Hi everyone. My name is Jeet and I am a character artist. I just came to know that posting on Reallusion forum only is not going to be a valid place to share the WIPs. So I’ll just put all the WIPs uptil now in a single day and then put them as I go along.
This is my chosen concept for taking part in the Character Design (Realistic). Found the image below on Artstation. It is drawn by George REDReev.
I generated a couple of inspirational images in Leonardo AI using this prompt. These will serve as an inspiration for achieving a cinematic photorealistic render.
Ultra 4K realistic photo of a unbearably beautiful girl’s face who is a dragon warrior, stunning makeup and lips, with a crying in pain expression, half of the face, hair and upper body burnt by the dragon’s fire, 20 years old, natural eyes and full mouth, looking right through the sky, light on the up side of the face with a warm fire light.
And a couple of others using this prompt:
gorgeous female warrior full body view from head to toe, medieval lower body fabric clothing, no metallic armor all hard leather armor, torn and tattered, knee high long leather boots, waist band, metal and leather bracers on hand
And I gathered a couple of reference images for the different parts of the main concept from pinterest. And I’ve compiled a mood board for the same.
Some progress on the face and body proportions. Used CC4’s morph sliders and Zbrush GoZ functionality to get the desired shape. Never thought shaping a head could be so non-destructive with the morph sliders and so accurate and precise with Zbrush’s brushes when the primary shapes have been dialed in.
Aiming for the faces on the side of the main concept art for the likeness and overall shape. They aren’t the same person as they are AI generated so not going for 1-to-1 likeness but those will heavily guide the face shape and personality. Will be keeping the same hair style and burnt skin look from the concept.
Simulated the gambeson (under armor padding clothing) in marvelous designer. Quite happy with the primary folds and clothing pattern. Will be using this as a starting point to detail in ZBrush and add other leather and armor pieces on top.
Retopologized the clothing first and then tore down the clothing from her shoulder and designed in what pattern should the burnt cloth should look like. Did some quick UVs to bring them to ZBrush where I’ll be transferring the details from the high res MD sims.
Sketched some armor pieces and shoes in Zbrush and retopoed them in Maya. Most of the meshes on the warrior have been done (except for some small doodads around the main meshes).
Shoulder Plates:
Forearm Bracers:
Shoes:
And here’s the full body view where these parts will go.
Wrapped the free sample scan available on 3d scan store here and transferred the high res skin detail and texture maps to the base CC head that I’ve been using.
Detailed the head in Zbrush and fixed the seam where the scan and CC mesh join. Overall body has the CC details that were transferred with GoZ plus from CC4.
GoZ plus created the overall skin details to an acceptable level in most places, but there were quite harsh lines on the seams smoothed and filled those with nearby details with the Xtractor brush in Zbrush. Blended the scan with the CC texture and matched the colors to look seamless in Substance Painter.
Did some RnD on creating the burnt skin with blisters and boils. Used the handy surface noise in ZBrush with some manual sculpting and alphas for tertiary details. Quite happy with the workflow, going to do the same on her body and face next.
First pass on clothing sculpt, still lots of damage/wear and tear need to be added.
Detailed the skin with the burn marks. Created with a combination of hand painted mask and surface noise.
Detailed the zbrush sculpt with the damage pass and detailed the rest of the meshes that were remaining.
Since I already had the meshes retopoed before detailing, UV Unwrapped the lowest subdivision. Then after doing a quick displacement test chose the right subdivision level to have as the base mesh to have the closest result to the zbrush sculpt. Using 9 UDIMS for the clothing and accessories. Red= Clothing, Green= Leather, Blue=Metal
Whether it’s the first time or the thousandth time, seeing your displacement map work as expected is always a satisfactory experience. Slapped some basic flat shaders to differentiate the materials and did some test renders to check the displacement. Using V-ray in Maya for the render engine.
Poly Modeled the sword. Created the UVs. Decided to split the blade into 2 sections to get more texel density for the blood splatter. Now onto Zbrush to add some damage.
Started with the textures for the main burnt area that is probably the heart of this project. For me personally everything depends on this particular aspect if I can nail down the burnt/damaged skin.
I would do another round of detailing with dirt, some scuff marks on the knuckles and fingers.
Textured the sword as well. I plan on adding all of the blood splatter at the end when she’s posed so the blood splatter is placed appropriately.
Started with blocking out the Dragon Head. It’s not going to be the best looking Dragon we’ve ever seen but I think I need to put something decent besides her as it’s an important story element. I don’t think I’ll be able to create the rest of Dragon body given that it’s less than 20 days now, but let’s see.
Textured the clothing and armor elements. Like before I will do the the blood splatter at the end to keep some sync for all the elements.
Started with LookDev. Prepared all of the materials for different texture sets. Experimented with tears.
The autorigging in Character Creator is such a huge time saver. Got the clothing and armor rigged in a few seconds. I’ll still need to improve the skin weights on the loose part of the skirt and shoes but rest of it is pretty good.
A couple of updates in different areas. But it’s all coming together now.
Textured the dragon head, like I anticipated won’t be able to do the full body as making the scales by hand took a lot of the time than it’s worth for just a background element. Quite happy with how the head looks like.
Did a quick expression test to see how the blendshapes from CC4 work in Maya and it seems to work quite well would be using these to make the different renders in different expressions. And also created the shaders for the teeth and tongue.
Had to add extra joints for the loose part of the gambeson similar to a skirt rig to fold it into place.
Finally got everything together and started with the primary pose. Added some corrective blendshapes for the areas that needed extra attention.
I underestimated the pose- getting the knees, hips and the clothing to sit well in a natural manner was way too time consuming, almost to the extent that I thought of giving up this pose and do something simpler. But I glad I pushed through the pose really conveys the essence of the concept.
Next up is hair and other grooming. In the above render test, I’ve already replaced the eyebrows in the textures with actual groomed eyebrows will be doing the other grooms next.
Groomed the hair, eyebrow, eyelashes and peach fuzz. All grooms done in Xgen.
Added a custom hair rig to control the the hair which might come in handy when posing the warrior without having to mess with Xgen again.
Looking good !!!
