Master Study: Nextgen character creation

I'm Sai and I'm a programmer/writer/whiner but sometimes I do art. I've been doing some of the modeling and most of the technical art work for Vacant Sky Awakening but I've never made a complete character by myself from start to finish (usually it gets passed around from teammate to teammate for different stages of the pipeline). To better my skills and understand the artistic side of it more, I'm going to do a master study to make a nextgen character completely by myself.

Goals:

• Learn to model and sculpt clothes with realistic folds, wrinkles, and tears
• Learn an efficient and visually appealing workflow for modeling hair
• Figure out how UV mapping in Zbrush is supposed to work
• Learn to model accessories in Zbrush instead of constantly switching back and forth with 3ds Max
• Learn to texture skin convincingly
• Learn to produce realistic fabric textures, maps, and materials
• Lastly, get the character optimized for game usage and playable in an Unreal Engine 4 level

The first steps I undertook last night were to work on blocking out the basic forms of the body in Zbrush:



And a closeup on the face:



Next, I'll be using the blocked-out body as a base to simulate and sculpt the clothes. I got a start last night but am not yet far enough to show anything interesting.

Male or female? I just can't tell.

He's a he.

Usually...

As a tip for making realistic skin, use pictures of real skin to work from when creating your skin texture. Generally same goes for clothing materials :)

That technique is actually outdated nowadays due to physically-based rendering. Real skin pictures have information such as specularity, roughness, subsurface scattering, etc baked in and can't be easily extracted. When photo textures are used, they're used from high res 3D scans in ambient lighting which are processed to remove the specular term. ...Unfortunately, I really can't afford to do that since it's very expensive.

With our PBR shaders, that information is dynamically added ingame so it shouldn't be in the texture.

I've still been struggling with getting PBR skin to look really good so this'll be a good excuse to knuckle down and get it right! I'll be sure to chronicle the steps I take to see if I've messed up anywhere obvious.

I decided to start from the bottom up with the clothes. He wears several layers, so I'm going to gradually built up from the inside out.

I started blocking out the pants:







Still in the rough blocking out stage, but it's starting to come together. I'm not going to get too obsessive over details just yet since a lot of it is going to be occluded by his coat. I'll wait to start adding fine details and correcting mistakes until I've got all the clothing layers in place. One thing I've learned about 3D is not to spend too much time on something until you know for sure it'll be needed.

Current poly count: 405,821

I got a start on blocking out the undershirt. I'm playing fast and loose here and being lazy with the shoulders and collar because they'll be completely occluded by his coat and cloak when I get to the upper layers. I probably could have gone without doing the undershirt at all, but for the sake of realism, I thought it might inform the structure and folds of the upper layers.

Current poly count: 523,936

That looks pretty good, so far.

Thanks! I'm still pretty early into the process and haven't had a chance to really ruin it yet.

I got a start on the coat:







Current poly count: 604,278

I ended up deciding that the first design I was working on was too easy and didn't have enough variation in it to make it a good learning experience, so I started over on a different character.



I'm still in the stage where I'm roughly blocking out shapes for the clothes. I'll probably end up removing the squarish laces altogether for something more elaborate later.



Not terribly happy with the wrinkles on the back of her legs. Will soften those out on a later pass.



This one is most decidedly female.



Face is a decent start but maybe a little too youthful looking.

I'm pretty pleased with my start so far. I think I'll work on fixing up the pants a bit next.

Current poly count: 202,243

Youthful or not, it looks like it fits in a medieval setting, if that is what you are aiming for. Don't I recall somewhere hearing that they tended to be married off around the age of 14-ish, maybe 16-ish or so? A youthful appearance still fits, in that case.

That is very true and a good point.

Progress made! I've refined the clothes a fair bit and improved the wrinkles on her pants.







Current poly count: 664,574

I started adding her ammo pouches (only one is done for now) and belts. Still struggling to get the buckles to look good so I've left them off for now.







Next I'll be refining the straps a bit and trying to add the buckles.

Current poly count: 666,643

I've (finally) finished sculpting her straps, buckles, and ammo pouches. Getting the straps to wrap properly around the mesh without clipping was a nightmare, even with the curve brush.





Note to self: Ask how those pouches are supposed to be affixed to the straps.



I think I overdid it with the detailing on the pants so I might go back to the drawing board on them. I think it's also about time to properly lace up her blouse.

Current poly count: 672,253

I did end up doing her pants to make them less busy. I think it's a big improvement.







Now to redo the laces...

Current poly count: 675,908