I have finally finished my "Presley" 3D character! I spent the better part of my thanksgiving break wrapping up this project. Firstly I had to wrap up the high poly.
Getting to this part of the process took a strong will, as it is easy to tunnel vision and quickly get sucked into details that have diminishing returns. Perfection is not my goal, so finding that middle ground where I was happy with a finish but also spending my time wisely was important. There was also multiple occasions where I chose to rebuild sections, such as the thighs. I was dissatisfied with certain parts of the model. I would write all of these things down so I could see in front of me how much work I was creating. I would then cross things out and pick the most important things, such as my choice to rebuild the thighs and chest. This allowed me to continue improving this model as an artist, but once again, finish on time, as I did not want this to stretch beyond Thanksgiving break.
I also chose to rebuild parts like the hand to better achieve their forms. The photo
above and to the right is the old hand. Below is what the hand is supposed to resemble. I think this decision was important, even though it took a lot of time.
Making decisions to return to old models is difficult, as overall it took away a lot of time from me. Working like this serves to remind me how inexperienced I am with creating models. I imagine those who practice more and do this daily don't make as many mistakes as I do, and if they do, they resolve them much earlier. This hand design should have been fixed at a much earlier point in the project for me, however I feel these things will decrease in repetition as I practice more and continue to train with a "big picture" view of my project.
Next I did a lot of work polygrouping, duplicating, flipping, naming, grouping, and UVing various pieces. I won't go into detail however this took plenty of time as well. Any mistakes in this area would cost a lot of time in the future, so it was important that I had gotten this right. It helped a lot by purchasing a few plugins to speed this process up, such as EZRemesh which allowed me to remesh some of my subtools much more efficiently. When this wasn't the case, I could use ZBrush's remesh tool or simply Maya's quad draw, which was necessary for some pieces.
I also parented and grouped objects in Maya for posing. I made sure to do this after the UVing was sorted. I built a posed fbx as well as a "blown up" fbx where I could texture each individual piece without overlapping causing issues, as it had done so for me in the past.
The bake did not go smoothly at all, in fact it really never does for me. The issue I faced this time was that my high poly mesh had far too many polygons for either Substance Painter or Marmoset to properly bake. This took me hours to solve, however, now that I know this, I should be more equipped for the future.
Above is how the bake turned out after solving most of the issues. This is my favorite part about most projects, it can be so rewarding to see all of your detail nicely packaged in a low polygon mesh. However, I do think this retopology could be better for the future. I don't think this lowpoly holds the sillouete for the character at its best. There is also plenty of spirals and strange remesh issues. I didn't have time to fix these things, they were trivial as they didn't effect the final renders. However if this project were for professional use I think its important to note my retopology could use more of a human touch to be really impressive.
Finally I textured the piece. This took about eight hours in total. I used IDs and hand-painted masks to create the final look of the character. I was aiming for a PBR, realistic version of the 2D digital art:
I am very happy with this project. I think I've learned a lot of new things, as well as learned a lot about things I didn't know I didn't know. I am most surprised at how much of this project had to do with mindset more than anything. Artistic ability is difficult to focus on, it comes in time and really is just a muscle that is trained. What you have more immediate control over is your mindset, which intimately controls your final results, as well as if you finish at all. I'm eager to move forward in character modeling and am excited to start improving drastically. I want to take on different projects that continue to challenge me. I want to make stylized characters, use more hand-painted techniques, and try and specialize in some area that makes my work stand out to employers.
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