I wanted to work through the entire creature creation process, so I created this guy. Sculpting, retopology, texture painting, lighting, etc…
It was really fun and I learned a bunch. A lot of this stuff I had never done before, like baking out normal maps.
I’ll post work-in-progress pictures, as well.
Sculpting progress. I didn’t use dynamic topology, only multires sculpting. It was going somewhat slow by level 7, but it was certainly still workable.
Test render of the sculpt. I wanted to see how the details looked when lit nicely.
Then I started sketching out my retopology. I didn’t end up following it exactly, but it certainly helped me identify where the problem spots were going to be and how the general edge flow should go.
Getting started on the retopology. I used Bsurfaces and Blender’s standard retopology tools. It was really easy and fun.
Getting the retopolgy completed.
I only ended up with one triangle on the whole mesh.
Then I unwrapped the new mesh as cleanly as I could.
Baking out the normal maps. I did a test render after this stage, as well, to make sure it looked as good as the original sculpt.
Finally texture painting! This is what I was looking forward to most, just being able to paint on the model in realtime.
I baked out ambient occlusion, too, and took it all into Photoshop for blending and touching up.
I painted a few layers, such as veins.
I unwrapped and painted the eyes separately.
Rather than create geometry for the background, since I knew it would be out of focus, I simply whipped up a little matte painting to put behind him. Something spaceship-ish.
Setting up the shot, the lighting, etc…
Rendering the final high-res image took a little over 5 hours.
Here’s my layers for the final image in Photoshop.
Congratulations on your work. For a work that you had to move out of your confort zone you’ve managed to deliver quite well imo. Oblivously the image could use some more work, mainly on texturing and compositing, certain areas of the alien seems as though as he was made of plastic…
Anyway thanks for posting the whole process aswell, it’s nice to have an idea of all the steps an artist goes through.
Oblivously the image could use some more work, mainly on texturing and compositing
I’d love to make it better if you could be more specific about the areas that could use more work. I really want it to be the best it can be.
I love it.
Wonderful render BTW.
*5 from me.
Thanks, michalis!
Great Render, hype. Texture painting is really fun, and you did a good job with it to. He is really shiny, but I think it fits the character. *5 for me to.
absolutely gorgeous !
Thanks, model man and PeteMc!
Yeah, he’s shiny, that was my intent. I wanted him to feel oily or a little slimy, and much of the reference I used (other artists’ CG aliens that I liked) was very shiny.
This is a beautiful piece of art!
Wow, thank you, Nathan!
this is impressive… you did great job on sculpting and materials…
Great job on each aspect : modeling/sculpt, textures, rendering etc. 5 stars and congrats from me !
For instance, the part around his left eye, “nose” area and forehead, now this might be just me, but im not getting the slimly, goey feel. Think he needs to be more oily. I’d love to be able to be more specific and tell you how to make it pop out, but im still a newbie in what CG is concerned.
Also loved the veins details, to bad can’t quite notice it on the final render. But subtly is key in cg, so im sure you accomplished what you wanted with them.
keep up the good work.
Thanks everyone!
kohg, I can see what you mean, the way the lighting hits him in those areas, it’s a bit duller than other areas. And yeah, the veins could have been turned up a bit, too. Maybe I should have painted them thicker… Maybe I should experiment with renders from other angles. That could be fun, and may highlight some features not apparent in this angle.
