It was a very unproductive week for me. I was visiting family, and I also got hit with a nasty flu which I'm still recovering from. As I only had a laptop at the time & didn't want to sculpt on the vampire mesh with only 14" of work space, I decided to do some blockouts of creatures in project nova.
The last 10% really does take awhile. I'm still recovering so it's hard to do the longer stretches of work I usually do, and spent a lot of my free time last week sleeping. Everything feels really surreal, and life keeps flashing before my eyes. I'll probably be back to 100% next week. IDK what kind of flu I had, but I'm glad the worst is over. Have a great week!
Time flies! I thought today was Wednesday, but actually it's Tuesday. Happy Tuesday everyone!
Last week I worked on updating the human basemesh retopology, separated the underwear lowpoly from the basemesh lowpoly, and began budgeting for textures. I also added fingernails, toenails, and detailed the vulva.
Last week I used consistent references (nsfw) to improve the human female basemesh. It's still damn hard to make something that doesn't feel uncanny, but It's just a matter of learning and forming the neural connections and muscle memory that will enable me to 'see' what works and what doesn't. Ideally over the years I'll get faster and more accurate at sculpting faces and anatomy.
More lowpoly and UV work was done as well as a test bake. The results aren't too shabby considering nothing is optimized. The face is 2k, the body a 4k. As per last week's update, the female genitalia is sharing space in a 1k map that will also include male genitalia, alongside other small, modular race-specific parts that are also available to customize, e.g; eyes, fingernails, and possibly more, with the goal being a character customization system similar to Cyberpunk 2077 or Baldur's Gate 3.
I've decided Project Nova will not have a first person mode, and will only be 3rd person. With this change comes the removal of modular fingernails and teeth, however I think this is fine since the fingernail idea came from Cyberpunk, which is a first person game that has you staring at V's hands throughout the game, and makes a lot of sense in that context. Modular teeth are not worth the effort, since teeth are really only seen during dialogue.
Last week was just shittons of learning. I've been a highpoly sculptor for most of my career, and have only rarely dabbled in textures and bringing everything together in-engine. This is what I've achieved, and it's great seeing how far I've gotten despite the mountain of work ahead of me to get everything looking pristine. https://youtu.be/rxsuB0CW6Rw
Next week I'll likely be bringing everything else to lowpoly. I'm eager to work on the male meshes, as well as animations and armour, it's a bit tiring seeing naked people for so long, tbh. The whole purpose of making excellent basemeshes is to make incredible armour and clothing.
I don't think I got a lot done last week. I swapped the lowpoly subdiv mesh of the vampire for the lowpoly of the human, and transferred the human anatomy updates over as well. I missed two days of project nova work, which I'll be making up for this week, and need to get my schedule back on track.
Your anatomy improved crazy fast! I absolutely love the vampire mesh and (sorry for being a pervert) the weird slited clitoris. Are your characters still going to be in the never nude gang?
lol anatomy is like the hardest thing ever, even more so than armour and weapons. Thanks! Yes characters will be nude simply due to how detailed I'm making everything else.
I think Baldur's Gate 3 and Cyberpunk 2077 showed the world how it isn't really that big of a deal. We're all born with bits and bobs. However there likely won't be depictions of sexual acts in game; I don't see it contributing much to a mostly looter-shooter survival sandbox game. If there is romance, there are good examples such as, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic and Dragon Age: Origins, where stellar writing, narrative, voice acting, and character development play key roles.
For me it's the opposite lol, I suck at hard surfaces.
Exactly, I think it's fun when you can get your character naked and customize their genitals even if there is no gameplay reason for it. And since you have multiple humanoids you can make interesting body designs that expends the lore.
Finished up the back of the wings, at least until I start polishing everything with alphas. Inner wings mostly done I'd reckon, until alphas as well. Cleaned up and made the scales around the face and neck smaller; this will apply to all areas with higher levels of articulation.
i feel like this is becoming incredibly noisy and harder to read. it kinda lacks mid and low level details of the prior versions that especially made it easier to read at a distance, i think you should go back a few levels and introducing some bigger shapes, clumping together details into interesting groups, rather than just surface noise
good point Neox, some of the larger shapes were softened when I projected the human basemesh details onto the vampire mesh, I've been meaning to go back and accentuate some parts, and reduce some noise
More scales & pulled out some details that were starting to get hidden. Mostly trying to get the scales density to look right before I really finalize larger shapes & details. Some of the scales were abnormally large & next to large patches of bare skin, or followed illogical patterns, like large scales in highly articulate areas. I particularly like the changes to the hips, but the small of the back is definitely more noisy, however the scale density is where I want it. I'll go back and fix it up later!
I think the vampires are in a pretty good place for a test bake. There's always more I could do, but I'm eager to take the second race of Project Nova out of Zbrush and into UE5. I've imported the human lowpoly as a starting point for retopo.
Needs horns, eyes, eyebrows, etc - pretty happy to have the basemesh in UE5 though. Face is 1k, body 2k, wings + tail 2k. The months of sculpting paid off I think. 2 down, 2 more races to go.
Last week I added the rest of the auxiliary meshes to the vampire race as well as revisited the highpoly for the Infested race. I still wasn't happy with the design, but after some tweaks I think I've settled on something that I think I'm happy with. I wanted the race to look more feral and vicious, something that the very first design had, but subsequently lost over iterations. I've also replaced the membrane wings with something more armour (especially cloaks) friendly.
Feels like I didn't get a lot done this week, I'm not sure why. Maybe too much Morrowind. I'm also skipping today's stream because I was busy cleaning and organizing the house, and am pretty tired. I'll pay more attention to what I'm doing moment to moment next week.
I've played around with colour parameters and added detail to the 'wings' on the infested race. Skin colour will need masks for better control, and is of course one of many customizable features for players during character generation.
More progress! Been thinking a lot about adding the automaton race. Still need male versions of the existing races though, plus additional race = exponentially more work. The teeth were bothering me for the longest time, so I gave her some more pearly whites.
More polish work, tidying up, proportions work as well as adjusted the sculpt for rigging, as I want the 'wings' to be able to hang down like a cloak as well as go up. With this range of motion, I have decided on the classic T-pose instead of an A-pose for the 'wings'. They'll be important in conveying emotion, as well as combat capabilities. Some interesting details were lost, but I'll bring them back like I did with the vampire sculpt.
I imagine a lowpoly + first bake will be possible by next Wednesday. The last 10% is always the most tedious, but is 100% worth it
and we'll get there.
The first and largest of the 'wing' limbs are done, and the rest are smaller. Honestly not a lot of work done last week due to the release of Shadow of the Erdtree, and market research is something I take seriously. I'm back on my usual schedule however, so hopefully we'll see more work done next week.
Yay! it's done (at least for now) and in UE5. Next up is finishing the lobster race and getting her in engine as well. Once all races & male counterparts are in UE5, I'll fix up baking errors, improve texture maps and optimize UVs (probably at the same time as animations, so I can fix or improve troublesome lowpoly geometry for anims).
I think I went a bit too heavy handed on the fine details, which I've noticed seems to be a common theme and bad habit of mine that I need to watch for. Next week I'll be cutting back on that & smoothing shapes to regain the larger chitinous plates that were present last week.
That said, the finer details will be helpful in making the shapes of the larger plates more accurate to how the skin and plates articulate.
just going to say on most recent update, i enjoyed the separation of the plates the ("flesh color"). but carry on i come on to see who posted updates sometimes.
Good point, I did remove a fair amount of colour nuance, especially around the legs lol
The current plan is to bring the lobba' girl into UE, and do the same thing I did here with the male basemeshes. After that I'll improve polypaint across the board, then handpaint the roughness and specularity maps while finalizing UV layouts and fixing baking issues. There will probably be a lot of back and forth between painting and UV during animation and weight mapping too, so that the lowpolys look their best during anims
'Sup ya'll it's ya boi Zeth, back at it again sculpting alien dongers for a living.
Last week was especially productive; I finished the female abyssal lowpoly, added her to UE5, which means all four currently planned races are in-engine and ready for rigging and test animations. Sculpted and retopo'd the human male basemesh and added him to UE5. Also worked on the abyssal male basemesh, currently experimenting with a more antler/horn-like antennae configuration for some interesting sexual dimorphism.
Last week I made the infested race more red and gory, and also sculpted and imported the male basemeshes of the abyssal, infested, and vampire race to unreal.
This concludes the initial work on the basemeshes, from here I have enough to work with to branch out into making modular faces and horns, hair, animations, or clothing and armour.
I'm going to choose animations and clothing/armour, as the first two options are refinements and customizations that can be added later. Additionally, rigging and painting weights will definitely highlight any shortcomings my meshes have. Clothing and armour is something I'd like to work on, mostly because I'm excited to work on armour, but also because I'm frankly a bit tired of staring at bits & bobs for months on end.
Last week I started blocking out some armour, learned how to use material blending for scalp hair and stuff like blood decals, which I will also use for stuff like facial tattoos and so on. Also worked on a walk animation for the male basemesh.
I'm kind of doing everything all at once, so zbrush progress might be slower than normal, but that's because I'm also doing stuff like learning animation, painting weights, learning UE5, and fixing minor things here and there as I go. Lots of back and forth between softwares, and I definitely need to download more hard drive space.
For the armours, there will be two variations; normal cuirasses and cuirasses with the backplate removed or altered to be compatible with wings to accommodate the vampire and infested race. Extraneous rigid meshes that poke through helmets like antennae or horns will be handled with a different method. Equipment slots will likely be divided into helmet, cuirass, gauntlets, cuisses and greaves. May or may not be individual pieces (different gauntlet on each hand).
AIGen Disclaimer: Blood splatter alpha masks generated by Stable Diffusion and edited by hand.
No animation work this week, just armour and weapons. Both armour and weapons will be modular, and it's been an interesting mental odyssey planning out how they'll be assembled. Similar to Destiny 2, weapons will be categorized as primary, secondary, and heavy weapons. However unlike D2, players can carry whatever weapons they want in any combination they desire, as long as they don't exceed their carry weight limit.
Polish, polish, polish. Hmm I miss polish pickles. I was once in Leeds to visit the Royal Armouries, and came across a small Polish foods store. They sold jars of pickles; cucumbers, tomatoes, and onions all in ludicrously large glass 5-6 liter jars. Maybe I should go and make some.
Like the good Chinese spy that I am, I went there to steal military secrets. Sadly the ones I stole are outdated. You can help yourself to the ones I took while I was there (and other places too), links found in the description sidebar. https://www.artstation.com/artwork/rRDYXG
A day late with this update due to my non-existent sleep schedule. Mostly worked on the internal structure of the armour, also reworked some of Project Nova's internal wiki structure for better organization. Project Nova is getting fairly big, around 160gb worth of files now, so I've invested in an external 2 terabyte SSD to bolster my cloud backup and will be looking into seeing if I need to be using Perforce or similar for better data management, despite working solo.
I was going to use some AI to generate an alpha map for the brass-like metal, but in the end decided hand drawn yielded nicer results.
Some more armour variation blockouts, an example of possible armour combinations in the second pic. I'll have to be sure these mesh well with the other material type armours. Currently, leather, chitin (placeholder name, Bethesda/Zenimax lawyers), and steel armours are planned. Artstyle congruity is something I care a lot about here.
Mostly worked on armour 4 & size adjustments to a lot of pieces. Poleyns are missing on 2 & 3 because I forgot to toggle vis when rendering them lol. More compatibility work towards wings & tails. Added jetpacks for wingless races.
More detail, cleaning up shapes, etc. Blocked out a 'fully kitted out' character with all of their equipment slots filled & some wing armour for the vampire race. I hid an easter egg in here somewhere lol
been swapping out my shiny brass material for a more basic matcap for polypaint. Did a recolour, shape & silhouette balancing, basically just made it a lot darker. Added gems, added modular trim for cloth. Vampires (and all species for that matter) require colour balancing, the vampire wings are currently way too pink. Retopologized & cleaned up wing armour and pauldrons. Separated armour sets into individual .ztls, the singular file started hitting my 32 RAM limits. Armour sets 1-3 are mostly defined already though, so this is fine.
Replies
Added more detail to the abdomen, legs, back and tail.
Have a great week!
Have a great week!
Have a great week!
Have a great week!
More lowpoly and UV work was done as well as a test bake. The results aren't too shabby considering nothing is optimized. The face is 2k, the body a 4k. As per last week's update, the female genitalia is sharing space in a 1k map that will also include male genitalia, alongside other small, modular race-specific parts that are also available to customize, e.g; eyes, fingernails, and possibly more, with the goal being a character customization system similar to Cyberpunk 2077 or Baldur's Gate 3.
Next week I'll likely be bringing everything else to lowpoly. I'm eager to work on the male meshes, as well as animations and armour, it's a bit tiring seeing naked people for so long, tbh. The whole purpose of making excellent basemeshes is to make incredible armour and clothing.
Have a great week!
Have a great week!
Have a great week!
Have a great week!
Bonus Turntable!
Have a great week!
Have a great week!
Have a great week!
Have a great week!
Have a great week!
I've played around with colour parameters and added detail to the 'wings' on the infested race. Skin colour will need masks for better control, and is of course one of many customizable features for players during character generation.
Have a great week!
Have a great week!
Have a great week!
Have a great week!
Have a great week!
Have a great week!
Have a great week!
Have a great week!
Have a great week!
That said, the finer details will be helpful in making the shapes of the larger plates more accurate to how the skin and plates articulate.
Have a great week!
Have a great week!
The current plan is to bring the lobba' girl into UE, and do the same thing I did here with the male basemeshes. After that I'll improve polypaint across the board, then handpaint the roughness and specularity maps while finalizing UV layouts and fixing baking issues. There will probably be a lot of back and forth between painting and UV during animation and weight mapping too, so that the lowpolys look their best during anims
Have a great week!
Last week was especially productive; I finished the female abyssal lowpoly, added her to UE5, which means all four currently planned races are in-engine and ready for rigging and test animations. Sculpted and retopo'd the human male basemesh and added him to UE5. Also worked on the abyssal male basemesh, currently experimenting with a more antler/horn-like antennae configuration for some interesting sexual dimorphism.
Have a great week!
This concludes the initial work on the basemeshes, from here I have enough to work with to branch out into making modular faces and horns, hair, animations, or clothing and armour.
I'm going to choose animations and clothing/armour, as the first two options are refinements and customizations that can be added later. Additionally, rigging and painting weights will definitely highlight any shortcomings my meshes have. Clothing and armour is something I'd like to work on, mostly because I'm excited to work on armour, but also because I'm frankly a bit tired of staring at bits & bobs for months on end.
Have a great week!
And yes, I KNOW I just fell into this trope hard, but it is what it is lol
I'm kind of doing everything all at once, so zbrush progress might be slower than normal, but that's because I'm also doing stuff like learning animation, painting weights, learning UE5, and fixing minor things here and there as I go. Lots of back and forth between softwares, and I definitely need to download more hard drive space.
For the armours, there will be two variations; normal cuirasses and cuirasses with the backplate removed or altered to be compatible with wings to accommodate the vampire and infested race. Extraneous rigid meshes that poke through helmets like antennae or horns will be handled with a different method. Equipment slots will likely be divided into helmet, cuirass, gauntlets, cuisses and greaves. May or may not be individual pieces (different gauntlet on each hand).
AIGen Disclaimer: Blood splatter alpha masks generated by Stable Diffusion and edited by hand.
Have a great week!
Have a great week!
Like the good Chinese spy that I am, I went there to steal military secrets. Sadly the ones I stole are outdated. You can help yourself to the ones I took while I was there (and other places too), links found in the description sidebar. https://www.artstation.com/artwork/rRDYXG
Have a great week!
I was going to use some AI to generate an alpha map for the brass-like metal, but in the end decided hand drawn yielded nicer results.
The Emperor protects.
Submit to the Three, the Spirits, and Thy Lords.
Have a great week!
Have a great week!
Have a great week!
Have a great week!
Have a great week!
Have a great week!
Have a great week!
Have a great week!