In this blog I will be describing my detailing processes. Let's get started!

I wanted to make a fishnet in zbrush that I could then create an alpha from using the original shirt as the retop (with a bit more optimising). I used a tutorial by Michael Pavlovich on creating a nanomesh for use with Zmodeler. This was a fun technique that I had never used.

I divided a square plane into four then added two mirrored edge loops.

I then divided the edgeloops into smaller loops to make it deform better when on the body. I also squared off the corners.

The mesh was then rotated 45 degrees and used as a nanomesh in zmodeler. I welded the points together so that it made one connected solid mesh.

This is what the full fishnet looks like! I cropped out the hem area to remake, as this would be a lot cleaner and easier in the long run. I also cut out the holes and used pinch to mimic the distortion of elasticated fishnet.

This is the shirt so far! 

This is the model in the BPR renderer. I wanted to see how the fishnet looked here. It is a lot finer but I really liked how the shadows play on the torso.

As I stated in my last post, I planned on exchanging the spikes on the choker with studs. I liked how this looked a lot more.

Now onto how I sculpted the jacket. I kept it divided into polygroups after using Zmodeler to add thickness.This would allow me to use a masking brush and prevent other parts of the jacket being affected by my brush strokes.

I started by adding in some basic seams.

Once I added in the seams I added in some pulling folds and texturing using the standard brush on a light intensity.

It was at this point that I realised I needed to reposition the zip. So I replaced it and edited the position of some of the parts using the polygroups.

I added in stitches along the seams. I really loved how this came out.

For the sleeves, I subdivided them and added in some folds and continued the seam along.

I revisted the holsterand added in the straps. I also added subdivisions to avoid the faceting and so I can apply more detail later on.

The chaps had the same treatment as the jacket. I edited the folds around the knees and added in pulling folds and seams.

I started to think about the way the chaps interacted with the tied cloth around the leg. There would be more tension around the knotted area.

It would also overhang slightly.

I wanted the cloth to be very a thin linen-like material. Therefore it needed more of a rippled texture and would crease easily.

I edited the jeans by adding in heavy folds around the crotch. I also added in a gentle bumpy texture using the standard brush.

The seams were added, and then I thought about changing the pockets. I thought they looked too messy how they were, so I remeshed them and deleted one. I then mirrored the new pocket so that they were exactly symmetrical, and added in the details.

I really love the variety of textures so far.

The gloves would be made of a fine leather and are close fitting, so the folds are minimal here.

I added these large stitches on the thick leather cuffs for variation.

I also blocked in the headband, and I will sculpt it in a similar manner to the leg tie.

This post will be about my blockout workflow for the clothes.

I had a few challenges when importing into Zbrush. At first I didn't weld the patterns together which resulted in a fragmented imported model. I then changed it to welded single mesh and from here I could group the objects into polygroups in Zbrush.

For any parts that were remeshing weirdly I used remesh guides. I did the same for the trousers also.

The jacket was fairly efficiently remeshed and when I upped the sibdivision levels I was able to work on it with very little distortion in the details.

I edited the jacket slightly using the move brush to square off the shoulders a bit and adujst any clipping. I will add thickness using ZModeler.

I edited the position of the zip components using polygroups selection.

I pulled out the chaps at the hips to match the slihouete of my concept. The chaos are made from a thick leather which would enable the rigidity that appears here. I used a lot of reference to consider how the thick leather material would be able to maintain certain folds and poses.

I then started the boot blockout, using a remeshed cylinder and pulling it out, then remeshing it again and adding divisions once I was happy with the basic shape.

Using what i learnt from the first project of the year, I ensured that the sole of the boot adhered to the anatomy of the foot, particularly with the shape. I needed to represent the instep accurately.

I added a heel using a cylinder that I again remeshed and positioned in place. I am not happy with the shape of the boot tip yet but this is something I will revsit at the detailing stage.

To take a break from sculpting, I moved into 3DsMax to model myhardsurface components and props. I started with the spike studs that will appear on the gloves and shoulder.

I made the shoulder pad using a modified rectangle that I shelled out.

I then copied the spikes over in rows.

I made a round stud that would have multiple purposes in the model, e.g. along the lapel of the jacket and on the belt.

I also made a quick cross earring. I tapered in the ends slightly as I liked this a bit better than the rigid straight angles of regular crucifixes.

This is the final high poly lighter.

For the hairspray can and holster I firstly made the can, and then duplicated the outside faces along the main body and then shelled them. This ensured that the holster sat flush against the can. I left a little gap to add in the leather straps and shaped the holster components according to my ref. I added in the leather straps later on in zbrush.

I made the beltbuckle using a modified cuboid and then used turbsmooth for a smooth curved shape.

I tested my new props in Zbrush and I really liked how it was coming together.

I made a curve brush using the stud mesh, and placed large studs along the edges of the chaps.

I placed the earring and played around with the position. This might move once the hair is in place.

At first I added in the spikes of the choker in my concept but I found that I really didn't like how they looked. There were too many spikes around this area and it needed a bit of breakup. I decided in the end that I would use the studs along the choker instead.

I created a thin piece of fabrich that would be tied around the leg. I eventually will add a knot and alpha strands.

The chaps needed some thickness so I added this using zmodeler.

The belt on top was made using the curve snap strap tool and remeshed.

I had a chat with my mentor about proportions for fighting game characters and found that regardless of style, characters often had larger hands for stronger impact. 

Even though it looked strange at the modelling section, once the character is posed it had a much stronger appearance.

With this in mind I edited the size of my character's hands, and also edited the size of the wrists to match. I made sure that it didn't look too disproportionate once I was finished, and checked it with one of my tutors.

This is how it looks so far! Next I will be discussing my detailing process.

Marvelous Designer was my next big challenge. I had never used it before and now I was going to test it by making a simple pair of trousers. I used my model as the avatar, as it made the most sense to make sure the clothes fit and drape over him correctly. I had a few sizing issues at first which affected the arrangement points but I later fixed this by reimporting with the correct settings. 

I started by making a basic trouser pattern and experimented with the sizing.

They're way too big in this, so I made the pattern islands smaller.

With more experimentation and editing the material preset I made a pair of jeans! I was happy with these for a first attempt as I really liked how the material draped around the model. However, they would not be seen in full as they would be covered witha a pair of chaps. 

So the next stage was to start working on the chaps pattern. I made a lot of mistkes with this, despite using chaps pattern reference. There were a lot of components to them and as a result, more to go wrong. It took a lot of tweaking of sizes and positions of pattern islands.

Eventually I got a good chap shape. 

 However, the chaps in my design were unconventional and needed to be a lot slimmer fitting to tuck into the boots. I edited the shape like I did with the jeans. I was happy with how the chaps were draping over the material underneath.

I added more details to the jeans, like the zipper and back pockets.

Next I made the shirt. I will add the netting in Zbrush, but to start with I need the base. The tank top pattern was simple to make. After making the base shirt I made the hem using internal pattern offset and creating a pattern from this, then sewing it on.

I used layering to ensure that the shirt tucked into the chaps and deformed accordingly.

The jacket was definitely the hardest to make. I started with the back and front panels, which were somewhat simple. They required a lot of curved edges to fit together well. Of course, I used reference of jacket patterns throughout the process.

The sleeves went through a couple of changes. At first I used one pattern, but then after experimenting with the way it affected the rest of the jacket I found that I liked using two pieces of fabric for the sleeves best.

The front was hanging much too loosely. I changed the fabric preset to a thicker cowhide which made the jaket more rigid.

I altered the shapes of everything slightly until I was happy with the way it simulated.

I pulled the sleeves up to rest above the forearm. I would edit the roll of the sleeves and the squareness of the shoulders in Zbrush.

The gloves only required two pattern islands.

I had to edit the width to avoid clipping and also part the finger parts.

This is the final base for the main clothing of my model! For my first attempt at Marvelous Designer I am realy happy with this. There is a lot I need to learn but this has sped up my clothing sculpting process and made it a lot more accurate.

I added a lot more shape definition and detail to the muscles and areas of the hands, feet and face.

In the lower subdiv levels I added more blocky bone and tendon shapes.

I also added in nails for the hands and feet. The sculpting processes for the hands and feet were similar but obviously required different references.

In the higher subdivision levels I added in veins and wrinkles.
  

I also added in the leathery appearance of the palm skin and the lines of the palm.

  To get more refined details on the face, I masked it out and subdivided. I was then able to use pore brushes. I used the Flipped Normals skin kit which allowed me to create a variety of different pore types in a much shorter amount of time.
  

With the skin kit I was able to apply lip creases. I had to edit the creases afterwards so that they were in the logical places.  

  I also edited the creases under the eyes and used a different pore type for this area.

For the rest of the body I used a noise maker to create fine pores.

  Feedback

From my tutor I recieved feedback on areas to improve. For example the arms were a little too short. The hip area also needed a bit of work and the muslces of the thigh needed to be looked at again. I will tackle these improvements soon!

Welcome back to my blog! This marks the beginning of my FMP project. I started by gathering reference of two 80s sterotypical fighting game characters. I wanted to make them in the realistic anatomical and material style of Mortal Kombat 11, with over the top clothing styles similar to King of Fighters. I started by gathering photo references and then drafting quick concept photobashes and sketches. I expanded this reference board as I went. 

I then had a talk with my industry mentor about my ideas. My ideas had been approved by my tutors, but my mentor would help me to consider how to improve silhouette and material readability. For example, the zebra print made the jeans too noisy, especially with the netted vest. The jacket could also be much more pushed in terms of shape, e.g squarer shoulders and larger gloves.

I then did some more reference gathering and produced a newer version of my concept sketch. I added in things to break the silhouette like spikes, glove layers, chaps, a holster and squarer shoulders. I really liked this new silhouette, it was much more dramatic and cohesive.

I took a slightly different approach from the start this time. I started with a mannequin and blocked out the basic shapes using my anatomy reference PDF given to me by my mentor, as well as using the knowledge from the autopsy project to make accurate anatomy.

I paid a lot of attention to the way the shoulders and ribcage connect early on, to avoid making the same mistakes as the last project at this stage.

I then fleshed out more of the forms and added in a suggestion of muscle definition that I would work on later on. Once I was pleased with the blockout I remeshed and then added subdivisions, using project where necessary to maintain the detail level on all the divisions.

 For the hands and feet I blocked out the toes and fingers and I will work into these later on and make them more detailed and tweak the anatomy to add in the forms of bone, muscle and nails.

I created the arms using the chain structure of the muscles from reference and also the anatomy book.
  

I added in the serratus muscles in the lower divisions , and pulled out the lats. 

I then started to add in more details, such as muscle shapes into the higher divisions.

I used a turnaround for the legs to get the proportions correct and the muscles in the right location. I thought about how the muslces overlap and actually connect to the bone. I found that the reference I was using provided excellent illustrations of this.

I added in the areas of the face using the planes of the face model as reference. This helped me to maintain good proportion.

I divided the face into workable polygroups and used masking by polygroups to make the process of sculpting the face easier.

Using the eyeballls I was able to sculpt the eyelids over the top.

From this point it was a matter of adding in details and altering the proportions until I was happy and it fit the facial likeness of my reference.

In the next blog I will go over the detailing of the anatomy and any improvements I will make.

I edited the roughness of the floor, which I was told by my mentor was too shiny and needed more variation. I also adjusted the table legs.

The subsurface of the skin in Unreal was difficult to figure out at first. I ended up having to create a subsurface profile in the material and applying the subsurface mask to this, and then adjusting the colours and scattering depth.

I then experimented with the lighting in unreal. I wanted to bring out the appearance of the skin subsurface scattering and to do this I felt it best to use dramatic contrasts with the lighting. I also implemented a HDRI background which I darkened and blurred.

This is the dramatic lighting implemented, and the subsurface scattering of the skin is much more organic looking.

For the captain project I started my improvements by editing the smoothing groups, as advised by my tutors. This was mainly on the hardsurfaces. I started with the sword then moved onto the chains.

The result was a smooth and unfaceted surface in Unreal.

I then did some work on my texture maps, starting with roughness variation.  This immediately made my model more visually interesting.

I added some roughness cloud masks onto the clothes to continue to vary the roughness. I didn't want to make areas too shiny though so I ensured I was careful about this.

I added more variation to the hair and face also. This would prevent the face from looking as plastic and rigid and will look more organic.

I edited the albedo maps, adding more yellows and reds as well as using curvature on the hands to add in highlights and shadows.

The face was a lot more organic looking and I really liked how the new values worked out in realtime on the character.

After a couple of chats with my mentor and my tutorial feedback, I went back and improved the textures. I added in a sken texture heat map. Even though he is not alive, my mentor recommended I do this to show that I undertsand the colour zones of the body and face. I made the layer very subtle so that there is just a tough of under colour. It actually made a lot of difference to the appearance of the face, adding mroe dimension.
  

 This is the body with the new colourzone layers applied.  

I really like the slight blue tinge to the lower half of his face.
  

My tutor recommended some colour changes to the tongue, making it more purpleish at the end rather than red.

I also made the blood stains on the stakes darker to imply older blood.

I created a more bloodshoot look by adjusting the colour base of the eyeball.

Using my referncee I noticed that the cuts were generally clean and pulled apart slightly rather than being a thin artificial line that I had done before.

As a result, the model looks much better in marmoset too.

However, I was far from done. I did another review with my mentor, and found that I still had a huge amount to improve with the textures, primarily the roughness values that I mentioned in the last post. I also had anothe rlook at my base colours, and lightened the values of the bruises and blood so that they did not appear so dark in the renders.
  

I had to find the layers that were providing the roughness, turn off most of them and added a roughness noise to vary the values.

I also adjusted the ways I used curvature maps, using one for highlighted edges, and inverted for shadows. These were kept near the top of the stack.

I did the same stages for the face sheet.

I was also advised to make a plinth to ground my scene, and so I made a simple shape in 3dsmax before going into sibstance designer to make a very simple morgue tile texture.

When applying it in substance painter I adjusted the size of the tiles as well as the colour as I found that the original colour was too distracting and took away from the rest of the scene. This was a lot more subtle.

 I carried out similar edits to my table textures, varying the roughness values which was the main issue. I used a gradient and added a dirt mask as a roughness layer.

  I also adjusted the edge wear roughness values.

 The result was a surface that had a lot more visual interest and wasn't so blindinglysmooth as before.

  With these improvements done, I set up a three point lighting system for my scene. I used an interior HDRI sky light as it seemed the most appropriate for my scene.  

I used a key, rim and fill light to highlight areas of my model.

I played around with temperature and background blue a lot later in the process.  

I didn't want the rim lights to be too stark so that they would bleach the body edges too much.

This is my final blog post for this project. The final renders will be put up on my portfolio shortly. I can say that this has been the most difficult character project I have done to date. From start to finish I had the guidnace of my industry mentor Del and my tutors, who provided very effective but hard feedback, and this allowed me to push my skills and learn more about the best pipeline for character modelling. On top of this I pushed my knowledge of anatomy thoroughly, and the combination of both hardsurface and organic modelling was interesting for me to undertake. I definitely still have huge amounts to learn, and I need to improve my efficiency in a lot of areas to avoid making mistakes that ended up costing me a lot of time. Overall, it is very satisfying to see the outcome of this project.
  

At first I posed the ody in Zbrush using the transform gizmo and masking. This was a quick process, but the results were unsuccesful.

While I liked the pose, the process of exporting it in and out of zbrush had deleted my materials. I changed settings to import materials on import, tried FBX and OBJ, consulted forums and my industry mentor but I couldn't figure out why it had deleted my material IDs. It was a very frustrating process. I decided to move on to the cloth on the legs then come back to thi issue later, as the leg area wasn't much disrupted from the posing.

I used the cloth modifier in max for a simple rectangular plane, and brought it i into Zbrush to correct the positioning and add in any simple folds. 

This is how the final cloth mesh looks.
  

I then brought it into substance painter and used my linen smart material and edited the layers to change how the material is layered, e.g using one directional threads rather than crisscrossing to resemble cotton more than broad linen.

I smoothed out the areas on top of the thighs to show the strain of fabric and edited the directions and contrast of the creases.

Now it is time to revisit the posing. I decided to do a quick rig rather than pose in Zbrush.

The rig was simple enough, there were minimal objects to weight and I only needed to toggle the weight settings for a few verts.

This is the body before and after the rigged pose.

I then did some quick adjusting of the cloth and did another test export to marmoset, and found that all of my material IDs had been preserved. Success!

I did a couple of quick mesh tweaks in max again before re-exporting, mainly moving objects around and reducing the size of the eye sockets by dragging the outer corners in as they were too large.

weird eye corners in the test render

Editing said weird eye corners in max

So At first I struggled to apply the correct settings for the clear coat eye material. I made a mask in photoshop and used refraction, which fixed the issue.

In hindsight I didn't really need to make the mask as it has its own material, but it is good practise I suppose.
  

I did some test rendering of the full body in marmoset 3, playing around with lights set ups and subsurface.

I did some render tests of the table too.

What I took away from these tests is that some of my materials are far too shiny, like the steel of the table, and the skin. I need some more varied roughness values to really make my textures a lot better.

I continued my process by adding details to the skin. I added more patchy colouring in places.

  For example, I looked at images of bad brusing and festering wounds to create more convincing areas of damage and interest. I was advised to add these areas by my tutors during a feedback session, and I am pleased with the results.
  

For the wood, I used a base material and edited the colour, grain size and added in an edge wear.
  

I dampened it down a bit so it wasn't as stark.

I then added in dried blood too the ends.

 For the eyeballs, I revisited the tutorial by my tutor. I had to look up reference images of eyes post mortem to get the colouring correct, but as there is a shred of life left in this vampire I used emissive maps to keep his irises shockingly red.
  

I decided I used too much emmisive at first so I got rid of the innder circle, and I liked this much better. I also added glowing veins around the whites of the eyes.

 I used opacity for the clear coat material of the eye and made it shiny.

For the toe tag, I create an alpha on photoshop and imported it, stamping it onto the card.

I used a gradient for the nails, ensuring to go towards darker brownish tones to imply rot and damage.  

I really like the mouth components. I layered the tongue with gradients and curvature highlights and shadows, and then added the veins. For the teeth and gums I did the same but omitted the veins in the teeth.
  

I added strokes to the lips using a masked fill layer with height.
  

I then added more varied skin blemishes to the face.
  

For the feet and the palms I used a more leather skin texture.
  

This is the character so far. A lot more coming soon.

I organised another video call with my industry mentor to try and get my character bake working. I explained the problems I was having with the dots after baking and I was told that this was probably due to the high density of verts in one area. I also needed to fix my character UVs. Del told me that for high detailed character models in industry, often the head and the body are placed on individual UV sheets. With this in mind I went back and edited them in 3DsMax.

I then applied individual texture sheet materials to the head and body UVs.

Now to fix the sculpt. I decimated it to 20% which surprisingly retaine d alot of detail. I then re-exported it using different settings and placed it into Max. 

Having it at around 2 million points instead of 12 million (Yeah I know don't say it) made a huge amount of difference.

I then did some experimentation with baking in marmoset. Del taught me how to adjust the cage and AO settings to achieve different results and a better quality bake.

I needed to edit the position of the faces in the low poly as they didn't bind properly to the high poly silhouette.

I came across issues with baking the teeth and gums so I moved it out of the body.

But before I did this, I experimented with the AO settings and created two different AO maps that could be used - one that was more sparse and one that highlights more cavities.

The result was a nice interesting AO.

So I moved the teeth, gums and tongue apart as well as the eyeball.

I moved the stakes also as the bottoms of them were intefering with the body bake.

I adjusted the curve of the cornea as I felt that it was too drastic.

This resulted in a much better bake in Substance Painter. I used the substance painter baker instead of marmoset as I found that there wasn't much difference in the two bakes and this one was much more straightforward, and I could adjust the antialiasing easily.

I stated the skin using a base skin texture to get the correct roughness values, and then I layered curvature bitmap masks to get colourful crevices and edges that defined the anatomy more.

I also used some handpainted layers to create patchy areas as I did not want the skin to be too even.

I really like how the bake for the hands came out!

For the knees I created a dryer look using lighter tones.

This is what the flesh looks like with more colour layers. It looks less alive and less human.

It reminded me a lot of axolotl or frog skin which I also used in my reference.

For the face I used the same methods, but I later exchanged the curvature mask for thickness to get rid of the strange highlighted crevices.

I darkened the eye socket areas to get a sunken look and to make the face more dramatic. I might lighten this though as I think it is too dark.

I used curvature on the gums, and for the teeth I experimented with different filters and masks.

I added in a gradient.

For the tongue I used a similar method to the gums, but used a more yellowish tone for a sickly look.