Kevin Del Pino - My 10 Months of 3D

“Martyrdom” Saint Sebastian Sculpture

This was my End-term 300 and the theme for this week was “Roman Empire and Greek Mythology”. It took me a bit of time to decide on what model I wanted to make. I felt that spartan helmets might be a bit overdone and I was concerned that a statue might be too cliché. Ironically after hours of sifting through images online I settled on a marble statue made by Hedi Xandt. The concept is a modern take on classic Greek sculptures and frankly, metal as hell. This would be my first full body I sculpt and third character I've made so I was nervous but still thrilled for the challenge. 

                                            REFERENCES

This sculpture in particular stood out to me and I absolutely loved the contrast of the reflective gold and rough stone. One thing I noticed about this sculpture was how exaggerated the muscle details were. While the abdominals look quite realistic his arms, thighs and shoulders are detailed down to each muscle group. The shoulder is so defined that you can see each muscle fiber. It felt like you would only see the detail if your skin were flayed and made for an interesting mix of natural anatomy and stone carved texture. From that point I began looking up tons and tons of body references both sculpted and natural. The hardest part was finding references to muscular men with their arms tied behind their back. Needless to say, googling bondage and “shibari” made for some risky google searches at school. These are the main references I used including a full anatomy book called "Anatomy for Sculptors" by Uldis Zarins. This proved immensely helpful to the process of recreating a believable human body. I also found a shrine in Thailand called the Wat Rong Khun which is supposed to depict a gateway to hell which was fascinating. I thought it would be interesting to have the hands sprout up around my model.

Project Goals

● Improve my understanding of human body proportions and Anatomy
● Improve my lighting and Camera skills
● Refine my workflow for character creation on a full body
● Gain a better understanding of dynamic posing for sculpts 

                            MODELING AND WORKFLOW

I began by working on an A-posed base mesh because this was the easiest way I could work in symmetry and simultaneously sculpt the entire model to shave off some precious time. My biggest concern was getting lost in the details. It’s easy to zoom in as close as possible to refine details without realizing how small the part is in correlation with the full model. I had to remind myself to regularly zoom out just to make sure I’m not getting tunnel vision.

After finalizing the body, I began posing the model. I had tried a few methods of masking and moving segments in Zbrush as well as using Z-spheres to make a very rudimentary rig. This proved to be a very clunky way to pose a model and I’m currently unsure if this is how I will do so in the future. At least for this pose the model deformed quite a bit using this technique.

What worked in the end was Zremeshing my model, using auto UV’s in Zbrush then uploading my low poly model as an OBJ to Accurig. I then posed the rigged model in Maya and exported it as an OBJ to Zbrush. Since my Vertex order is the same Zbrush is smart enough to update my previous A-posed model with the posed model. This was an absolute life safer because I was already at my wits end attempting to pose purely in Zbrush. I also used the same rig to pose and adjust a few arms to scatter in my scene later.

The waist cloth was made using the Dynamics function on a Torus and hand sculpting cloth folds. The blood was made by painting a mask on a duplicate model, creating a new polygroup and deleting unwanted geometry, then adding thickness via panel loops. Finally, the arrows were made by using a very thin cube to cut out notches using the clip curve brush then sculpting finer lines with damn standard. After duplicating the flat feather I dynameshed it, Zremeshed  and tacked on a cylinder to complete my arrows.

                                               TEXTURING

My texturing was done in Substance painter. I began by using the base marble smart material as a starting point. I gradually built-up layers by introducing a variety of scratches, color variations and bumps to add depth and break up to the marble. These were all done through a variety of different smart masks and generators. I wanted a very rough finish for my marble as that best matched the original reference. I applied the same technique to the arrows as well.

I originally made a black and gold version of this statue, but the details were not as impactful as I'd like them to be especially because I was using a black environment. Luckily, it was quite easy to swap to white marble.

                                            LOOK DEV

The scene was very simply lit with three-point lighting, I used a very bright rim light to really outline the silhouette of the sculpt and had softer key and fill lights to help show off the anatomy. The hands were scattered around the statue and in the background of the scene which really tied the whole scene together. 

"Ganondorf" The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom

This was my Mid-term 300 project which was done in seven days. At the time I was eight months into my education at PIXL VISN. This was my second human sculpt. My goal for this project was to do a full groom in Xgen and practice nailing the likeness of a well-known character. This project truly gave me an appreciation for the art of grooming hair. I initially planned to have the entire groom done in a single day, this was a mistake. Three days of grooming later Ganondorf's hair was done, along with my patience. While I still wish I could have refined this project more I'm quite pleased with the sculpt and glad that I had my first successful groom under my belt. 

"Female Warrior"
Concept by Areum Jeong

This was my End-Term 200 Project, completed in seven days. I was six months into my program when I completed this assignment. This project was and is still incredibly special to me because It's the reason I fell in love with anatomy and digital sculpting. It was my very first attempt at sculpting and texturing a realistic person. My goals were to sculpt a realistic face from polysphere's, groom simple lashes and eyebrows, texture skin and make a realistic pair of eyes. Much of the workflow was unknown to me and I had to learn the workflow as I was creating this sculpt. While incredibly stressful I felt like I learned more about Zbrush in that week than most of my time at PIXL VISN. It was this trial by fire that gave me the confidence to continue pushing towards sculpting and character art. 

                                               CONCLUSION

These projects reflect each major milestone of my growth as a modeler. While they are still rough in some respects, I feel each one shows was leap of faith to challenge myself and try something new. I have learned so much in these 10 months at PIXL VISN and I am thrilled to see where this education will take me.

Thank you so much for joining me on this journey and reading about my process. Please feel free to reach out if you wish to connect or give me any suggestions for my work. Take care, have fun, don’t die and have a wonderful day! :D