FMP Week 4&5: PBR Project Introduction

The Kled model is in the final stages and I'll be putting it to rest for some time. I still have to rig it and present it in 3D but I'll do that after I gather enough feedback and finalise the textures. For now, I'm shifting my focus to my next project.



I was watching the League 10-year anniversary stream on Twitch when the idea for this project came to me (I would recommend everyone to watch it if you've missed it, especially concept artists -> there was a super fun segment where amazing artists Taylor Jansen, Jeremy Anninos and Jason Chan designed the funniest skins. I will still wish with my whole heart for K/DA Gragas to come true in game! :D).

When Riot introduced Wild Rift, I was, like I think everyone who watched, stunned by the PBR renditions of the handpainted in-game models we knew so well. They looked so different but still completely true to the champions and their skins, somehow even enhancing their personalities. It wasn't just a few thousand more polys added to the same models - it was a complete re-vamp. I thought this would be super-fun to do and a great challenge as it would help me learn what makes assets appealing and how to better convey personality and story through a model (as well as practice my PBR workflows).

Choosing the champion was another challenge that took me longer to figure out. There's too many good ones! I was tempted to aim for my dear main Miss Fortune but I feel like I've been focusing on pirates a lot (pirate Kled, previous PBR Sea of Thieves project..) and I wanted to get some more diversity into my portfolio. I spent a fun evening on Teemo Model Viewer and picked out some of the skins I would be most interested in:


I was trying to aim for skins which did not have a released PBR version or high poly version on Artstation just so I would not have a clutch and tried to figure out as much as I could myself. After much thought, I chose Championship Ashe which I always thought of as one of the most beautiful skins in game. Her design is already super nice, so it will be hard to find any improvements, but I like the possibilities offered by her bow, cape and floaters which could make an interesting final composition when posed (something similar to Steve Zhang's fanart below). One thing I also love about the skin specifically was that a portion of the proceeds from her sales went to charity! I love seeing that trend in games and wish there were more skins like this :D


Right now I'm also getting back into ZBrush after a month's break. I took an older sculpt of Blood Moon Evelynn I haven't finished and I'm trying to make it more polished while learning new shortcuts and tools on the way. Old sculpt:
WIP so far:





















Notes from tutorials:
Follygon:
Hair: large shapes first (big form), medium shapes (strands), small shapes (flyaway hairs)
- Large shape: start with dynamesh, create base, ZRemesh and sculpt to indicate flow
- Hair strands: CurveTubeStrap with Curve modifier. Medium shapes break up bigger, primary shapes. Size modifier on (in Curve Modif), Brush -> Depth for indentation. 
- Turn DynamicSubdiv on and off to check topo.
- Hair creasing: Bevel in ZModeler or more organic way with DamStandard
- draw topology lines over your reference to simplify and follow later

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