A little help from the experienced! Improving workflow for 3D characters
polycounter lvl 6
Hello guys,
I am a 3D character artist student in my first year of studies. As I don't have so much experience in creating characters--I have created 1 full creature, posed and rendered in marmoset and a bust of the same, also rendered in marmoset. I am having a very hard time trying to orient my workflow. At this moment, I am creating a female warrior that I started sculpting in zbrush and she is equipped with all sorts of things (armour, leather straps, trousers, boots, a belt, fabrics, that count down from her waist, etc. etc.). In zbrush I sculpted the base mesh body and with extracts and using marvelous, I created clothes and armor. After that, I retopologised only the bust of the girl, regarding the rest I zremeshed and made them into low-poly objects ready for uv unwrapping. I textured, gave pose through zbrush, maintained all the objects separated and....its's actually a mess. I am trying so hard to organize everything and have total control over my character and I'm getting lost. My goal is to create a character that is not presented as a soulless tpose model, but as a model, ready to pose and be "photographed".
I know that everyone has their workflow and it is something that depends to their way of thinking and organising, but I really wanted to know what is it would be a good way to orient my workflow so that I can get better and better.
Thank you in advance
I am a 3D character artist student in my first year of studies. As I don't have so much experience in creating characters--I have created 1 full creature, posed and rendered in marmoset and a bust of the same, also rendered in marmoset. I am having a very hard time trying to orient my workflow. At this moment, I am creating a female warrior that I started sculpting in zbrush and she is equipped with all sorts of things (armour, leather straps, trousers, boots, a belt, fabrics, that count down from her waist, etc. etc.). In zbrush I sculpted the base mesh body and with extracts and using marvelous, I created clothes and armor. After that, I retopologised only the bust of the girl, regarding the rest I zremeshed and made them into low-poly objects ready for uv unwrapping. I textured, gave pose through zbrush, maintained all the objects separated and....its's actually a mess. I am trying so hard to organize everything and have total control over my character and I'm getting lost. My goal is to create a character that is not presented as a soulless tpose model, but as a model, ready to pose and be "photographed".
I know that everyone has their workflow and it is something that depends to their way of thinking and organising, but I really wanted to know what is it would be a good way to orient my workflow so that I can get better and better.
Thank you in advance
Replies
Think outside the box and work the other way around : Once your concept sheet is in a solid enough state (capturing most of what you want out of this character/project), start by making a simple, lightweight body model (or even just a rough blockout) and begin working on its skeleton structure right away. Then check that it can hit all the lively poses that you want. You will be effectively previewing your final end goal ... just a few days into the project. That's extremely valuable.
Once that is done and firmly established, then you can start thinking about details, sculpting, and so on.
99% of CG character artists don't do that (because they think that making a skeleton and doing some skin weighting is so boring, and playing around in Zeebrush is so fun), and are fine with slaving away at a character for months. Tackling things differently will allow you to be much faster, and will allow for much easier iterations.
As a beginner I was having a lot of trouble doing the hi-to-lo workflow. Finally I said enough, it shouldn't be this difficult. So I tried things the opposite way, and it really worked for me. Now I make a character that looks better than some of my earlier characters in literally 1/10th of the time. And it's a more enjoyable way for me to work as I don't need to do any retopo.
So, if you are having too much trouble with your current workflow, run some experiments with alternatives others have tried, and of course don't be afraid to try anything out from your own imagination as well.
Do you want to make a model for games? For movies? Just to enjoy on artstation?
Once you know that, then you can find plenty of tutorials and articles to take you step by step through the process.
I'm not a big ZBrush user, but I know there's some nifty pose tool that you can use like a simple(?) skeleton to pose a character on the quick. But that's about all i know on the topic, it seemed like the easiest way to get to a posed character while avoiding "doing it for real". The other option would be to jump into another program, create a skeleton, or use an autorigger to assist in that step. Weight painting can be copied to other objects, which is a huge help
Specifically to having multiple objects on a posed character, it's totally doable, but not always the norm for realtime games. Unless there's lots of character customization/part swapping going on, clothing is typically a single thing, or broken down into something like Boots, Pants, Shirt. Some dude with suspenders and an armband might exist as separate things in the ZB sculpt, but the low poly game model would have them modeled into the shirt, or even baked on without special geometry if they're flat enough. Another common one is that a long shirt sleeve ends and the arm begins from there, rather than having a full body under the clothing. Sorry this doesn't explicitly answer your question, I'm just rambling out some things to think about without seeing what you're working on or knowing what your end goal and quality are exactly.
Im only interested in game models so I have to make a low poly version. With texturing in mind I group parts together so they will bake properly. There is no real reason to do this because the lowpoly could easily be one mesh. I just prefer to separate things for more control, and a better end result (like the skin so if I need an sss shader I can do that more easily plus painting the body diffuse in ZB is quicker for me). Breaking the figure into parts making sure none are juxtaposed for baking I group the subttols into a few groups. Here I used 3 groups. I export the groups using fbx and naming conventions for substance painter. Then I copy and decimate the groups and send them to a 3d app for retopo/creating low poly cages. I create the lowpolys and uv them, then export them with the same naming convention system. At this stage I'm not interested in posing the character yet. However if you follow pior's advice stuff like weapons and baggage or any character assets wont get in the way of the end animations.
I then import the low models into substance painter and the groups are identified as texture sets.
The hipoly model body already has a diffuse so that bakes fine. The hard surface groups have been poly painted in ZB with different 'clown' colors so they can be isolated for making textures. On the left is the assembled model on the right are it's three parts. Once I have extracted the maps I will use the UE4 skeleton by importing it into whatever 3d app I'm using, then skin the parts to it staking the skin modifies for the groups onto the skeleton. Export the rigged/textured model to UE4 and have some fun. Using the game skeleton lets me use the animation sets from the engine. That is how I take a 16 part model and merge it into one asset.
Hope that helps.