, more pics. Any advice making the anime render look better is welcome!

Okay, now getting back on the some sculpt and make this look better !

mpej429

Hi everyone, what a busy week ! I was still figuring out how to **render** this piece in a proper way staying in the *anime* field (but not too much). I got overloaded tweaking the **lightcaps**, **matcaps**, **shaders**, **textures**. and finally **bpr** settings... it was a lot to be honest to dig in and especially test most of the settings.

So my first serie of test was to achieve a decent result in black in white and then apply the colour on it (as I previously done in my last post).
My first try was a complete mess (*the left grey one*), but I wanted to show where I got from. Obviously I'm not putting all the results I got but just some after the first one. It  got me to a better understanding of how the shadow work is done on the material for this type rendering.



Fortunatley during my study I stumbled on the work of **Pablo Munoz Gomez** that introduced me to quad shaders and the timing was perfect because I could assemble into one material all the recent gathered knowledge!

> **Thanks Pablo, you saved me from crashing my head through my monitor!**

:rofl: haha!

My favorite one is the **fourth** (*grey one on the right*), I like how the shadow works on the hair, and chest but didn't work well on the hand or the arm. But it was decent enough to begin working on some colour to see what the result would be.

OH! and while working on the black and white material render I got crazy and worked the shading result too far (lost sight of my objective or went frenzy at the end of the day, it could explain the result lol!)

But this wasn't the result I was seeking, I was more thinking about these right here:

OK,  then!  I applied some **colours** (*basic plain polypaint*) and tweaked some more my custom **QuadShader**, adjusted the polypaint colours and basically pressed the **bpr** button (not knowing much about filters but added one or two for fun) and got these.
I liked where this was going but something felt wrong... Maybe too "anime" and I felt it was lacking of my special touch. My goal is to have most of my final image inside Zbrush but probably the final pass will go to Photoshop, just to enhance the result (if needed).

So here is where I struggled a bit searching how to get more from material I just created. Well, after tweaking here and there lots of sliders I reached the point where I didn't know what I was tweaking anymore and decided to rebuild a whole new **QuadShader** from what I learned.
*It was very instructive* !


Again I got to a point where I gave all I could, still applying a simple polypaint colour to the subtools and tweak the QuadShader setting one by one to achieve step by step a more *illustrative* feel to the **render** while staying into the *anime style*. So these are the latest renders at this day and time. I'm pretty happy where this had led me, I disabled all shadow casting and ambient lighting from the light and the material settings to control as much as I could the shadow work. The trick was also to work a second QuadShader for the dress ! I simply duplicated the first one I got (skin) and worked on it to make a material reacting differently to light. I still think this second material needs some tweaking, I managed to get some crisp and interesting details from it ^^
But I agree it could feel a bit too posterised don't you think?
I'll keep this in mind next time.

Here are some last renders for today, I'll keep you guys posted on further progress !

mpej429

Hi there ! Trying to improve the shaders, but I feel kinda stuck for now. I’ve been playing with adjusting the filters and correcting the quadShaders, added some wrinkles here and there to help the shaders make the character’s dress pop out more.
I’ll concentrate my efforts on making a small rocky ground from where she pounces and make it live more with some floating props. I just need to keep away from getting soaked into the character now and improve it elsewhere. Anyway, what do you think of these BPR renders? Any suggestions ?
To be honest I think the last visual passes will be on Photoshop!

mpej429

Hi everyone, I've been very busy since last time but this is it: my last renders through Zbrush's BPR system.

So the first of all: I wasn't satisfied on how the face looked once it was rendered. So I went back on the sculpting process and tried to capture once and for all a manga look of some sort for her face.

It may look ugly and less natural with no proper shader but trust me, it was worth the akwardness at this stage.

Then I got this crazy idea : "Wait! What if I wanted to give her whatever pose I want?" That got me into rigging the low poly body in order to quickly find the gesture I was looking for. Using the layers (subtools), I imported the low poly on my T-posed model inside Zbrush and keeping the details on higher subdivisions: Great !

You may see I tried to reach some extreme poses just to see the potiental of a quick rigging thanks to Advanced Skeleton 5 Plugin (Maya). I kept the 3 pose, because it was the most similar of my original idea and I had to fit (again) the clothes and props (eyes etc.). But next time I'll be rigging everything, I didn't think it would've been so much work getting everything together again.

So my model has now the proper pose I wanted, and had to correct some nasty deformation on the highpoly model and then get her clothes back! I remodeled the clothes inside Marvelous Designer and retopologized the garments to have something proper for sculpting on them inside Zrbrush.

Something wasn't feeling right yet... oh the hair ! It looked so stiff, It wasn't helping the character have that "levitating" sensation I was looking for. I couldn't really use the hair I previously made so... I was going to redo the haircut for this particular pose.  Then again sculpted some more folds on the dress, painted the eyes, added floating rocks as well as a base (for presentation purposes), adjusted the materials and tweaking some more the BPR Filters. The dress material looked too complex and had to be simplified, It looked a bit off the more I turned around her, like if the light wasn't reacting as I intended (the anime way).

The dress material looked too complex for its true nature. Even if it's anime, light can't be that crazy nor it's made out of shiny material.

So the rather simpler version looked more appealing to me but it lacked some details I liked on the more complex render...

I finally combined the two in Photoshop to grab some of the render details I liked comparing the two and got what I was looking for. I could've added more details but this is good enough as it is. To be honest I'm pretty satisfied for my first BPR render. She looks almost alive ! I said almost huh !

**By the way, do you like the hair ?**

Ultimately added a simple gradient that worked rather than the grey background to give a mood. Then: voilà!  Here is my take on the One Punch Man anime character : Tatsumaki. I learned a lot during this process and mostly from my workflow mistakes. I'm so excited to be able to work on a new piece and use probably again my anime shaders but in a more refined version!

I got some fun taking screenshots just to see my work in action. I hope you guys like the work so far, I hope to see you again on my next work ! I'll try to assemble a video to show the process, it could be a good idea, wouldn't it ?
Here are some other pics from Zbrush only (no photoshop tweaks for these ones).

Happy Zbrushing !