The Pillaging Predator - The Rookies 2024

Hello! My name is Taya Bhavsar and I identify myself as a beginner in character art! I am so excited to showcase my latest project which I did for a modeling challenge called Raiding the Rookies with CG Spectrum for this very competition! This project took a very rapid 14 weeks for me to do, but nonetheless, I am happy to share the heart and soul I put into this character. Without further ado, let's get into my process of creating this Pillaging Predator! 

The two important goals I had for this character were the following:

1. To translate an original 2D concept to 3D as accurate as possible

2. Showcase character design and appeal

                                                                 Concept by Sandro Brunner

References 

I was paired up by a fellow concept artist, Sandro Brunner, in the CG Spectrum Community for this challenge.  He created this concept above (please go check out his work at his art station: https://www.artstation.com/sandrobrunner)! Sandro and I did a collaboration working together to create this concept, however, this final concept was 100% his credit! 

My approach when modeling this character was to go the stylized/cartoony route rather than realistic. I want to challenge myself and attempt to create an inspired Disney/Pixar style to the character. For references, I gathered characters from Pixar and DisneyI liked that best fit the concept; a movie that I referenced the most was Brave. Brave had the Scotland/Norse theme to their art style (we went for a Viking theme for our character) that I referenced Fergus, Merida's dad, as my main source of inspiration. I also gathered other Disney references such as the King from Tangled, and Mr. Incredible from the Incredibles. I also picked references I liked from How to Train Your Dragon and Big Hero 6. I made sure to have stylized anatomy references as well as real human and bear references for credibility. 

I. Sculpting 

I initiated this project with blocking in ZBrush, progressing from body to accessories to pelt to sword with frequent switching to Maya.

The sculpting process was the most challenging phase when it came to this character. Truthfully, I never sculpted a character in Zbrush, however, I do have prior experience sculpting characters, however, I was familar with how to sculpt. I went from blocking out basic shapes to dyna-meshing them together to sculpt as much of the primary forms as I can from the geometry I worked with. I did have a hard time finding a way that would best serve me sculpting the forms; my model went through this "alien phase" which became unrecognizable at first but slowly with each progression, it became clear and solid.

                                                                   Character Sculpt Progress 

                                                               Character Final Sculpt

II. Retopology 

 Before I started the retopology, I made sure it was to scale in Maya. To tell you the truth, I was out of practice with retopology; I may not have done the best when it came to the face, fingers and toes, however, I made sure the topology was simple and clean enough to move forward. Once the retopology was finished, I used the relax sculpt tool in Maya to ease areas where edges were too close together. I used the mesh as is to re-project details back in Zbrush. 

The other retopology I did was the facial hair, armor, pants, and the sash (I blocked the sash in Maya and went back and forth from Zbrush to sculpt folds then do quick retopology afterwards; did the same with the pants). 

I modeled the necklace, the armor straps, bracelets, necklace, ring, and the eyes all in Maya. 

                                          Character Retopology  (with & without Accessories)

                                                                                 Necklace

Pelt 

For the pelt, I shopped on Artstation coming across these fur VDM brushes that were used for hair and fur. These were the same VDM brushes I used for the facial hair. I used them for the ear and neck portion of the pelt as I didn't have the time to really sculpt the pelt all over. 

Switching back to Maya, I did retopology for the pelt, teeth, gums, and claws. 

There was a setback when sculpting the fur: I did have a high poly version that got accidentally deleted due to me moving too fast. Fortunately, I found a decimated version of my pelt; the re-projection wasn't as strong, but it was good enough to work with going forward. 

                                                                   Pelt Sculpt Progress

                                                                           Pelt Retopology

Sword

For the sword, I blocked it out in Maya, switched to Zbrush sculpting the head of the snake as well as constructing the handle of the sword. For the snake scales, I looked at snake heads and I mainly sculpted out the big scales that were on the head and around the eyes. I decided to just sculpt the head scales to save time and in Substance, I can do a snake scale alpha to complete the body. Once I had everything sculpted out, I took it back into Maya for retopology and UVs to send to Substance. For the eyes, I used a simple sphere in Maya. 

 I did spend less time on the sword because I worked on it towards the last 2 weeks of the challenge. Life got in the way while doing this project so my goal in order to finish was to make sure I had the sword, regardless of the quality it came out as. 

                                                                             Sword Sculpt

                                                                        Sword Retopology 

UVS 

 I planned my UVs accordingly to be more efficient.  I grouped the body, facial hair, eyes, fingernails and toenails into  5 UDIMs, with the accessories, clothing, and the necklace into one single UDIM separately. I assigned separate materials for them. For baking purposes in Substance, I did explode the mesh to make sure the character and the accessories' details baked properly instead of keeping them in close proximity. 

For the bear pelt, the UVs consists of 5 UDIMs which are: the pelt coat (including the bear head), eyes, gums, claws, and teeth. 

For the sword, the UVs consists of 2 UDIMs. 

                                                                Character/Accessories UVs

                                                                                Pelt UVs

                                                                              Sword UVs

Texturing

1. Character/Accessories Texturing 

The approach I did for the character texturing was looking at different color zones on the face and body. I found some good color zone references that would help me map out the skin tone. The goal for texturing the body was to have the skin hand-painted to aim towards the "Disney" style. This encouraged me to look at other 3D artwork and observe how the texturing affected the characters that I saw. I generally put a peach color tone as a base then used paint brushes to paint in the red, yellow and blue areas on the face as well as on the body. I did a roughness breakup variation to show what parts of the body would be glistening vs. what would not.

                                                                 Color Zone References 

Test Renders

1st Test

I took various versions of the textures into Maya to see how it looked on the character. For the first render test, I want to see what the appearance was and things I noticed immediately that needed to be improved. For the 1st test, The normals looked off to me on the character body; it looked as if it didn't match 100% accurate. To fix this, I went back into Substance and improved the normal mesh map to clean up visible UV seams.

2nd Test

The second render test was much better on the body, however, the hair didn't look dark enough as I liked. With the body, I added a little more redness to make it look more natural and alive rather than just one skin tone. 

3rd Test

The third render test came out much better. Between the second and third test, the facial hair wasn't up to my expectations. I went back in and darkened the hair a little bit, attempted to create a shadow of some kind within the hair. Tweaking the levels helped the hair look more accurate to the concept. For the clothing, I adjusted the normals on the pants, making sure it read clear. The armor looked pixelated in normals previously, however the re-baking helped made the armor look smooth. The bracelets, I made the leather material brighter to match the concept. 

                                                                    Final Character Renders

I made a few adjustments to the sash by adjusting the normals so they show through on the model and I made the armor look grayish-blueish instead of just plain silver; this gave a pop to the armor and in the concept, it's seen as blueish tint. I was overall happy with the character renders; this made me hopeful to finish in time! 

Pelt Texturing

 The fur was the most challenging part of the pelt since the sculpting didn't work out well. I depended on Substance for fur texturing that I found a fur smart material created by a person of the name Lazarenko. This smart material could create any type of variation of stylized fur using multiple settings within the material. I separated each part of the pelt using masks. The masking helped me identify what type of fur is needed for that area. I blocked out the body, arms, neck, head, mouth and nose. The nose was already planned to be masked out as there isn't usually fur there. Then, I used the fur material for each part differently where I used my fur references to make long fur for the body and arms and shorter fur for the neck, head, and mouth area.This was truly a life saving resource to make up for the sculpting portion. The fur was the main challenge of the pelt, texturing the rest was straight forward.

Sword Texturing

The sword was a pretty quick job for texturing. I was running out of time to finish because I spent so much time on the character and pelt that I almost forgot to include the sword. Surely, I managed to use smart materials for each part and modified each stack differently to match the concept as accurately as possible. In the end, the sword turned out really decent and I was satisfied of the job I was able to do in short time. 

                                                                            All Assets

Final Lighting/Rendering 

After texturing the character, pelt and sword, I decided to challenge myself further and copied the pose in the concept; I had about a week and half left of the challenge at this point, so I went back in Zbrush with the character as is and used Tranpose Master to pose. Due to less time, the pose is not as exact as I would like, however, it was closest to the concept and it looked it's best to be finished on time. 

For the lighting, I went with a "campfire" dramatic-type lighting. I wanted the character to look as menacing as he could be, and showing a campfire of some kind really elevated the textures and made him look mysterious. Although there was not much time for me to perfect the lighting, in a challenge where there is a tight deadline, I made the most of what I got. My goal here was to show off the model in pose as much as I could. 

For the renders, I took them into Photoshop to tweak the levels, curves and brightness/contrast to lessen the overall brightness and make it look more from a campfire perspective. 

                                                        Raw Renders (Before Photoshop)

                                             Final Renders (After Photoshop) 

                                                                     Pose Wireframe

Final Thoughts

   I'll be honest: doing this challenge was not exactly what I expected. My priority was to be on top of my tasks I created when it came to this challenge. Unfortunately, setbacks happen and this challenge helped me learn that I need to do what was best for me in order to finish. I also learned that there is always time to improve after the challenge and I will be more motivated to do better! 

I learned a lot about myself as an artist doing this challenge. I learned I have strengths that shined and struggles that were obvious. Aside from being super stressed out about finishing, this was super fun for me to do! I love doing stylized characters and despite my self-critique saying I could do better, I could not be more happier seeing the character finished!

 I will continue to perfect my skills from here and I will post a update in the Project section of my profile in order to show growth from this entry! I would like to thank everyone in the CG Spectrum community for reaching out to me about doing the challenge, as well as giving me feedback and advice during the journey! I do hope you enjoyed viewing this project. Doing a character for the first time is never easy, however, it did exceed my own expectations I had of myself!