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[FINISHED] Shaman stylized character creation to learn some [UE4]

greentooth
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Anton_Guzeev greentooth
The result:




Original post:
Wazzup people.
I am currently in the process of finishing the Highpoly for this Shaman dude based on the art by Yasen Stoilov (original concept here)

After taking part in my first GamesJam I see the need to broaden my skiilset beyond Zbrush and Substance painer.
So here is the plan: I wanna spend less time on polishing this guy and instead learn some new skills like:

Minimum:
  • Rigging and skinning in maya using built-in autorig system
  • Learning the basics of animation in maya to create a simple Idle animation
  • Importing and setting up the character in UE4
  • learning how physics works in UE4 and uisng it to make some parts of the character be affected by it (mainly leaves on the head and the leather skirt)
  • Creating presentation with one simple idle animation that can be used as a GIF like this one
Ideal:
  • Learning at least something about animation trees in UE4
  • Making a very basic animation tree or however it is actually called in UE4
  • Modify Mixamo animations until they fit my purpose. I want this guy to walk, stand and do some primitive casting when I press LMB
  • Maybe learning some basic FX stuff like making his stuff glow or something
  • Learn something about sockets in UE4 so I can make the staff swappable and maybe do another version of the staff to play with that.
Here is how it looks now, BTW




Currently I have to create the stuff and do some minor polish. Good luck to me, I guess.
Cheers.

Replies

  • Gannon
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    Gannon interpolator
    awesome sculpt, Looking forward to seeing more progress!
  • jose.fuentes
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    jose.fuentes interpolator
    you nailed the concept, looking forward to seeing where this goes 
  • Anton_Guzeev
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    Anton_Guzeev greentooth
    Thank you. Jose!
    Thanks, Gannon! (Feels kinda weird talking to ya after defeating you in BOTW) 
    Lets say I've done the HP for the staff



    All that is left to do for highpoly is some minor polish (just an evening or two, I promise) and start retopoing. Not the funnest part, but the sooner I'll get to it. the sooner I'll be done with it
    Cheers!
  • Piemaster
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    Piemaster greentooth
    Wicked sculpt. You did a great job, looking forward to seeing more.
  • Anton_Guzeev
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    Anton_Guzeev greentooth
    Okay, It itook a lot of time, and I am not happy with that, but I have finally retopoed and baked the sucker. Have to tell ya - making all of his leaves unique objects certainly did not speed up the process.  As well as life finding it's way to steal a lot of my time form this project((


    But for what it is worth, here's the lowpoly:


    I am not going to make the guy the most detailest asset in the world, but making him one 2k sheet was also a bit too much for me, so I separated him into 5 textures - head, body, his leather parts, his wooden armor and the staff. This way I can optimize the texture sizes a bit and play into Idea that he might have different outfits as game characters tend to do. I definitely am planning to play with making different staves, like, put some leather stipes on highpoly, rebake it, and call it "staff+1" or something.


    I was really not paying attention to polycount on this guy, but for what it's worth it is 35k of triangles. I am sure there is a lot that can be done to bring the polycount down, but I was in a hurry and it still took a long ass time, so I won't let perfectionism take the best of me here.

    I have been paying attention to the topology flow, but I am sure have messed up. if anyone there pays attention, please me a hint If I have done something obviously wrong.


    I have aimed this project at learning something about skinning, animation and Unreal, so I'll restrain myself from delving into texturing for the time being and go do some learning about skinning, adding physics in UE4 and stuff like that. 
    I am also going on vacation for two weeks, so the next post will probably be in another month. I'll try to post something in a next couple of days, but no promises. So far the plans are to watch some basic course on skinning in maya, probably not the fastest thing, to go through, but we'll see.

    I know that topology and bakes are not the most captivating of subjects, so here is a picture if my cat as a compensation. Isn't she cute?

  • Anton_Guzeev
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    Anton_Guzeev greentooth
    Okay, I am back from vacation!
    Still a bit dizzy in terms of willingness to study instead of watching anime and gaming.
    I've completed Hyper Light Drifter two times (NG and NG+) during this time and want to do boss rush, guys, its a problem

    But at least I have managed to watch two courses about HumanIK since I do not want to create complete rig from the ground up. Seems to be a great system for the base humanoids but there seems to be hard to add any addiional bones.But that is a problem I will deal a bit later with.

    I've done a test skinning of base body to the base bones to see how it looks.
    Here are some gifs from mixamo:





    As the next step I'll watch some more tutorials on basics of rigging and skinning, add the rest of the bones and try to skin the guy to the best of by abilities. If later I realise I have messed something up, I'll just redo it again. That is the process of learing, is it not))

    PS: I gotta say, painting weights in Maya is a bit more confusing than I thought. Maybe thats just my experience with skinning using 3dMax a while back, but skinning in maya feels rigid, wich is weird since from what I understand Maya is the program of choice for riggers and to lesser extent the animators, but again, that might just be me being used to Max. I'll watch some more tutorials and do some more skinning and maybe it will dawn on me.
    PPS: Keeeping this thread is really helpful at least for structuring my own thoughts and figuring out what to do next. Now all I have got to do is keep it up and also start visinig other threads. Yeah, that'll be nice.
  • CheeseOnToast
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    CheeseOnToast greentooth
    I know you're trying to learn skinning, so adding a plugin at this stage might make things even more complicated. However, I highly recommend ngSkinTools as a helper to Maya's native skinning.


    There's a free version for non-commercial use. It handles certain things like mirroring, smoothing and locking weights much more nicely than Maya's defaults, IMO. It also allows you to paint weights non-destructively in layers, which is amazing. 
  • Anton_Guzeev
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    Anton_Guzeev greentooth
    Just a quick update before I go to bed:
    I have attached the armor to the body to see how it looks together in motion, because it was easy and didn't require any additional bones.
    Found some clipping that is easily fixable, just a couple of simple mesh tweaks.





    The  reason I am bringing this little thing up is because seeing my 3d model in motion really clears up the head in terms of modelling: Animation brings up the things I have glossed over or plainly was not thinking about during modelling. The now obvious thing that the guy should bend his leg and there gonna be clipping issues just didn't occur to me. I guess the clipping is not that obvious and could totally be ignored if that guy is supposed to be just a mob in a mobile game or something, but it is not the point.
    The point is that artists in he industry become more and more specialised and sometimes don't even have the opportunity to talk to someone down the pipeline, but we should all still keep the entire process in mind while doing our part of the job, and the best way to do it is to do the whole pipline by yourself. At least to some extent. 

  • allmighty_thunder
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    allmighty_thunder polycounter lvl 13
    you have a very good way with forms i like it
  • Nuclear Angel
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    Nuclear Angel polycounter
    This is a really cool model, and I love that you take the time to do the entire character process. I look forward to see it in movement and textured. 
  • Anton_Guzeev
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    Anton_Guzeev greentooth
    I know you're trying to learn skinning, so adding a plugin at this stage might make things even more complicated. However, I highly recommend ngSkinTools as a helper to Maya's native skinning.


    There's a free version for non-commercial use. It handles certain things like mirroring, smoothing and locking weights much more nicely than Maya's defaults, IMO. It also allows you to paint weights non-destructively in layers, which is amazing. 
    Thanks dude! I'll check it out!
  • Anton_Guzeev
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    Anton_Guzeev greentooth
  • Anton_Guzeev
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    Anton_Guzeev greentooth

    Okay, so I have done a rough skinning of the shaman guy with all the outfit this time. Base skinning tools for this time, cause I have to have a point of comparison, but I definitely keep NGTools in mind (Thanks again, @CheeseOnToast)

    Still needs refinement, but for now that is enough to send him to Unreal with a couple of placeholder animations from mixamo (idle. walk, run, jump) to learn the basics of the Unreal side of this project.

    I really am looking forward to making his leather and leaves react to physics!







  • Anton_Guzeev
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    Anton_Guzeev greentooth
    Heyy! with help of some tutorials I have managed to do basic anim tree in UE4 and now it runs and even jumps, although jumping immediately made me realise how complicated all this stuff is.it has to start and end in sync with jumping mechanics and somehow keep in falling parn of an animation until the charrracter hits the ground etc etc. SO COMPLICATED!
    but for now lets stick to the basics: I want to see his leather flap and add a socket for the staff.
    After that I think I can work on proper idle with staff, and do some texturing, I guess  =)

    http://youtu.be/k_UkPvbJ0NA
    Love yall!
  • CheeseOnToast
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    CheeseOnToast greentooth
    Looking good man. Always nice to see a character artist getting their hands dirty with rigging and animation stuff. Getting a basic state machine going is harder than it looks.
  • Anton_Guzeev
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    Anton_Guzeev greentooth
    Hey yall!
    I have got itno animDynamics a bit. That stuff rocks!
    A bit unintuitive, but cheap, since it does not actually use physics or something like that.
    anyway, it gabe me the exact result I wanted for the bottles, everythind else still needs some tweaking, but that is neverending process. Oh, and I reacts to the wind in the level just like that! really cool thing with a lot of settings that I have no idea what for))

    I guess I'll go and do some texturing now, coupled with creating appropriate Idle pose with the staff. I beilieve I can do that. just some more tutorials to watch)))

    BTW while I was figuring what to use, I have dabbled with actual phisics assets, so I can at least create some stuff on the chain that you can push around.



    http://youtu.be/C-fSlqXbkFw
  • Anton_Guzeev
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    Anton_Guzeev greentooth
    hey yall.
    not much free time recently, but I have assemled a first procedural texural pass on this guy. Planning to go over later and repaint at least some of it, but for now it will do.
    Now I'll try to find time and do the Idle pose as well as maybe some glowing fx on his eyes and beltstone.
    have to assemble some sort of base for final scene as well.

    http://youtu.be/QVRe_pmYVhM
  • HarlequinWerewolf
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    HarlequinWerewolf polycounter
    Hey, he's looking awesome! The dynamic animation adds so much to him. Any tips for how to get into that? I'd love to give it a go for a few of my characters
  • Anton_Guzeev
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    Anton_Guzeev greentooth
    Hey, he's looking awesome! The dynamic animation adds so much to him. Any tips for how to get into that? I'd love to give it a go for a few of my characters

    Hey @HarlequinWerewolf ! I am quite new to this stuff myself) For now the best first option in unreal seems to be AnymDynamics. I have picked up basics in this stream:
    http://youtu.be/5h5CvZEBBWo
    and then just toyed with it. I can not say I have mastered the tool in any way, and I still have to go through all the setup again to fine tune the results)
    But I will be glad to help if you want to ask something specific, so we learn together ^_^
  • HarlequinWerewolf
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    HarlequinWerewolf polycounter
    Awesome! Thanks for letting me know. Unreal is on my list of things to learn, just need to find time between other projects :P 
  • Anton_Guzeev
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    Anton_Guzeev greentooth
    Created a basic Idle pose with  just a little bit of motion to make the image alive. I have to come up with some way to loop the filnal mage, cause there are things like wind and glowing that do not wit into the idle cicle. maybe just create the looong animation so the jumping is not that noticable. I dont know yet.
    And I also have to find a way to produce bette looking GIFs, cause this is sort of terrible)))



  • Anton_Guzeev
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    Anton_Guzeev greentooth
    Okay my friends, I have found one solution for the GIF quality. soesnt help with the looping issue, but still. Check it out! Good old Vadim Bakhlychev knows his sh*t pretty well:
    https://www.artstation.com/slipgatecentral/blog/NEpB/artstation-and-your-gifs

  • Anton_Guzeev
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    Anton_Guzeev greentooth
    So, the issues with GIF so far: the more colors the more apparent the dithering is gonna be. More colors mean the GIF is going to be heavier. Also, the more frames it has the heavier it gets.
    To get higher quality GIF that also loops correctly I have to come up with some optimization.

    Ideas so far: Optimize the background, remove fancy gradient in favor of basic gray, make the base one solid green color, make the resulting image smaller. That considering the GIF size.
    To at least lessen the issue of looping, I think I will increase the amplitude on actual animation and lower the power of wind. 

    So there is probably gonna be two setups -
    *One for the static image and the video - with the fancy background and base and stuff and some FX like fireflies or sparkles
    *One simpler one - for the GIF -with some or all of the optimization Ideas mentioned above.

    I think that is It regarding the final Image. Now I am going to actually learn some animation stuff and do some hand painting for the textures.
    And I need to gather one good reference for the "Idle with stuff" animation

    Cheers!
  • Emhain
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    Emhain polycounter lvl 6
  • codyaq2
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    codyaq2 greentooth
  • Anton_Guzeev
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    Anton_Guzeev greentooth
    Okay I have tweaked the textures in substance, now it is time to actually handpaint some stuff.
    The animatin got some rework as well, see the GIF




  • dreadleft
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    dreadleft greentooth
    Yes. With animations, every character looks so much better. Good job
  • Anton_Guzeev
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    Anton_Guzeev greentooth
    Hey guys! 
    I have toyed with a couple of things, mainly have started painting over some of the textures, mainly the staff and the mask, even though the mask still needs more lovetyed with Idle animation a bit. I have also created the base, finally! With grass that is affected by wind no less! It still needs some love (the colors will definetely be tweaked), but I am actually proud of myself for once, because I have learned a lot!

    The useful thing I have learned here is how to upload custom collision to UE4 -  create the colliision mesh in the same scene as the mesh and name it "UCX_mesh_name" and export them both in a single fbx. A very simple solution, although not the obvious one. I have spend a decent amount of time, trying to figure out how to add collision as a separate mesh, but found no such option.

    I like how the grass turned out. I have projected the normals from the base onto the grass mesh, and it almost seamlessly merged with it!


    I have also painted some vertex colors to use later to controll what the wind affects


    I have watched one tutorial to make the grass act as if affected by the wind (thank the great Progress for the internet). "As if" because the wind node is marked as mobile and probably does just basic noise displacement without taking actual wind in the scene into account, which is fine by me. At least for now. 



    The movement is subtle, but I do not want to attract attention to it anyway. If I have time, in the future I want to figure out how to offset some of the grass movement, so it doesn't all move in unison. TBH right now it feels almost alien and tentacle-like.

    I think I'll also try to use vertex color to darken the base and maybe add some other visual variety.

    As I have said, the colors will still be tweaked in the future, but for now it will do.

    In other news I think I am done with staff diffuse. Of course it is not the best texture ever, but I still make myself move forward without getting stuck on making everything perfect. This is a learning project more than anything else.






    Overall progress so far:


    http://youtu.be/k1qXDmN3HNo

    Now I need to finish texturing the rest of the guy, and then set up the materials a bit better, because right now everything seems to be reflecting incorrectly. I want the leaves to be shiny!

    After that it is almost done. But not really, cause I will have to look into some post effects as well as play around with lighting, although honestly I like how it looks already. Oh, and I think I should add some details to the background texture. Just to make it more graphic.


    That's it for now folks. Love ya  <3

  • Anton_Guzeev
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    Anton_Guzeev greentooth
    The detailed post about will happen on the weekend, but here is the video with the current state of the project, before I make even more changes)
    In short, I have been working on the background. Created the texture for the background mesh, added some detail maps to it. T
    o fill the scene a bit more and create a sense of depth,I have created simple silhouettes of grass and trees.
    The thing I am most proud of is material with fake water effects around the grass. It is not  very noticeable, but it shouldn't be. Man, playing around with materials in UE4 is pure fun!

    Oh, and also particles, to imitate fireflies, because why not))

    http://youtu.be/NwfyBUsZAs8

  • Anton_Guzeev
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    Anton_Guzeev greentooth
    Water foam material
    I created this particular effect to create some transition between the grass and background mesh, and also to pronounce the illusion of the swamp.
    Geo is a simple mesh ribbon mapped in a straight line around ground isles. 


    The effect is mostly done using a simple texture pack: Red channel would determine the general area where the effect would happen, green to create some outwards going rings, blue contained simple Photoshop clouds that I would use to warp the UVs and alpha contained the gradient to hide the effect on the outer portion of the used geometry
     

    Than I plugged those into material editor and start playing 

    And the result looks like this:


    Background
    Most of it is quite standard - I have created the 1k texture for the background that looked blurry, so I added some detail map on top




    and than I have added some simple planes with grass and trees silhouettes create sense of depth and fill in background a bit.





    Something like that)
  • Anton_Guzeev
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    Anton_Guzeev greentooth
    Hand painting pass on textures is done, baby!
    It is not Ideal but it was definitely worth it! Thanks to the great feedback of the awesome @Svartberg, I was able to learn a bit about hand painting textures in Photoshop and 3d Coat. There is definitely a lot more to learn, but at least I've got the grasp on the tools and techniques and was able to add some additional details.
    The Idea to change the yes is Svartberg's as well but I love it! it will not be noticebla in static shots, but in the animation Shamans eyes flicker and with added depth they have more visual interest.




  • Anton_Guzeev
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    Anton_Guzeev greentooth
    atmospherics are done is well. Added some basic fog and tweaked the lighting a bit
    http://youtu.be/EFhhGAJBlus


  • allmighty_thunder
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    allmighty_thunder polycounter lvl 13
    That has really come together  really cool
  • Crazy_pixel
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    Crazy_pixel interpolator
    Very cool project. Love the style or your character  :)
  • JamesBrisnehan
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    JamesBrisnehan polycounter
    I've got to say, my favorite part of the new paint job are the eyes. So such rich color and depth. I kind of wish his eyes weren't glowing in the video, at least not glowing the whole time. But anyway, great work over all.
  • Anton_Guzeev
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    Anton_Guzeev greentooth
    So, I declare the project completed!
    Here is the final result

    And of course the obligatory link to artstation: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/Jl6RDD

    In the beginning of the project I have created some goals for myself. Lets see How I managed.

    Minimum:
    • Rigging and skinning in maya using built-in autorig system -  Done! Got myself acquainted with HumanIK in Maya. I am not  sure about the flexibility of this particular tool, I hand troubles setting Up the Staff rig and there are some keying issues, but that tool should be more than enough for most basic stuff, I feel, and I'll try to use it again and understand it more.
    • Learning the basics of animation in maya to create a simple Idle animation - Done! Honestly, I have done the bare minimum, because animation does not seem interesting to me, but still I think I should invest more time into it to be able to create at least basic stuff.
    • Importing and setting up the character in UE4 - Done! Nuff said here. Even learned how to add vertex color and set up mip levels and some other stuff
    • learning how physics works in UE4 and using it to make some parts of the character be affected by it (mainly leaves on the head and the leather skirt) - Done! In my case the ideal solution turned out to be anymDynamics, but again, I have barely scratched the surface of all the dynamic stuff you can do with your mesh in Unreal
    • ✔Creating presentation with one simple idle animation that can be used as a GIF like this one - Done! Although due to Gif limitations and Artstation's size cap for images, the Gif sort of went into background and I have spent most of the time working on a video, learning sequencer and adding stuff like glowing particles and pulsating eyes and wind, that could not be easily looped, but could be captured in a video without any problems. I have even gave my YouTube channel some use)
    Ideal:
    • ✔ Learning at least something about animation trees in UE4 - Done! But indeed, something it is - I have created the simplest solution to make the guy run and jump, but that was hacky at best and anim blueprints is one thing I feel I have to invest loads more time to understand it and I do not want to. But I have to. 
    • ✔ Making a very basic animation tree or however it is actually called in UE4 - Done! But again - see previous entry.
    • X Modify Mixamo animations until they fit my purpose. I want this guy to walk, stand and do some primitive casting when I press LMB - Nope! This one clearly failed. Even though I have used Mixamo animations for walking and jumping, I have not modified them at all and there is no signs of him casting anything)
    • ✔ Maybe learning some basic FX stuff like making his stuff glow or something - Done! Lets call this done but that is more due to the vagueness of the description. I have indeed learned some basic particle parameters to create me some bugs and I have played a lot with material effects to create the water rings, so I guess it is a win.
    • ✔Learn something about sockets in UE4 so I can make the staff swappable and maybe do another version of the staff to play with that.- Done! I have indeed leaned the basics of sockets in unreal, and theoretically I can swap his stuff, but I have not done that, so it remains to be seen how successful it will be. I have also learned that things that are crucial to animations and need some special rigging should not be placed in sockets and should have their own bones and stuff. I could still swap them, but this time I will be sure they will behave correctly.
    So here It is folks! All in all, this is a successful project and the funnest one I have been working on.
    I will rename the theme as  [FINISHED] but there still may be some posts because I want to test out a couple of things and maybe play with animations some more.

    I hope at least someone have learned something along with me 
    Good luck everyone and have a great year!
  • Anton_Guzeev
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    Anton_Guzeev greentooth
    I've got to say, my favorite part of the new paint job are the eyes. So such rich color and depth. I kind of wish his eyes weren't glowing in the video, at least not glowing the whole time. But anyway, great work over all.
    The deep eyes are entirely Svartberg's idea and I have actually modified the material so you could see them not glowing in the video sometimes, but I had to turn the flicker off for the GIF to make it fit Artstaion's stupid limitations on GIFs
    Thanks for the kind words)
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