Toon Shader Exploration.

This week, I made five potential props for our capstone game. The theme and all elements in this game will be ancient Greek style. I made some potteries, and some architecture parts so they can be used on the three islands.

My plan is to keep working on these parts in this coming week, to sculpt them in Zbrush, adding more texture details, paint them over using the sample reference shown here in Maya, so we can toss them into UE4 and see if they fit the world. There are still many more parts I want to make, these are the starting point.

Toon shader is fun tool. I can imagine using them on certain style characters for a more cartoonish look. Although I don't see we will use Toon shader in our capstone game, it's certainly a very powerful and handy tool to use in future for quick color and lines mock-up.

1) Architecture Parts_01.

The reference is from the research of ancient Egyptian temple columns ( although our game is mainly ancient Greek style, ancient Egypt and Greek civilization came across and blended into each other at some point in history. So here I chose this reference so in this week I can start to paint Nile flowers onto the columns.)

                                       Prepared the column base for future texture paint over.

2) Architecture Parts_02.

For this one I used the a very typical ancient Greek column top as the build. The use for this one in game is as a destroyed left over part from the previous existed civilizations on Zeus. This week, I'm going to export it into Zbrush, and sculpt all the detail textures as shown on the reference picture.

3)Prop Parts_ Pottery 01.

Destroyed homewares are the must-have elements in our game to show a civilization which used to shrine. My plan is to add some minimum flower sculpted details on the pottery body, but mainly will paint over either using Zbrush poly paint, over paint over the UV by using the reference images paint.   

3)Prop Parts_ Pottery 02.

Although Toon shader is not the first option for our game, I'm very happy about how this one turned out. It's very close to its reference image, and the overall effect almost look like it's painted over by oil. The golden material look is the one I'm looking for as building potteries to show a very luxury life style before the civilization was destroyed on three islands.

3)Prop Parts_ Pottery 02.

I tried both warm red and golden for the previous two and they turned out amazing! So this time I wanted to try to use some cold color. I'm happy with the model shape, but doesn't seems cold color, especially this purple, worked out that well. It may look good underwater, which will add a blue tint and tone over it.

*Note*:

I just realized that this week is just for environment, I made all the props instead. So there are 3 quick mock-up environments for a overall look of destroyed civilization corners on three islands.

                Finalize the Design and Photoshop Paint over.

I had done some changes on the models this week based on last week's design. Then had fun of painting them over in Photoshop. The only problem I run into was when paint as "Overlay", seems the color was not vivid and bright enough to bring out the effect I was looking for. The skin texture of the models are grey white. I thought this way could bring out more saturated colors.

I use the method Nick's tutorials taught, Alt+ click on the "Mask" layer to make the selection of the entire shape, which worked out really well!

Final rendered result:

So far this guy is my favorite.

This guy has a lot of exposure skin area, I didn't add too much rough texture on him, because I want to make one with a smoother surface. 

How about a white whale? :)

Insert Mesh Brush.

1) Made 5 different parts as insert mesh brushes for different body types. LOVE the customize ability in ZBrush to create any brush you want and insert them to create characters! >_<

2) Eventually, all 12 were added insert brushes. These whales are obviously not friendly lol...

My favorite three designs for final highly polished and painted ones will be F, G and B.

But Nick picked: F, C and L ~ fine (=>_<=)

This Week, I used the Layer system and redid my 3 different varieties. I did the varieties last week, instead of using layers I saved each individual as a tool. I found out that using Layers is the way easier for concept one character with multiple designs at the same time. Also Morph target is a good tool to use, too.

1) Body type_1

Original Body

3 Varieties

This Week, I used the Layer system and redid my 3 different varieties. I did the varieties last week, instead of using layers I saved each individual as a tool. I found out that using Layers is the way easier for concept one character with multiple designs at the same time. Also Morph target is a good tool to use, too.

2) Body type_2

Original Body

3 Varieties

This Week, I used the Layer system and redid my 3 different varieties. I did the varieties last week, instead of using layers I saved each individual as a tool. I found out that using Layers is the way easier for concept one character with multiple designs at the same time. Also Morph target is a good tool to use, too.

3) Body type_3

Original Body

3 Varieties

This Week, I used the Layer system and redid my 3 different varieties. I did the varieties last week, instead of using layers I saved each individual as a tool. I found out that using Layers is the way easier for concept one character with multiple designs at the same time. Also Morph target is a good tool to use, too.

4) Body type_4.

Original body

3 Varieties.