3D - Term 2 - Year 2
For this period I wanted to sculpt and texture paint an elf head
Term learning plan 2
Humanoid Head sculpting & texture painting
Workflow plan:
- Moodboard
- Concept sketches + final sketch
- Following tutorial steps, from sketch to 3D model with low polys
- New layer for the sculpting
- Retopology
- UV unwrap
- Texture paint
First I’m going to try to make a low poly mesh and then in another layer sculpt it so that maybe I can use the lower poly mesh as a re-topology.
Last period I focused on sculpting in blender and for this period I decided to continue with the sculpting and focus on the texture painting. Before sculpting I started off with making a moodboard to get some idea of what I wanted to make.
To challenge myself I decided to make the head and shoulder of some kind of elfish tribal creature.
Using 2D lessons, I made a few silhouettes and let people decide which one they thought was the best. Eventually I chose the one which I underlined because, I really liked the ears and the horns.
For the horns I already had an idea of how I wanted to make it. When I was sketching the silhouettes, adding the earrings seemed like a nice detail. Another reason why I picked this one was because, I thought I was able to make it within time.
After the silhouettes I made a final sketch
Using a tutorial, I started of with modeling the Elf so that I would have some kind of base for my sculpt. (I wanted to use this one as a retopology as well but in the end this one didn't really seem fit for a retopology)
For the sculpting I looked up a lot of reference photo's of faces, ears, head's, eyes, lips etc.
Now came the challenge of making the clothing on to the sculpt. I tried three different ways.
1 picture: Extrude and try to sculpt. 2 picture: cloth stimulation with sewing, it didn't work smoothly because of the spikes. 3 picture: model it onto the sculpt and subdivide it to make it fit better, after struggling for some time I went with this way.
when I was finished with my base sculpt, using the dyontopo, I wanted to remesh my elf and add extra details with the multiresolution using texture brushes but, my laptop wasn't strong enough for this so sadly had to skip this step and continue with the retopology.
Before I could texture paint my model I had to bake my high poly mesh onto a lower poly mesh so that I could UV unwrap the elf and paint it.
I had a lot of trouble figuring out how to bake my highpoly mesh onto my retopology so my teacher helped me figure out how to do it. In the end he came with the solution to bake my Elf using Adobe Substance Painter. I really like this way of baking my meshes because it's quick easy and you get a decent bake.
Now I could finally start with painting my elf in Adobe Substance Painter. This was the fist time I used this program. With the help of some texture brushes I still managed to create the little bit of extra details that I wanted to make in the sculpting process.
Here are a few renders of the final result.
Reflection:
In the beginning everything went quite smoothly until I was finished with the base sculpt and I couldn't apply my multiresolution a on my remesh to add extra details. Blender kept crashing and very leggy, so after a while I started with the retopology.
After the retopology I was kind of lost because I didn't really knew what to do next and how to UV unwrap and bake my retopology the best. After trying lots of things like a cage, etc. to bake my highboy into my retopology but I didn't get the result I wanted.
I asked my teacher if he could help me and he helped me a lot with, UV unwrapping my retopology and he also came with the solution to bake the mesh in Adobe Substance Painter, which I find a very nice program to use.
It gave me a good direction of what workflow to use for making a painted sculpt because, I was really looking for one but couldn't find it.
Starting with the texture paint everything went quite smoothly again, I did had to figure out how things worked but it looks a lot like other drawing programs so that wasn't a problem.
I'm pleased with the end result considering the struggles I had along the way and the amount of time I put in the project. but I do find it sad that I didn't manage to add the ear rings and make the Elf a bit more detailed and personalized like in the sketch. T
Things are what they are and I learned a lot this period, that's what makes me happy the most and for a first try, I'm proud of my texture painted elf.