Below I am going to go over my final thoughts and discuss the largest changes made from the Pre-Production plan to the final character.
:: The Good ::
Previous to the module I had used ZBrush very briefly and that was only to make soft environment pieces such as chairs so naturally using the software to produce and entire character did pose a lot of interesting questions.
I am overall, rather happy with the visual I produced. The Assignment was a little restrictive in regards to creating the best possible renders as it didn’t allow me to experiment with poses which would have been nice but the final renders are something I am happy with.
I do also like the texturing I was able to use, and definitely feel it was worth the hassle of exporting from ZBrush for me to use a software I was familiar with to add a lot of visual storytelling which I definitely feel the final renders do.
I also think the decision to model the wings off a bat was a good one, as well as the idea to have two wings, but have one visibly broken. This does make the visual look much more complete and would still allow me the interesting puppet on a string flying animation next semester.
Along with this, I feel like I became much more comfortable using ZBrush in tandem with Maya and other software in order to fill out the entire pipeline of 3D art creation. Finally, I do also think that I did learn a lot about ZBrush through following tutorials such as making the original dress which gave a very interesting visual all be it not one I could take along to the other steps in the pipeline.
:: The Bad ::
Most of the bad points I have to talk about were all the technical difficulties I found when trying to create a low poly character for baking, and the difficulties my solution to this problem caused.
Obviously, my low poly mesh was not what I hoped for when I planned to bake my character. Now, I do know how to fix this issue and depending on time management next semester I may be able to use quad draw to create a quad low poly which I can animate. Something I very much want to do so I can create the flying animation that inspired the whole character.
I also don’t really like specifically the face texture. This was caused by the poor low poly mesh which meant I couldn’t manually UV the body mesh. Resulting in a ugly seem cutting through the centre of the face and the textures being so low poly that I couldn’t possibly have made the eye texture I had wanted to make as detailed in my face pre production post.
I would also say that the hair wasn’t as nice as I thought it would be. Now, I would caveat this by saying the hair was something of a compromise considering the entire pipeline and bringing the model out of ZBrush. If I had used various other tools to generate individual hair particles onto the character this, much like the dress wouldn’t have been able to port over to Maya or Substance Painter.
Lastly, would also be the time invested in creating the dress in ZBrush. While I do think I learnt more about ZBrush as a result such as using dynamic subdivide and the dynamics tab it is naturally very disappointing not to be able to export that object as anything other than a very high poly mesh. This meant that while it would make for a nice thumbnail or the beauty shots ZBrush have as a wallpaper in practicality the dress was not something you could reasonably expect to import into a game project.
:: What I Would Change ::
The main thing I would change about the character should really be obvious, the low poly ‘solution’ was simply a work around for this specific assignment as it only asked for a still of the character, not to animate the mesh. Given better time management and less workload from other modules I would have liked to invest the time into learning the quad draw method to create a nice quadrilateral low poly mesh which I could animate. This means that I either abandon the character going into the animation module next semester or I try an invest the time into creating a quad drawn low poly and redo the texturing steps before I can animate.
Also, one small thing I would change would be a simple oversight I made with the dress. The final dress as seen in the renders doesn’t have any thickness assigned, which you can see in the wireframe renders. Now, this is a relatively quick fix. I would simply need to select the faces in Maya and extrude to a very small value. But I would also then need to re-UV the new object and re texture the dress. This thickness could also be done in ZBrush but that would simply result in me going back further through the pipeline to repeat the steps of exporting to Maya. Not the end of the world, but also a silly mistake that I really shouldn’t have made.
:: My Idea Development ::
My initial idea for the character was fairly simple, partly due to the fact I was basing the character off a side character in a pre-existing novel franchise. I wanted a character that was noticeably female but with enough non-human elements to add visual interest to the character.
As you can see from my initial 2D sketch (Left) and my final character (Right) quite a lot did change from my initial vision. My original sketch was much more faithful to the character as described in the novels the character is based off (Which you can read more about in my initial brief post). This meant that the character was basically just a human woman with some bird elements attached such as small claws instead of fingers and just one wing.
My biggest change was making the character much less identifiably human than originally intended, I felt like it would add more interest to the character if I made her seem much more like a human bird hybrid than just a human with wings and claws. I felt like the knees bending the wrong way and the exposed bones at the elbows and knees helped make the character seem much more bird like than my original sketch.
I also decided to increase the scale of the wing massively, which was a good decision as it makes it seem visually believable. A human female is a large object and so a wingspan as short as the one shown in the 2d sketch would have looked a little strange. I also decided to ditch the wing as described in the books as a single crooked wing I felt would have looked incomplete and by having one damaged wing instead I can still animate the character as intended without having an incomplete looking still mesh.
I am also happy with the final look of the character form a story telling perspective. I wanted to show the character as a slave, which fits in line with the world set in the books I used as my starting point. The dress does look suitable tattered, though not as well as the first attempt in ZBrush and I do think the chains are a nice touch all be it I am slightly dissapointed I couldn’t place the collar due to the hair.
:: Full Reference List ::
Below you can find a compilated list of all the references I used throughout the module. (These are also referenced at the bottom of each page for a more subject specific listing)
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[Amazon book cover image] ‘Smoke and Summons’ Holmberg, C.N. (2019) Available online: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Smoke-Summons-Numina-Book-1-ebook/dp/B07C96XW1D [Accessed 05/10/2021]
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