PROJECT 3: Basemeshes & ZBrush

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For the past week I have been mainly working on the three main assets for my SoT scene and well, it's been a ride. I've forgotten a lot about hardsurface modeling and in retrospect, I probably should have not picked such diverse subjects for my matrix -> picking organic character, 2D concepting and then 3D prop/hardsurface meant that I had to switch into different modes every few weeks and remember different things about all I knew in each discipline numerous times and that took way more time than I had at hand. Good thing is, for my FMP I've chosen a pretty consistent topic so I have hopefully already learned from this mistake! :D 

Anyway, the stage where I had to prepare the basemeshes for Zbrush was by far the most difficult at the start. Meeting the old friends called NGons, rat nests and control loops was a memory I'm not eager to revisit; nevertheless, I pushed through it, frontloaded my meshes as much as I could to save myself some certain tears in Zbrush and I'm happy to say that I think it was worth it, as the sculpting stage was a lot of fun and reminded me why I don't hate 3D as much as I thought I did. 


The following are screenshots from Zbrush where I played with materials and render settings to get an idea of what to shoot for later on in Substance:




Above: some alphas I created in Photoshop to add the engraving from the concept.


Above: Some WIP shots from Zbrush and 3Ds Max. The arch was especially challenging as I didn't know what method to use for it. I first tried to connect the edges and keep it as one mesh but after re-visiting the concept and hunting for some in-game screenshots of the actual modelled cage, I noticed that the bars are overlapping the arches and it would be easier to have them as separate meshes.

The gun took some figuring out as well. The concept wasn't as descriptive as the others and I could not find any indication of size specs, so I tried to guess the proportions and size of SoT characters and kind of wing it according to those. I also found some nice Blunderbuss model screenshots from the in-game shop. Not the exact one I was supposed to model but it was helpful in some minor things like the shape of the inside of the gun's head or the fidelity of detail in materials. Renders from Zbrush: 



High poly stage, turbosmooth in its full beauty.























The fish skeleton is still in a bit more of a WIP stage. I put a lot of time and effort in trying to follow the concept as close as I could to achieve an appealing shape. Now I'll get onto sculpting the teeth and adding wear&tear to the rest of the skeleton. I'm now also deciding whether to take these main assets to finish now (retopo, UV, bake, textures, etc.) to have them finished earlier (but FINISHED), or if I should try to speed sculpt the rest of the scene to keep it all consistent.

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