I was given the opportunity to challenge the 330 Advanced Modeling class, meaning I will complete the class early by doing one final project agreed on by me and the professor, rather than taking the entire class. Professor Pereira and I agreed on me completing a game-ready character model for a hard-surface robot with organic parts. I found some concept art done by another artist on ArtStation of a robot that fits these specifications and got started. The original artist is Miro Petrov.
The first problem encountered in this project was the reference only featured one angle of the machine. I could have either tackled this while modeling the character, or I could filled that ambiguity earlier. I chose to do the latter, where I sketched up my idea for what the back would look like on this robot. It doesn't feature too many details as I didn't feel like this would be necessary, I only thought it was important to block out main structures and forms. I made sure to try and match the front of the robot so that the style and forms didn't feel foreign or created by another artist. I am glad I did this up front because I think sitting at my desk with ZBrush or Maya open while trying to imagine what the back of this robot looks like would take more time than the two hours I spent on this drawing.
Next I wanted to start the blockout out this character. I tried a few different approaches at first but now have settled on a base mesh for reference using ZSpheres as well as the ZModeler tool and ZBrush primitives to block out the hard-surface materials. I chose to tackle the body first to knock out the main proportions for the character.
While I don't think much of this will be used in the final high poly model, I do think this is important to reference as I place armor and pieces of the robot over this. I am considering using this to make the torso and thigh parts of the robot as those are much more organic.
Next up I blocked out the head.
This took me longer than expected mainly because I was experimenting with a tool I didn't have much practice with, the ZModeler Brush. However I thought it was important to do this head with this method for a couple of reasons. Firstly, I know ZBrush has a very powerful set of tools for making hard-surface models quickly and effectively, and I don't understand this workflow much at the moment. I think it's important I start forcing myself to learn tools such as ZModeler so that I don't need to switch between Maya and ZBrush, effectively slowing my process down. Additionally I wanted to start with the head because It is one of the parts of the robot with the harshest angles, and I wasn't confident I was skilled enough to tackle this with a sculpting approach. If I could make a lowpoly version of this and use dynamic subdivisions, I will be able to easily create this hard-surface look with the ability to easily go down in subdivision level and fix any issues or proportion. I have had issues like this in the past with previous characters, so I am glad I have started with this approach.
I don't however think I will do this for all pieces. Many pieces look like they can be sculped in dynamic subdivision and the stylized smoothing achieved with HPolish. I plan to use a mix of sculpting spheres as well as building primitives with the Modeler for different pieces in the future. I named this robot I'm working on "Presley", for whatever reason, so that's how I'll be referring to this robot in the future!
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