Second Portfolio Piece Update

                                                     Portfolio piece 02_Mid point check.
So this time I'm trying to make armor set. I was trying to learn and see if I can use the hard surface tools in Zbrush to do it, I tried couple of times with the Zsphere -> topology method, but it didn't turn out well. So eventually I decided to stick with the original plan and started to build it in Maya. This is where I am currently, I'm blocking out the big shape pieces, and all the details will be sculpted in Zbrush later. All the burning eyes, and very tiny metal details on the armor will be painted in texture.

Second portfolio piece concept

For the second portfolio piece meanwhile I'm also working on the previous one, I'm going to build an armor set for a character ( since the previous piece was mainly organic, I feel I need to learn and practice how to do more complicated hard surface for characters.) I started from Zbrush last time, so this time I will start from building it in Maya ( meanwhile I'm also interested in keep learning hard surface in ZBrush). My goal for each portfolio piece is to do what I can to learn something new and explore the tools, and eventually figure out a workflow and system which suits me. 

Art itself is an endless journey of growing and exploring ~ very proud of being an artist!! 

Final Portfolio Piece Preview

So far I'm in the stage of finishing the Topology for low res model. Although it's very challenging in every step of making this character, I have been learning tremendously of making organic in ZBrush. The most challenging part for Topology right now is how to get the poly shape right at those very hard to reach areas such as behind the ears, behind the neck in-between the skin and the hair, and the hair itself. Made a set of armor in Maya then imported into ZBrush, I will have to redo the armor during the break, also I will finish the bottom body part for this characters including legs, feet, and a tail. The final in-game character will be render in Substance Painter. The final render for the entire character as concept work will be in Keyshot.

Here's a version of what the final model would look like. I did a Photoshop paint over on the 3D model to show my plan for texturing: Skin color, skin details, hair color, horn color, eyes color, and the dragon burning mark. 

 The ancient pre-historical Chinese characters on the top left means: Old Dragon. This character is a very old god dragon long lived back to the pre-historical time in ancient Chinese legend. During the war of gods before the world was created in chaos, there was only darkness. When there was light, this old Dragon pushed the sky and earth apart so later on all creatures on earth can never reach to where god lives, ever since then the mystery of the world has never been known. 

I know he's still somewhere, probably in another cosmos other than ours beyond our capability of intelligence and understanding. And I know there are billions other worlds and universes outside of ours without the definition of time and space goes on alive endlessly. 

And yes, for a character like this, for the cosmos we are living in, and for many other dimensions beyond our wisdom,   

forever is not long enough.

     

 Below are some snapshots from ZBrush:

Overall body: 

 Front face view:

Facial details 

Hair

Hand Detail

Body detail:

Topology it. 

Final Portfolio Concept

For my first highly polished portfolio piece, I choose this guy as my character. The challenge for this one is how to make his hair, and how to render his skin and muscle as real as possible. I'm going to do the upper half ( from his waist and above, including both of his arms, but no wings for now. I do want to make this character complete later.)

Substance Painter Stencil

After I Submitted my homework I started to play around the stencil because I wanted to add some picture patterns onto this helmet instead of just keeping it as a solid color model. I browsed all the provided stencil there are, and I wonder if I could make my own stencil - I found out yes I could! (=^0^=) 

I checked the substance youtube tutorial and it says it was simply made in Photoshop as PSD and import it as image (File -> import image into project). I wonder if I could import the image as .psd, or .ai since I like making the pattern in illustrator. It turned out that only certain format can be imported such as PNG, JPEG. But not psd or ai. So I made the stencil image in Illustrator, then save it as PNG, then imported into painter. 

One more thing I found out was when making the stencil:

1) It doesn't matter if it's color or black and white, because after imported into painter, it automatically change it into grey scale. If you want to have colors on it, you have to customize the brush and paint over the stencil. 

2) When making the stencil, make sure the background is BLACK, and stencil image is WHITE! I tried transparent background with white image, or white background with black image, them imported them, it didn't work out. It's like masked out the image itself and when you paint you are painting OUTSIDE of the image shape, but not IN the image shape itself. 

Wrong stencil size ( it was too full filled the frame ).

Wrong stencil background ( the background is actually transparent, in this grey blog is shows grey)

RIGHT DESIGN ( Black background, smaller sized pattern, pattern color white ).

3) When making the stencil, make sure to resize the pattern much smaller than the background. So when imported the image the stencil will be tiled as repeated but there will be distance between each repeated image. If when making the pattern and it's filled the entire background, then there will be no space in between the tiled stencil in painter which makes painting over the shape really difficult.

But basically if I want to add very beautiful and more complicated colored pattern onto the model, I either have to use brush to hand paint them directly on the model, or use stencil shape then paint different colors within the stencil. 

Not sure how customized pattern can work out in Designer. 

Also, seems there is no way to export the 3D viewer as an image!!!! You can only export all the channels into different maps. So in order to have a view shot I have to use the Print screen button.... (=@_@=) Really????? 

I haven't figure out how to make color changes AFTER the stencil paint over is done. I tried different places in the software but doesn't seem like they provide any option to change the color??? Or maybe I should try to add a mask to change the stencil layer itself. I will keep exploring the possibilities. It's really fun! :)

Substance Painter Helmet Paint Over.

For this week I played around the substance painter and find out it's such an amazing tool and it will be the ultimate tool for me to render my future 3D concept art piece. I love how the interface is design so much alike Photoshop especially the Layer area. Substance designer and painter are not very hard to learn, and I have figured out a nice work flow to finish an entire 3D model with Maya, Zbrush and Substance. Comparing with designer, painter is indeed more for artistic use than nodes. However when I was using the painter, my computer got slowed down. In designer I didn't have this problem. Not sure how it will go when rendering a more complicated model in future.