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Sketchbook: Jansen Turk

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JTurk3D polycounter lvl 3
Hey everyone, I'm an aspiring Character Artist and thought i'd start posting my progress up here. I'd love any critique/feedback you may have, just looking to improve!







So this is a Archer character i'm working on. My next step now is to texture the face, I hope to have that done by the end of the week. Following that I plan on working on hair cards. I'll keep this thread updated with my progress.

Thanks!


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  • JTurk3D
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    JTurk3D polycounter lvl 3
    Hey all, a quick update on where i'm at. I've got the head into Toolbag with all of the basic maps attached. Plan for tomorrow is to get the eyes sorted in the scene.

    Thanks!




  • JTurk3D
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    JTurk3D polycounter lvl 3
    Ok so the eyes have also been added into Marmoset, Textures still need some tweaking as well as some balancing in Marmoset. Next I need to add the Caruncle part. 



  • JTurk3D
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    JTurk3D polycounter lvl 3
    Hey all, I've got the majority of the Retopology and UV's sorted for the clothing and Arms. Just need to add in the trousers. Everything bar the head and eyes only has Normal Maps and block colours at the moment. For now though I'm going to make a start on the hair. i'll keep this thread posted with my progress!



  • JTurk3D
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    JTurk3D polycounter lvl 3
    Hey All, here is my current progress, I've decided to call this character Frankie!

    I'm signed up to Adam Skutt's Hair Creation class which starts tomorrow so the hair is coming! i'll share my progress with that in this thread also.


    The Bow is currently just a temp mesh.












  • JTurk3D
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    JTurk3D polycounter lvl 3
    Hey all, So after a lot of iteration I have finally got the base layer of hair cards sorted! The buzzed hair around the sides and back is just a hair cap. Still got a lot of work to do to get this up to scratch! Next I will be sorting a breakup layer to really start getting some more interesting results. 

    This is the result in Marmoset Toolbag 3:
  • JTurk3D
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    JTurk3D polycounter lvl 3
    Hey all! So here is the breakup layer at the moment. Along with the topology of the hair cards and hair cap, with the textures for the base and breakup layers. Slowly getting there!



  • JTurk3D
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    JTurk3D polycounter lvl 3

    Hey guys, so I finished with the hair and wanted to do a little breakdown of the process.

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    1.


    So to begin with the idea here is to grow the hair from planes, which have a slight rotation to simulate the head. You want to create hair clumps that you will then use to place along your model. Rendered using Arnold, using the AlHair Shader.

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    2.


    When it comes to placing the cards, make sure that you are using viewport 2.0 and in the settings, set “Transparency Algorithm” to “Depth Peeling” and “Transparency Quality” to 1. This ensures that the cards will display correctly when placed on top of each other. Another tip when making the plane itself, is to make the geo extremely low, and use the smooth mesh preview “3”. This makes sure that you don’t have to worry about working with lots of geo, and makes it easier to place the cards.

                  Once finished with the placement, you need to select all your hair cards, go to Modify > Convert > Smooth Mesh Preview to Polygons. This will convert your preview to polygons. Obviously now for Games this is far too much geometry. To solve this, go to Mesh > Reduce, and then play around with either the percentage or triangle count to get the amount of geometry required.

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    3.


    Here is the head model and topology, without any of the hair cards.

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    4.


                  Hair Cap with topology. This was created using XGen Interactive Groom, and just baking that down onto a HairCap. To bake the XGen Interactive Groom, first go to Generate > Convert Interactive Groom to polygons. This gives you your hair as a high poly mesh. Export the mesh as your high poly, and the HairCap as your low poly. Next Jump into Photoshop and make a gradient (I used Blue and Red) Save this as your root to tip color.

                  Next for the bake, In XNormal put the XGen Groom as the high poly mesh (The groom we converted to polygons), and add the hair cap as the low poly. For the high poly add in the “Root to tip Color” to “Base Texture to Bake”. Next in the baking options enable “Normal Map” and “Bake Base Texture”.

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    5.


    The base layer of cards, the purpose of this layer is to get the silhouette and base color.

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    6.

                  Next is the breakup Layer, here is where the hair really starts to look like something. These textures are a lot less opaque and have the job of breaking up the flow of the hair. To place these I simply duplicate cards from the base layer, make adjustments to position and flow, and change the texture.

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    7.


                  The final steps for the hair are to add Flyaway cards and Transitional cards. These help to ground the look and add more realism.

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    8.


    Here is the final topology and the final textures. The first two textures are the thickest clumps, and are only used for the base layer. The next two are a lot less opaque and are used for the breakup layer. Next to that is a clump used for the Flyaway layer. Finally the two clumps at the top are used for the transitional cards. In places like the hairline to create a more natural transition between the scalp and hair.

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    9.









    So there we have it! I hope that this can in anyway help someone out. I've started on another couple of pieces and will be sharing my progress on them soon. I aim to improve and get better results with those pieces. Thanks Guys and feel free to let me know what you think, and if you have any cool techniques also!

  • Francois_K
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    Francois_K interpolator
    Turned out nice pretty sweet, still having problems on my side with that tutorial with the alShader :/
  • JTurk3D
  • JTurk3D
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    JTurk3D polycounter lvl 3
    Thanks @Francois_K! What are the problems your having? When I set up the alShaders I followed along with this tutorial, as I too had some issues with how the renders were displaying. But this helped me fix the issues.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GaTf0GBkEAY&t=554s

    Also once I got my renders from Arnold I made some adjustments in Photoshop until i got the results I did. Let me know if that helps!
  • Francois_K
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    Francois_K interpolator
    Yeah for some reason the alHair shader doesn't appear despite me reinstalling arnold a bunch of times and bringing the shaders over from the website , the shader is even in the folder but it doesn't appear. 
  • Ouran
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    Ouran greentooth
    Great job buddy!
  • JTurk3D
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    JTurk3D polycounter lvl 3
    @Francois_K  - Ah OK! I had exactly the same problem! I followed this video to install the alShaders. 
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C8w0ea7Mgzs&t=1s
    Go to the plug in manager in Maya, and make sure that "mtoa.mll" is set to loaded and auto load. Your alShaders should then appear. If they don't behave as expected (which is what happened with me). Make sure when installing the alShaders you follow the video and use the second method to install. I think it might be a problem with versions of Maya just copying the files across? Either way that is what fixed it for me. Hope that helps and let me know how you get on!

    @Ouran - Thank you Vincent! :D Was great to watch you improve as the course went on! And your final result was just awesome!
  • Croftyness
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    Croftyness polycounter lvl 11
    Nice breakdown. :)
    I'll be moving my workflow to Maya soon. Appreciate you sharing the links.
  • JTurk3D
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    JTurk3D polycounter lvl 3
    @Croftyness - Thank you David! No problem! Yeah I can't recommend Maya/Xgen enough for the hair, once you get used to using to it, it's really quick and easy to make changes. Arnold is great too! Look forward to seeing what you do next! :D

  • Sam Hatami
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    Sam Hatami polycounter lvl 16
  • JTurk3D
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    JTurk3D polycounter lvl 3
    Great break down Jansen! Added it to the wiki http://wiki.polycount.com/wiki/HairTechnique#Hair_Technique_Links

    Thank you Sam! I will dig through that wiki to see if there is anything I can improve on haha!
  • Mitchellangelo
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    Mitchellangelo polycounter lvl 7
    This is looks really good!!  I love the Varga Hair trick, it works every time.  It's a good way to manipulate geometry into hair!  Also the anatomy looks really good and the forms look solid!
  • JTurk3D
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    JTurk3D polycounter lvl 3
    @Mitchellangelo Thank you! :D Glad it could be useful! :)
  • JTurk3D
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    JTurk3D polycounter lvl 3
    Hey all! Time to share what I've been working on; I've got a couple of projects on the go, here is some progress on a Joker bust I've been playing around with! Goal here is to try to get better with anatomy and expression! 

    More to come! :)



  • Mitchellangelo
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    Mitchellangelo polycounter lvl 7
    Good expression!  I haven't quite gotten to facial expression anatomy yet, but I'd say this is overall accurate (based on my face sculpt practices.
  • JTurk3D
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    JTurk3D polycounter lvl 3
    @Mitchellangelo Thanks! I've tried to push the expression a little further than what is realistic. Kind of like Joker from the cartoons but still kinda in the believable range. Overall it's been a good experiment!
  • Mitchellangelo
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    Mitchellangelo polycounter lvl 7
    It's definitely working.  I recognize him as the Joker.  It actually kind of looks like the actor is exaggerating a smile in the mirror, lol
  • JTurk3D
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    JTurk3D polycounter lvl 3
    Here we are with some textures all rendered in Marmoset, not entirely sure on the textures yet, next up is the hair and teeth! I'll revisit once those are sorted :)

  • JTurk3D
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    JTurk3D polycounter lvl 3
    Hey guys! It's been a while! Here is my current progress with this Joker piece, I'll start posting my progress more regularly with this. I've re worked quite a lot so would love to hear your thoughts! Thank You

    :)
  • JTurk3D
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    JTurk3D polycounter lvl 3
    Another WIP, I've been slowly working on the hair, about 30% of the way through it, still a long way to go! 

    It's been taking me a while to do this, although it uses the same process I showed previously, I've put more of an emphasis on the breakup layer to try and get the messier look, still fairly early so still a lot of work to do to get it looking how I like! I'll share some more of the process steps soon! :)

  • JTurk3D
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    JTurk3D polycounter lvl 3
    Finally finished! Had a lot of fun working on this! I'll post a little breakdown of the hair soon :)













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