Javier González - Character and Prop Artist

Hello everyone! I'm Javier González, this is my first year participating in The Rookies and I'm very excited to take part of it. I created the following projects during my formation at Voxel School in Madrid, where I did a Master's in Digital Sculpture and an Advance Master's in Character Artist for AAA Videogames. I hope all of you like my models!

Kyogre - Realistic Creature

I did this creature during my last master in Voxel School. The task was modeling and sculpting a creature in Zbrush. This was my first time modeling a creature, so it was a hard and interesting learning process of sculpting and anatomy.

I made the high and low mesh in Zbrush, after that I made the UVs in RizomUV and the baking in Marmoset. Next I did the textures in Substance Painter and finally I went back to Marmoset to do a rendering pass.

    Sculpting Process

The sculpting process of the creature was an odyssey. As I said, it was my first try with one of them and anatomy is not one of my strenghts, but I wanted to improve my abilities, so I started giving it the shape of a real killer whale. At the same time, I made the polygroups to control the most relevant zones like the fins and the mouth.

When I got a shape more accurate to the concept, I started working on the scales. At first I masked the fins and the head to inflate and continue detailing them, but I was not convinced with the result, so I went back to a file before doing the scales and try again, this time with alphas, the idea was to use it as a base to continue working on it, giving it the shape that it has in the concept but I was still not convinced by the result.

I took a break from this project and I dedicated myself to continue with the Explorer Map prop and the character (both projects of the same master). When I finished with them, I returned to the sculpture, now with more knowledge and a clear mind, which leads to the great change it had in the end.  Special thanks to my friend and classmate Andrea Fernández for teaching me how to do scales correctly and some anatomy lessons to improve the creature.

    UVs

For the uvs I began with of all of the subtools first subdivision, the geometry was about 30k polys, so I considered it enough to proceed. I did three materials / UV sets: Body, teeths-tongue-claws, the eye, and finally, the Tentacruel (the octopus - jellyfish pokemon).

    Bake and Textures

I did the bakes in marmoset, with bake groups based on pieces with the same material that were not touching. Later I obtained the curvature smooth and curvature sobel maps in Substance Designer to use in Substance Painter to obtain a lot of information and details only with the base color and intensify with the rest of baked maps and some adjustments in roughness and with color gradients.

    Texture Maps (BC - N - ORM - E)

Base Color - Normal - Oclussion (Channel R), Roughness (Channel G), Metalness (Channel B) - Emissive

    Render Scene

I made the render scene in marmoset. I used a template scene that I made  for renders and modify it to work correctly with the creature. I wanted to make it seem as if the Kyogre was beeing seen from a submarine, who contemplates how he has just hunted its prey. To make this possible, I modified the values and color of the subsurface scattering and added a blur to the camera.

    Concept Art

I made this realistic creature of Kyogre based in the original concept by RJ Palmer.

    PureRef

Explorer Map - Stylized Prop

I did this prop during my last master in Voxel School. The task was modeling and texturing a prop in a stylized style. This was my first time with this type of textures, so it was a interesting learning process.

The high and low mesh was done in Zbrush, had to do the retopology of a couple of pieces in Maya and optimized the low in 3ds Max. On the other hand, I did the UVs in RizomUV, the baking in Marmoset, the texturing in Substance Painter and finally I ended up rendering in Marmoset.

    Unfolded

    Closed

    Modeling Process

I started with the blocking in Zbrush, since it's the program where I feel more comfortable to model. I went really fast with the blocking so I don't have initial steps to show, but I did the same process with all of the pieces: Insert ZPrimitive, modify with ZModeler and polygroups and subdivide to preview how it looks.

When I had all the pieces I started with the boolean operations, trying to make the holes and shapes of the complex pieces with them. At last I did a sculpting pass to add wears and tears.

    LowPoly Optimization and UVs

After applying the booleans it was necessary to make a retopology of the resulting pieces. The parts that didn't have booleans didn't need retopology, simply optimizing the first or second subdivision in 3ds Max, were I put all the pieces to do the materials to export to RizomUV.

    Bake and Textures

In the same way as the creature, the baking and texturing process of the prop was done with curvature maps and fill layers with color and height variations, and some grunge as a mask to add detail if necessary. I haven't used any predefined materials to texture any of the projects shown here.

    Texture Maps (BC - N - ORM - E)

Base Color - Normal - Oclussion (Channel R), Roughness (Channel G), Metalness (Channel B) - Emissive

    Render Scene

As I mention previously, i made a template scene that i later adapted for all the projects, including this one. I put some lights for the unfolded version of the Explorer Map and cameras for both versions. In addition I added a "cartoon" effect (the black outline) by inflating the lowpoly model in Zbrush an flipping the normals. Later in Marmoset I set a black material with its diffusion in Unlit mode and deactivated the "cast shadows" option for the inflate mesh to be able to use the effect with raytracing activated.

    Concept Art

I made this stylized prop of an Explorer Map based on the concept "Concept Artist RPG 5" by Ekaterina Bek-Nazarova.

    PureRef

Zanark Avalonic - Realistic Character

This is the first character I have modeled and I decided to take inspiration in "Zanark Avalonic" from "Inazuma Eleven GO 2: Chrono Stones". I used the "Final Fantasy VII Remake" style as an artistic reference and I focused on the character "Reno" for the adaptation process from stylized 2D to realistic 3D.

I did the high mesh in ZBrush and the low in 3ds Max, after that I made the UVs in RizomUV and the baking in Marmoset. Next I did the textures in Substance Painter and a couple of patches in Substance Sampler. I did the hair in Xgen after I posed it. I chosed to do it that way because of a time crunch on the Advance Master in Character for AAA Games project. Finally I went back to Marmoset to do a rendering pass.

    Sculpting Process

I started sculpting the face from a realistic scan that I changed to achieve the similarity to Reno's face. After that, I made a mirror and weld to restore the symmetry that I lost in the process.

Just as I did with the head, I used a base mesh for the body that resembles Zanark's anatomy.

    ZWrap

The scan's geometry was too dense to use, it also had a different topology than the body mesh, so I used ZWrap to have the head and the body in the same basemesh with uvs and a good control of polygroups.

    Marvelous Designer

After finishing the body, I imported it to marvelous to start making the clothes. The character is wearing a soccer kit but the pants are the ones of a tracksuit, so I tried to make it more elastic than the rest of the clothes.

    Cloth Retopology and Hardsurface in Zbrush

ZRemesher is not always the best option to use as the retopology in because it places Npolys randomly and can be a hassle if you need to rig the model. So I prefer to export the clothes (simulated and non-simulated) to Maya and do a manual retopology on non-simulated clothes and transfer atributtes of the simulated pieces to the new ones.

After importing the clothes to Zbrush, I started modeling the armature pieces with ZModeler (house brand) and finish by adding wrinkles to the fabrics.

    LowPoly Optimization and UVs

Once I finished the Highpoly, I went to 3ds Max to optimize the model as much as possible. I also modeled a pair of props (a Chrono Stone and a soccer ball from the anime), to use for the final render. 

    Bake and Textures

The texture method I used for this character is a bit different, but with the same intention. I made some layers of baked lights and details for edges to add tones and color variations. For the materials I use some sportswear presets but adding some changes to it (like wears or color gradients).

For the textures I take inspiration in real soccer teams and added some publicity inspired in Inazuma Eleven, like the "Kirastar" that is from Inazuma Eleven Ares. I focused the texture process as if I was doing a hypothetical live action version of the character.

    Texture Maps (BC - N - ORM)

Base Color - Normal - Oclussion (Channel R), Roughness (Channel G), Metalness (Channel B)

    XGen

The icing of the cake was the hair. Zanark is not Zanark without that nest in the head, and I know that doing it was going to be a challenge, and it was.  I made a description for every lock of hair, otherwise XGen was not able to add enough fibers to it. I also added a description to have a base for the hair to avoid bald spots, and another one for the eyebrows. 

Due to the organization of the Master, I did the hair once the character was posed, since there was no time to do it in lowpoly. And if you want to know how much geometry the hair has, I'll just say that Marmoset closed several times during the renders, and that the turnaround will have to wait for the next character (perhaps with less hair).

    Render Scene

The render scene is the same as the other projects. But in this case I modified the reflection of the hair material (basic color, no textures maps).

    Concept Art

The original concept is from "Inazuma Eleven GO 2: Chrono Stones" videogame, property of "Level 5".

    PureRef

Amos Bow - Genshin Impact Fanart

I did this prop during my first Master in Voxel School. It's inspired on the "Amos Bow", a weapon from "Genshin Impact". The task was doing a weapon while learning to use ZBrush and ZModeler.

The entire modeling and sculpting process has been done in Zbrush and I optimized a couple of pieces in 3ds Max. On the other hand, I did the UVs in RizomUV, the baking in Marmoset, the texturing in Substance Painter and finally I ended up rendering in Marmoset.

    Modeling Process

This was my first time using Zbrush and wanted to learn as much as possible about the program. So I forced myself to do the entire process in Zbrush, that's how I got into a fight and ended up loving ZModeler. As a plus, while I was sculpting the bow, Maxon released Zbrush 2023 and the integration of Redshift renderer on it (with Emissive materials). So I watched the new features video to understand how it works, and with some help of my mentors at Voxel, I used polypaint to paint the model and prepared a render scene that took advantage of Redshift new options.

    Redshift Renders (Old Renders)

These renders were originally made for the final delivery of my first master at Voxel. The renders were made in ZBrush with Polypaint.

    LowPoly Optimization and UVs

After finishing the second master in Voxel, I decided to make the lowpoly of the bow (I already have subdivisions so it will not be complicated). At first I optimized the lowpoly and did the uvs wit the intention of importing the model back in ZBrush and projecting the highpoly to obtain the polypaint textures in UVs and using as a base while texturing.

    Bake and Textures

    Texture Maps (BC - N - ORM - E)

Base Color - Normal - Oclussion (Channel R), Roughness (Channel G), Metalness (Channel B) - Emissive

    Concept Art

I made this stylized prop of the Amos Bow based on the official concept art from "Genshin Impact" property of Hoyoverse.

    PureRef

Ezra Bridger's Lightsaber - Star Wars Rebels (Fanart)

This is the first lightsaber that Ezra Bridger designs from junk he finds in his house. It has the particularity, compared to other lightsabers, of being a blaster as well. One of the challenges that I set myself when texturing it was to achieve the effect of wear and tear on the pieces, with the remains of paint from the adjoining pieces.

I made the modeling in Zbrush from booleans, to which I later did the retopology in Maya. I did the UVs in RizomUV, the baking in Marmoset, the texturing in Substance Painter and finally I ended up rendering in Marmoset.

    Modeling Process

This was a patchmodeling exercise that I did in the first Master, but the model was of my election. I did all the pieces in ZBrush with booleans (I think it sounds familiar to you).

    LowPoly Optimization and UVs

The original model wasn't optimized (I was still learning when i made it) so I decided to make a real lowpoly and change the uvs.

    Bake and Textures

    Texture Maps (BC - N - ORM - E)

Base Color - Normal - Oclussion (Channel R), Roughness (Channel G), Metalness (Channel B) - Emissive

    Render Scene

    Concept Art

I made this weapon based on Ezra's Lightsaber, the official concept from Star Wars Rebels animated series. 

    PureRef

Thanks for view all of my art!

If you liked my work, I encourage you to visit my ArtStation and if you need to know any extra information about me, do not hesitate to contact me or hold an interview if necessary.

Last but not least, a big mention to all of my mentors at Voxel School: Alicia Melero, Eduardo Nodar, Daniel Marty, Manuel Mané, Antonio Pons and Marta Álvaro.