Skull Lord

dcolombo

“What have I become? Look at me, I am a monster…” he rose an arm toward me “is that all you can see?”

This is based on the amazing concept by Stepan Alekseev (https://www.artstation.com/artwork/GX1nJB ).

I’ve taken the liberty to change some aspects of it in order to reach a slightly different feel. Hope you like it!

artstation: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/8eyG2m

instagram: https://www.instagram.com/metumrepello/
twitter: https://twitter.com/MetumRepello

ImsumDave

Looks really good, great job! The one issue that jumps out to me is that the material of the sculpted plate on the dagger sheath looks strange. Is it meant to be brass/bronze?

dcolombo

Thanks man for the kind words! I tried to replicate 3 different golden materials, that should be more akin to brass, meanwhile on the armor is "fire gilding" most of the time. But thanks for the heads up, I'll do my best to improve!

ImsumDave

My perception of material strangeness may be the depth of field making the materials look muddier than they really are. The lighting might be a contributing factor as well.

dcolombo

That means I have to make more attention to it!   
thank you for the feedback!

SeekeroflLight

I think this looks Amazing! I like the details with the skull and armor. I would love to see more shiny spots to catch some light from the bronze texture.

dcolombo

thank you so much!

VinceOrcis

What can I say, it is stunning.
Mak I ask do you do retopo? And what time percentage does it take?

dcolombo

@VinceOrcis the most complex pieces where retopo manually in blender, for other simple forms I just used what ZRemesher was giving me and when little problems arose I did a mix of the two (automatic+manual). It took more or less a working week to have the retopo completed

JamesBrisnehan

I'm curious how you did the chain mail. Looks fantastic.

dcolombo

@JamesBrisnehan I've used Zbrush Nanomesh:  a couple of rings angled in a specific way so that when repeated they intersect with one another, I've tested the repetition with arraymesh first and then used them as a nanomesh on a very low-res version of the underneath gambeson used as a mesh guide. Then I just deformed the guide mesh where I felt the gravity and compression folds should appear in such a material. Unfortunately I forgot to edit the rings mesh before I committed to the final result, at the point it was too late for adding a rivet on every single ring, unfeasible without loosing a ton of time, well... lesson learnt
For the texturing I've used substance painter, I've reused the material I made for the breastplate, changed it a bit to better match the reference I was studying, nothing fancy 

JamesBrisnehan

Cool workflow, thanks for sharing 

valentin_baguirov

Thank you very much for sharing the workflow sir!

jose.fuentes

looks great, the tree bark for the color map is such a cool idea  

dcolombo

@jose.fuentes It isn't my original technique, I saw it long time ago passing by on a Blender youtube video, I don't remember the guy, but credit to him! 

Torch

Great stuff - would love to see how you did the fur and got those nice tufts with fibermesh.

dcolombo

@Torch I've used this Grooming Brushes set made by Pablo Munoz Gomez https://pablander.selz.com/item/fibermesh-grooming-kit, in those there is this "Breaker" grooming brush that's like painting polygroups on fibermesh. I think it's the most useful of the bunch! With it I've quickly made all the polygroups I needed to create those tufts without being bother by the other fibers

Torch

Nice, thanks for the tip. Just a quick heads up - if you're not fussed about seeing the hair in Zbrush, I've checked out this plugin Fibershop recently, quite nice for prepping hair planes for hair ( it will set up planes for your hair creation) https://cgpal.com/fibershop/

dcolombo

Torch said:

Nice, thanks for the tip. Just a quick heads up - if you're not fussed about seeing the hair in Zbrush, I've checked out this plugin Fibershop recently, quite nice for prepping hair planes for hair ( it will set up planes for your hair creation) https://cgpal.com/fibershop/

that looks amazing! I'll give it a try for the next hair-cards project!

Crazy_pixel

WOW, that looks amazing. great job and lovely level of detail.

Great job !

RustedFaith3d

This looks really nice!  Love the armor especially! 

dcolombo

I’ve got the privilege to be interviewed by the folks at 80.lv about the creation of this piece, if you are interested in reading the process I’ve used to create it you can read a full breakdown on their website: https://80.lv/articles/making-a-scull-warrior-in-zbrush-marmoset-toolbag/

thanks for all the kind words!