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CC Digital Human Contest 2020 - Charles Peckstadt - Tezzeret (MTG)

Posted By peckstadtcharles 5 Years Ago
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CC Digital Human Contest 2020 - Charles Peckstadt - Tezzeret (MTG)

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peckstadtcharles
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Hi everyone!

This is my somewhat late entry for the Character Creator Digital Human Contest. The video of Sefki Ibrahim looked super interesting and I wanted to test it out, and this contest was the perfect gateway for that!

For the character, I chose Tezzeret, a planeswalker from the Magic The Gathering universe. I always thought he had an interesting design and wanted to tackle him.
This is my reference sheet.


As almost every interpretation of him is from another artist, there is not a 'final' consistent design of him. It's something I will have to figure out in the blockout stage.

To start, I opened up Character Creator and chose a basemesh to work with. I really like all the customization you can do to your basemesh, the morph sliders are fun to play with. I ended up with this mesh (after using the morph sliders).


At this point I proceeded into Zbrush for a more refined headsculpt before beginning the overall blockout. It was also a bit of a freestyle, as there isn't a consistent head concept. I ended up here, which still needs more refinement but is fine for now.


After that I decided to tackle all the rest. I first ended up with this armor design, but I wasn't really feeling it and decided to change it.

After some more exploration, this is what I ended up with. 



As I was doing the blockout, I bumped into some questions I will have to figure out. For example, if you modify the topology of your basemesh from Character Creator, it will not recognize it anymore if you want to GOZ back, and it will load the mesh in as something new. This is a problem for me, as Tezzeret doesn't have his whole body anymore. So it's something I will probably have to delete later, after I fine tuned the head with the CC tools and after posing the mesh in CC.
I'm also not sure if I want it to be a realtime character or a pre rendered one. The Unreal livelink looked super dope, but I'm not sure how it's going to work with meshes I still have to adjust after that, and I'm not an Unreal expert yet. I have the feeling I'm more comfortable in Arnold render, but I will still see which one I chose. (If you guys can give me advice on that regard, that'd be great).

After the blockout I GOZed everything back to CC. I left out the giant metal arm as it was deforming pretty horribly due to it's size.

I tried some poses to see how everything feels in a more natural way. I really like this feature in CC. It's a fast process to go back and check it out with a cool pose.



  


  



Thanks for reading!
Next step will probably be refining the face with TexturingXYZ details. If you have any questions, don't hesitate to ask!


 

peckstadtcharles
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Hi everyone,

I've continued on Tezzeret in my spare time. I've polished some blockout and gave them a Zremesher base to continue refinement later.
The cloth is still placeholder, I'll probably simulate it in Marvelous.


Most importantly, I continued with the head sculpt. I added TexturingXYZ details following the tutorial of the amazing Sefki Ibrahim.
I deviated at a certain point, as I don't like working in Mari (I hardly ever use it) and decided to apply the raw displacement and clean it in Zbrush.
This was done with Skin Brushes from Pablo Munez and some alphas from TexturingXYZ. Note that the head is not final yet.


After this I wanted to check it out in Arnold. I made a simple skinshader and reused some eyes I had from a previous project. I also cleaned up a bit the basecolor map from TexuringXYZ in Photoshop.
  


It still looks a bit weird without any eyebrows and eyelashes but it's a great base to start with.

I then jumped in Character Creator to add some extra touches to the basecolor texture.

I'm on the default CC so I don't have the extensive SkinGen library, but it already has some great features you can add.

I've added some quick hair, beard stubble and eyebrows in the texture that I later will cover with a groom. I also added some extra veins and some darkening around the eyes.


I then like to make my final BaseColor in substance. I added a bit more layers to it for more customization. It's just a first pass so It's probably going to be edited more down the line.

I then made a new (rough) render, which you can see here.



I still got loads of stuff to do, so I hope I can meet the deadline. Next up is probably trying to finish up the highpoly :)
Cheers!
peckstadtcharles
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Hi guys,
Small update on my end. I refined the highpoly a bit more and put everything in pose already.
It's at a stage where I'd like it to have a bit more polish, but unfortunately I don't have much time left. So I'll be finishing up with some tertiary details on everything and then jump into texturing and rendering.

This is the pose in CC


And this is the result in Zbrush (i've added the cloth afterwards)



I'll maybe edit the pose a bit more in the rendering stage to see if everything is readable enough.
Hope I can get this finished in time :D

Cheers

peckstadtcharles
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Hi guys,

I finished up the highpoly details of the sculpt. Like I said before, I wish I had some more time to polish more areas, but I really want to meet the deadline so it's time to move on. Here are some basic Zbrush renders of the finished sculpt.


 I then started to assemble everything into maya for the renderscene, so it was good to go for lookdev once I had textures ready.
For this character, I kind of disregarded UV space management and just winged it a little bit. I put some items together in a subtool and then proceeded to make auto unwraps for most of them in Zbrush, you can get pretty far when you have the right things polygrouped. Some of the meshes are retopped in max, and others are just Zremesh due to time constraints.

I then baked out a displacement map for most of the meshes and proceeded to plug them into materials in the maya scene. I'm using Arnold for this one as I'm the most familiar with it.
For those who are curious, I followed the guidelines of https://www.cggallery.com/tutorials/displacement/ for baking.
It's a great resource to find out why you should use specific settings for baking displacement and how to set them up into maya.

Here are some initial tests for the scene.


After that, I tried to figure out what the main metal should look like. It's pretty important as the Character will be covered in most of it.
I jumped into Substance, where I loaded in my bodyarmor, which I decimated with keepUVs and then baked maps with 'use lowpoly as hipoly mesh'. 



I then proceeded to test out certain smart materials I have in my collection, tweaking them where I needed them to. I then exported those textures and made a shader setup for them in Maya, so I can see how they look in the render for a more accurate representation. The shader setup is pretty simple, you can just use the default BPR MetalRough options in Substance and then plug those maps into Maya. Just make sure to set your roughness and metallic map to the 'raw' color space and click on 'alpha is luminance'.

You can also add in the normal map from Substance for additional details, but as I already had displacement details I skipped that one.

It's pretty simple setup but it works great. You can then overwrite your texture files with new exports from Substance to test out different looks.
I'll probably look into more layered setups in the future, if I have the time to do that :D

This is an overview of tests.


It's hard to figure out which one I like the most, as in some reference the character has a more steel armor, in the other it's more chrome and in the other it's more black painted metal. Overall I like the black painted look the most so far (the one on the far right), So I'll go more in that direction, combining some elements I like from the other ones like a bit of rust and dust.

That's all for now, cheers!




 

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Hey guys,

So I pretty much finished texturing most parts. Some elements will need some fine-tuning here and there, like the shirt I'm not quite satisfied with yet. But I'm happy with how the main metal turned out. Here are some renders.


For those who are curious, this is my scene at the moment. It consists of 1 Skydomelight with an HDRI (here mainly used for rim and fill light) and 1 key light. I also added a plane underneath him so it gives a little more bounce light for the bottom part. I will still need to figure out how I make my final presentation.


I also added in some new eyes. I looked around a bit and decided to purchase the Eye Tutorial from Tom Newbury ( https://gumroad.com/tomnewbury ). For the low price you get so much good information, really worth the purchase.


I tested the shaders with some other HDRIs, and the armor seems to hold up pretty well.



Just the face looks kind of weird, I'm not really sure what the problem is. I haven't had the chance to make additional maps for the face (like roughness), so maybe that is the problem, hope I will have the time to look more into it. Right now it's holding up pretty ok with the main lights, so I'll see if need to tweak it still.
For people who are curious about the head shader, here it is. It's pretty basic, but maybe it can help people out.


 Next up will be hair! Let's hope Xgen doesn't give me too much problems ands bugs :D
As always, if you have any questions, don't hesitate to ask.

Cheers!

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Hey guys,

So this update is all about the groom.
The most daunting aspect of this process was the dreadlocks, it's something I haven never done before and I was a bit stressed out if it would succeed.
Luckily, I found this video by the amazing Hadi Karimi. He share's a time lapse of his process and a copy of his final modifiers. Been super helpful and without him I'd probably have no idea on how to approach this, so a big thanks to him.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Z0wEaRYkQI&t=13s&ab_channel=HadiKarimi

This were some initial test renders after following the process and modifying the modifier stack to suit my needs.



I then continued refining the groom and adding another description for base hairs underneath the dreads, so you can't see as much bald spots.
After a certain point, I wanted to add some color variation into the groom, but I wasn't really sure how to. I scoured the internet again, and remembered that Arvid Schneider has lots of informative videos on Arnold.  I found this video in his catalog and it suided my needs perfectly!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pfCGG2DtFHM

It basically introduces some whiter and darker hairs, and some whitening along the end of the tips.


I'm not 100% satisfied yet with the look of it, but as the deadline is getting really close I decided to finish it up and start the rest.

I then wen ahead with the eyebrows and the beard. These were pretty standard, If you're curious about how to approach them, the aforementioned Hadi Karimi also demonstrates that in his youtube videos.

I also modified the head texture more to fit the concept. I darkened the eye region a bit to get a make-up like effect, and painted a mask for the paint. I then made a shader for it and combined it with the headshader in an AiMixShader. I also added in some quick peach fuzz.
This is the result.


In maya viewport:

The dreads are super heavy in the viewport because the groom requires lots of CV count, so most of the time I hide it.


All the guides from the groom.

Thanks to everyone who has been following my process, I hope you learned something from it.
Right now will be a sprint to the finish line, I still need to add some lighting fx and find a more suitable presentation. Just hope I can get a turntable render in time!

Cheers

peckstadtcharles
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Hey guys,
This will be my last WIP as the deadline is closing in fast.

I will go over a few more things I added for the final renders.
I wanted to recreate the glowy eye effect he has in most representations, and also wanted to tackle the lightning-type effect he has going on in his armor and around his arm.

I tackled the eyes by making copy's of my different eye parts and making them an arnold mesh light. After some trail and error I found that making the sclera light up was the best result (with an inverted mask). I made a simple texture to plug into the light color.


which gave me this result.

I then proceeded to make the lightning, which I quickly sculpted in Zbrush. I'm on a tight deadline here so don't judge the quality too much haha.

I then imported this in maya and made it into a mesh light as well. As rushed as the sculpt is, it actually looks pretty okay in the render.
I then made some color variations to see which one suited the character the most.


I asked some friends about which one they liked the best, and went with the middle (purple) one.

I quickly some procedural color variation with some nodes. It's a nice way to add some breakup and variation if you don't really have the time to go through the texture process, and it's quickly adjustable.


I then made a duplicate of the mesh itself and made a quick transmission shader for it, so I could add some more fidelity to the final render by combining both render in photoshop. This is the transmissive version.


As a final touch I added some metal rings around some of the dreads. It's something I kind of forgot about but really wanted to add, as it's also present in most of the reference.


Sorry most of the images are crops, but I didn't want to reveal the final images already ;)
For the main close up (image above) I also used some AtmosphereVolume for the firs time (you can add it in arnold render settings, in the tab environment). It's really nice to play around with, but it increases render times significantly, so be careful with it. I used these settings, but depending on your lights and their exposure you probably need to tweak it to your liking.



I struggled quite a bit to make the turntable work, as xgen doesn't really like rotating the mesh.
I first wanted to convert the groom to polygons and fix it that way, but because the dreads were so heavy, they crashed my file and corrupted it as well (don't worry, I always make backups). So I solved it by rotating the camera instead.
It's rendering right now, I wanted to make some bigger body renders as well but unfortunately don't have the time. Will probably make some higher res ones after the deadline for the Artstation post :)

Cheers to everyone following this blog, and good luck to the other contestants!



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