Milestone 02 Check In: Blockout
References
Since I'm following a single illustrative interpretation of this character, a lot of the focus was put into shape definition and anatomical structuring, particularly on the glabella (skin between eyebrows) and quadratus labii inferioris (muscles on the corners of the mouth)
Key Art: Illustration by Hegval on Reddit,
permission to create her was obtained before the project began :)
Shortfalls:
For this week, the main goal was to get all of the sculpting finalized to continue onto the retopologizing in the later weeks. However, I didn't get all the sculpting done, specifically on the gauntlets. The gauntlets use the same design as the gorget, previously described as the 'breastplate' or 'chestpiece' in previous weeks, which ended up being an extremely tedious process of breaking Maya.
The process I used for making the gorget involved modeling the key shapes onto a plane, focusing on the base glass, shapes then expanding outwards to create the frame. Originally, this was going to be achieved with alphas; however, due to the complexity of the gothic design and this talk at the 2023 Zbrush summit from Blizzard's Overwatch team, I decided to continue the design in Maya
The gauntlets bring their own challenges in the form of their complexity compared to the gorget; the shapes have very little breathing room against the other stained glass pieces, requiring them to be a tight fit.
This method led to its own downfalls, mainly there being an issue with the inner corner of the shape frames, the yellow polygroup, not going far enough in the geometry, causing the glass shape underneath to be fully seen
Closeup of the gorget
Same image above with polygroups
Another main issue I had was in regard to matching the reference image, because of the nature of posing and stylization of the drawing. Hegval notes the style is reminiscent of Hades, a lot of the anatomy works but is seen at a much wider focal length, bringing many of the details much closer together than I'm able to achieve inside of ZBrush. This could be a case of 'illustrator anatomy' versus realistic anatomy; however, I attempted to follow the reference as close as possible to the sections I could.
A common question I got when making this sculpt was regarding the use of orthographic versus perspective view mode. I feel somehow the issue above is related to the nature at which Ireena is posed; however, I don't know of a specific fix for this.
Orthographic view of Ireena versus Perspective
Resources:
I mentioned these resources last week, however I rewatched them over the course of working on this project and I really think they significantly improved the workflow and direction of this project. Being able to peel back the overall design concepts, both in a professional and casual setting, such as TBSkyen for League, and understand how and why characters are designed a certain way adds a whole new level to the creation process.
It is mentioned in one of the videos above, but Renaud Galand's gumroad has a fantastic free hair brush and matcap/material library that has fit in perfectly with my workflows!
Additional resources:
- Ruffle Insert Multi-Mesh Brushes for Zbrush by Alexandra Jackson
- Gio Brush for Soft Forms in ZBrush by Pablo Munoz Gomez
- Kirill Senzu's Clothing and Accessories Tutorial
- Mark Lambert's Hair tutorial
- Chloe Worthy's Beginner Headblock in Zbrush
- Sean Forsyth's Cloth Folds
Schedule
[05/19] BLOCKOUT [✔] -- Overall blockout complete; some secondary forms emerge, but the overall flow of the piece is present. Polypaint used to differentiate material types
[05/26] SCULPTING [✔] -- Detail sculpting completed. All objects have secondary and tertiary details present.
[06/02] RETOPO & UVS -- Retopologizing the model down to a goal of 30k tris, following reference from Overwatch 1's character models (Source).
[06/09] TEXTURING & RENDERING -- Use generator and mask-based texturing workflows rather than handpainting due to time constraints. Render in Marmoset Toolbag.
*During the retopology phase I'll be looking into different methods to work through the gauntlets and potentially redoing the gorget. In the meantime, they will proceed as normal until an alternative can be found.
Blockout & Unreal Blockout
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