Sketchbook: Melomad

Melomad

Hello, I'm Arzel from France! I've been lurking the forum and decided to get my stuff out there.

Right now, I'm building my portfolio and I'm trying to get good enough at what I do to lend me a job. I do 3D and 2D art, I'm contributing to the Beyond Skyrim: Morrowind mod and the amazing people there really helped me

Here's a set of temple bells I did for the mod, I'm quite proud of it! However, I am and always will be open to critique. Huzzah!

Melomad

I started a horse project: firstly because I love horses, secondly because they can be a challenge to get right, and thirdly because I've seen one too many fucked up horse in a game.

I chose to represent a local breed, the Breton horse (specifically the 'postier' subtype), as I haven't seen a lot of working horses in games / online. Horses are hard to get right because they bear the selective breeding curse which makes a lot of them fucked up, like pugs. In the case of the Breton horse, the 'trait' subtype has long ceased to be bred for manual labor and is instead bread dumb and heavy to maximize meat production.

With my postier, I hope to create a cute horse with good conformations and train my anatomy at the same time   Below are (some) references I gathered, my blockout and the first sculpt pass. I will refine the anatomy as I go, but if a horse-savvy person comes by, I'll be more than happy to get feedback on it.

Fabi_G

Hi! That's a cool bell. A critique I'd make, is that it could use some impression of thickness at the opening. Maybe a bevel at that edge in the normal map would suffice.
 

On the horse I'd say it currently feels too front-heavy in terms of weight/proportions.

Keep it up

Melomad

Hey Fabi! Thank you so much for the pointers! I haven't thought about a bevel, it'll look so much better. I'll get on that asap.

And yes, gosh, I need to figure out the rump area. Just like hips on a human, I feel like it's one of the most complex piece of anatomy. There's so much going on...

It's really nice having new eyes on my work! Thank you for taking the time to comment

Melomad

Long time no see!

Lost the mojo for a while, but I completed my horse sculpt. It was easier than I first expected it to be! I changed a bit of the proportions of the base sculpt and the rest was just filling in some details. The legs and hooves where thougher to get right, especially at the joints and the whole under-hoof-to-leg connection. I also sculpted in the genitalia because why not, my goal was to make an accurate horse model after all.

I'm debating wether or not I should go insane and sculpt things like protruding veins/hooves ridges/skin bumps. I like this version as is, but I could come back to it if the texturing needs a little more hoomph.

Melomad

Once again I forgot to update this thread. A lot has been done!

The retopo went smoothly, I used to struggle on quadrupeds around, well, their legs. I studied other models and managed to find solutions that fitted my needs. Some of the parts I'm not too sure about are the hooves and the ears--I feel like they are too high density for the shape.

I usually use xNormals for baking my stuff but this time Blender gave me an almost perfect result in one go. I love you Blender...

Then the part I slaved over: the diffuse map. I could be smart and learn some texturing software, but I'm impatient and photobashing and painting over horse pics in CSP is much more intuative. Painting the details such as skin rolls and veins was insanely satisfying... It ties the whole thing together...

I made it in black and white as I wasn't sure about which coat to choose for her, ended up going with a darker chestnut.

Behold my very first time managing to use the Hair Tool addon! I always had a problem making hair in general, I just couldn't manage to make it look good. This time something in my head just clicked, and even though it's far from being the most impressive groom, it's the first one I managed to finish one thus it's a great victory in my book. Went with a long, straight bangs/mane look to honor all the shetlands of the world.

And right now I'm painting the coat! Still a wip ofc, happy with how it's turning out so far. Coloring from a grayscale underpaint can be tricky sometimes. After finishing the coat, I want to add feathers to her legs Thank you for reading!

Melomad

It's finished! 25k triangles total, 6k for the body and 15k for the hair. I have no idea if that's insane or average for today's standards. Will compile everything and upload the project to my artstation, I'll have to figure out how to upload stuff to sketchfab. I learned a lot from this project, namely my first groom and good topology for quadrupeds. In the future I want to be less depressed and complete projects faster, learn how to better use substance instead of photobashing/painting everything by hand and make renders in unreal to prove I'm a good boy who makes good game ready asset.

In the meantime, let's gaze into the eyes of this bowl-cut horsie...