Zbrush Personal Project (Valzythe Character Creation)

Part 2

After the Maya project it was time to go back to my un-finished Zbrush project. This was a project I was thoroughly enjoying and was eager to delve back into. I was especially eager to improve my digital painting skills and efficiency, make a professional design process and continue to learn the sculpting software after so long of maya modelling. I would also like to practise taking work between the two so I can export a sculpt as a low poly model in maya and animate it/ drop it into a game engine. This was where I last left off the project. (with a new more textured background and better presentation) 

From this it was time to create a value study which would eventually lead onto a model sheet and then the sculpting begins. I've been trying to adopt a new style for my iteration process to gain some more Photoshop and digital painting skills. I also would like this character to follow a very Dark Souls-esque look as these concepts where my inspiration from the start. I started with a very rough value, just block colours of dark and light to show where parts would be and give a sense of light direction. Then I worked over this by shading over it and erasing into it until I ended up with the final value. From this I will make a model sheet so I can better understand all angles of my character for the sculpting process.  

Before Starting...

SO, before I get into Zbrush for my sculpt of this character I need to re-kindle the knowledge learnt throughout BA2. I decided to do a real simple test to adapt myself to the programme navigation and tools again. I took a 2D game, 'The Binding Of Isaac' and chose a creature I could see a nice, simple 3D design being possible. I used a few sub tools, poly groups and a mixture of brushes. I also used the poly paint function to better understand the materials part of Zbrush. Although for my character I will un-wrapping the UV and painting it in Photoshop as I will be able to create a better painted surface with Photoshops software. I picked it up again fairly easily and it took me no time at all to create this 3D creature. I will do some more hard surface and clothing tests before I begin work on the final sculpt and slowly get my skills to a more advanced level. 

Time to get on with some 3D work. 

With Zbrush all familiarised again It was time to start getting the base skeleton down of, what would become, my character.  I started by using the Zsphere function we used back on the 7 Virtues project to produce a rough stick man as a start point. I then turned it into a mesh skin ready to be sculpted on. I began fleshing out the skeleton, trying to keep my anatomy correct and get a good feel of human muscles. 

Alongside the sculpting element I wanted to try making the base mesh of any hard surfaced elements, such as the helmet and general armour elements in Autodesk Maya. Transferring meshes between maya and zbrush and back is something I've wanted to be able to do effectively ever since my first Zbrush project, I shall use this project as a learning opportunity to develop these skills. I went a-head and made the base mesh for my mask/helmet design in Maya, making sure to keep it all in quads and at not too high a poly count. 

With that successfully made I took it over to my model in zbrush to test if it: A. worked in Zbrush and B. Fitted on the zbrush body in a way that made sense. I'd also continued to flesh out my zbrush body a bit more and added a rough idea of muscles so I could work a nice skin over the body and/or get the clothes laying upon the body correctly. Anatomy and human muscles are something I've never really looked into enough and is another element I want to focus on and hopefully be something I can gain from this personal project. 

Next I duplicated the body with the muscles on and sculpted over it/smoothed it down to give the illusion of skin over the same muscles. I tweaked it quite a bit and then added some details to the face/head to give me some rough details to build a face onto (not as though it's needed given it's secluded behind the mask). I'll need to pose the body into a better position as the posture is a bit wrong right now and it doesn't quite look like he'd be able to stand like that steadily. 

When attempting to pose this model I realised there where quite a few issues with the models forms and the structure of it. Researching more into the male human form is a very vital part of getting my male character right, After all it's the foundation which shapes every male character. I think I may have to take a break from the character creation process until I've done sufficient anatomy studies and have enough research together to get this right. This project has already taken far longer than anticipated however it's more about the personal learning experience throughout for me than it is getting a finished product.