[WIP] Request for feedback on my bachelor project

Fluchtmais

Hey there!

I am Melina, and I am currently studying at SAE Institute Germany. At the moment, I am working on my bachelor project in the field of creature art. My creature contains elements such as being a survivor of a long term snow and ice storm. More information will follow in the bullet point list. For the implementation I will use Unreal Engine 5, Substance Painter/Designer, 3DsMax, Maya, Photoshop and ZBrush.

• Semi-Realistic Style
• creature is in relation with a Wendigo
• creation of fur via XGen in Maya
• will include a diorama turntable

First of all, I decided to adapt my creature to the environment of my fellow student in order to learn how to adapt a creature to an environment. First of all, I would like to briefly discuss the environment. It is a rocky ice landscape, but on the other side it is a tundra/taiga. The story is about a world that has been hit by an ice age and there are certain shards in the form of various elements that can be used to make warming suits but also to drive machines. As already mentioned in the mail, my creature is a Wendigo. This is said to have both human and monster-like traits. The mask itself is based on a fox skeleton. Due to the icy environment, it has adapted its body temperature to the environment and has been able to live on undead, so to speak, thanks to the crystals. In the end, the creature should stand on a diorama and possibly be implemented in the scene with a few animations, which is why I model it in A-Pose. Here you can see the environment:

 

In the first step, I created a mood board and a concept to get an impression of what the creature could ultimately look like. I tried to mix the human and Wendigo stature as much as possible. As a result, I started to create a blockout in ZBrush with ZSpheres and refine the model bit by bit. As brushes I mainly used the Dam Standard, Trim Dynamic, Pinch, Clay Buildup as well as Orb Brushes and Smoothing. Here you can see the final result:

After that, I greatly reduced the number of subdivisions with Dynamesh, as it was initially far too high at 59 million, and then came to a number of 236 thousand. For the low poly I had first tried to do the retopo in Maya by hand, but that was very difficult for me because I mainly worked in 3Ds Max and ZBrush and so I had to break the whole thing down to about 90 thousand with the help of automatic retopo Modifier in 3ds Max, as this was the lowest number that caused no problems with banking in Substance Painter. I wonder if that's still too many subdivisions for a Game Ready asset. I tried to take a picture of the wireframe, but you only see a bunch of white lines, so I hope you can pull information out of the numbers instead. Here is a picture of my high and low poly:

Next, I sat down to the texturing and handpainted the Wendigo to a large extent. I created the flesh, bone, frost and skin materials in Substance Designer and then added additional details such as shading and snow in Substance Painter using generators. The skin texture is a mixture of leather and human skin which I have now simply placed on top of each other.

The crystals have an emission and are supposed to provide an extra eye-catcher in the dark. Later, an icy breath should come out of the mouth and the eyes should shine. 

I've already created a rig in Maya, but I'm not sure to what extent I'll animate the creature in the end. However, I would certainly like to give the creature a pose with the help of the rig and probably it will be able to move the head, ears and tail. However, since my focus is less on animating, I will probably try to export the animations from a Panther CAT rig from Max and put them on my rig if this succeeds.

 

However, since I was advised to do the fur first so that there are no problems with the animation later on, I have now just arrived at the grooming part. I created the fur in Maya with the XGen Plugin and im planning to convert the Interactive groom into hair cards due to performance. You can see the current state of the diorama plattform in the next picture:

At the end of the project, I plan to load the whole thing into the Unreal Engine and render it there. Maybe I'll load the creature into the scene as well, but that's not certain at this point. Since im currently working on this project I would love to hear some advices or feedback. Please let me know what you think about my work. 

Thank you in advance and have a nice day!

iam717

For TLDR people;

Since i am currently working on this project I would love to hear some advice's or feedback. Please let me know what you think about my work. 

Thank you in advance and have a nice day!

I had to break the whole thing down to about 90 thousand with the help of automatic retopo Modifier in 3ds Max, as this was the lowest number that caused no problems with banking in Substance Painter. I wonder if that's still too many subdivisions for a Game Ready asset. I tried to take a picture of the wireframe, but you only see a bunch of white lines

Manual retopologizing is how to do things correctly, but if you are rushing or just do not like putting in the time to do it carefully, that is one way of doing it.

If the "teacher/professor", is legit they will have issues with this part.

The crystals have an emission and are supposed to provide an extra eye-catcher in the dark. Later, an icy breath should come out of the mouth and the eyes should shine.

If you can make that work out nicely, i think it will look great, at least it does in my head.

Looks alright to me, looks like you planned the fur out enough, no ear skin exposure makes me a bit sad, looks a little lazy if i had to really make a point known.  If i where the professor I'd say this also, i am pretending i am cause id want my "students" to do the best so passing my class would be almost impossible. lucky for you.

that is all i got for you, now onto the partner since no one else is chiming in, though it does seem like a lot to go through and people have to put time into reading all this then thinking it over, 'its like' dump, talk to me, tell me how to do!

All the best with this though i do like the general idea, make a demo with all this work so at least its put to use after, that is the goal right not to just have these assets sitting on the hard-drive becoming "obsolete" old and bad eventually.

Fluchtmais

Thank you for your feedback. If I still have time left, I will try to reduce the subdivisions a bit. Maybe I'll try the Retopoly tool in maya again. I'd be really interested to know what you think, how many subdivisions such a creature should have. I will also take another look over the ears and adjust the fur there a bit. I'm assuming you mean some bald spots that are missing there compared to the rest of the body.

Since this is my first creature and I've only been working in the 3d field for a year, I unfortunately have no choice but to ask for feedback in any form, so thank you very much for these tips.

zetheros

always manual retopo, unless you're working in film and don't care at all about optimization. 90,000 tris is insane for this creature. 10-15k is more like what you'd expect, including hair cards. Study more creature anatomy. Crystals are too dense and very same-y.

Fluchtmais

All right, I will definitely take a closer look at the retopo and the crystals. Thanks for your advice!

zetheros

I can see you have a bit of it going on already, but you can exaggerate them more. Here's the crystal lizard from DS3.
red = large crystals

blue = small crystals surrounding large crystals

green = not all crystals grow in the same direction, some are stray crystals growing at odd angles.

iam717

i wanted to see ear, skin, hole somehow, even wolves and polar bears you can see the ears at least.  zethros covered the rest, appreciate it didn't see thread or come to site in a bit. (missed all this.)