Flash Gordon Real-Time Model

| -08- Jacket Retopology/UVs/Baking/Texturing |

[Timelapse video shows the retopology inside of Topogun, Uving and Texturing]

[Although i had painfully made the basemesh already for this using Marvelous Designer and Maya, i was still not pleased with some of the results as well as tris count. Although this was good for practice and laying down the base for the concept i went onto retopologizing once again inside of Topogun. I started similarly to the leg model by seperating the main parts that need retopoing and importing it into Topogun. I found making the retopology this way was hard at times due to the inside and outside being very close but the end result is 100 times better in my opinion. There were too many edge loops and a lots of problems with the previous mesh which had me driving crazy. A big improvement in the tris count also came from creating a very low poly zipper brush. I really wanted this to be included as a detail and not just a normal/texture addon]

[Once the topology was made i continued to do some quick UV tests as well as bake tests to see the results before going into UVing properly and texturing. This process has really helped me be more flexible in this part of the workflow which i used to think it was that or that. Now i know there are a ton of corrections and tricks to help later down the line in the texturing phase]

[For the texturing having done the concept i had saved some smart materials with the base materials + colors of what i liked and went from there. I played with some stitching for the right arm patch. To create the patch effect on the back jacket emblem i used an alpha as the outline to create the height from and with a fill layer inside the mask i inserted the diffuse version of the emblem]

[Overall im very happy getting it down from 276,000 tris to 29,600 tris. Unfortunately those zippers are the cause of the higher tris count but i think its worth it]

| -07- Legs Retopology/UVs/Baking/Texturing |

[Once i was done with the High poly sculpt for the legs and shoes i dove into the retopology. I've never done this much manual retopology so there were a few hiccups on the way. I had started wanting to retopologize the shoe entirely with the piping, straps, and laces but after some bake tests i decided to split up the model into parts. This would allow for me to control the topology better and also have less of a headache when retopologizing. The draw back would be some more time spent on baking by individually baking and compositing the main maps in photoshop]

[Once the retopoing was done i moved onto UVs, I ran into some problems at first due to some overlapping uvs which i would fix later on by redoing the UVs. For the concept sculpting i used a very fast uvs to test out the texturing and lookdev of what the final model could look like so i went for a manual and better uvs for the final modeling of the legs]

[The texturing was straight forward since i had already made the materials bases and process through the concepting phase. The only extra part i had to do is manually paint in the already established materials]

[Im very happy with the final result of the leg and from 150,110 Tris i got it down to 9,209]

| -06- Legs + Pants Sculpting/Texturing |

[Timelapse shows the Leg hard surface blockout, refinement and uvs + texturing, as well as the pants blockout and uv + texturing]

[Like for the other blockout i used the same base mesh to get the base geometry to start building the leg hard surface piece. Then i dynameshed the piece as well as using the slice curve brush to create polygroups of where id like the main pieces to be. Once the polygroups where established i then used a combination of:
Ctrl Shift group + Mask group + Mask edgeloop
This allows me to create a very thin border polygroup which will help when extruding out the selected piece by keeping a clean base and reduce distortion. Using the masked edgeloops also creates a paneling effect after applying some group polishing. Once the Blockout was done i cleaned up some pieces and quickly uved to throw it into Substance. The texturing was pretty straight forward by using a prebuilt Steel base material i had made as well as changing some diffuse colors for certain pieces. I also went with trying out by adding some emissive parts]

[For the pants i refined the blockout as well as quickly uved in order to texture in substance painter. I added some buttons and straps like in the reference as well as started to think about the pouch and attatchment to the pants]

| -05- Shoes Sculpting/Texturing |

[Timelapse shows the process behind concepting the shoes, uving and texturing]

[I started out with a base mesh using the plant of the foot of the base mesh as a reference. Using zremesher i started creating the initial Base or sole of the shoe. Using Dynamesh to create the base for the top part of the shoe as well as using a lot of extracting, zremeshing and repeat. The sole details where made using an alpha created in photoshop and using the text 3D and svg feature inside of Zbrush, then i roughly rotated and aligned it with the base sole. The shoe laces where made using a very cool feature added recently to Zbrush using zspheres to create the guides to place an IMM curve brush along. Another technique i used was to group by normal certain elements of the shoe and then frame the borders mesh to also use once again IMM curve brushes in order to create a "Piping" effect along some borders. This helps split off some materials and adds a very cool detail to the shoes. This method can also be used to add stitching to meshes]

[For the base of texturing i imported a diffuse map of the shoes with the colorway i had made during the concepting in Zbrush. This allowed me to straight away have some color information in Substance Painter. For the shoe laces i used some alphas which were repeated to create a pattern effect, as well as some different alphas to differentiate some of the materials, straps and sole]

This was very awesome making and was the second time trying out a shoe sculpt so i am super glad with the final outcome so far of the shoes.

| -04- Jacket Cleanup/Projection/Texturing |

[Timelapse shows the cleanup phase with Maya and Topogun, Projection in Zbrush, Texturing in Substance Painter]

[Ive included the export settings inside of Marvelous Designer as well as the steps i went through to make the garment and general steps. Once the Garment is finished, i exported individually the parts id want to stitch, so for example the jacket base, the sleeves, the inside base, and the inside sleeves. This way i would have a bit less clutter inside of Maya. I also exported the respective High poly version from MD as a way to check for any errors in Topogun]

[Once the stitching and cleanup was finished i imported the final retopologized obj. into Zbrush as well as the respective High poly versions. I began by adding a panel loops to the retopoed version to give it thickness, then by masking the new thickness and projecting i can control any projection errors. I then subdivided and repeated until reaching a good base for to sculpt on]

[Some sculpting and fixes to any errors in the mesh as well as checking the uvs before exporting into substance painter. The texturing was pretty staright forward and is still modifiable obviously. I went back and forth with marmoset to lookdev and check the progress and look of the garment. I also photoshoped and recreated the back logo in order to project on with the textures]

[As a final touch i love adding the diffuse/color texture map back into Zbrush to be able to work on the next pieces with the colored garment]

On to the shoes!

| -04- Jacket Creation |

[Timelapses showing the creation of the garment inside of Marvelous Designer as well as how i retopologized it too]

[Using patterns found online i started with the basic jacket and adjusted the overall proportions and shape. I used several different tutorials and information ive collected, which ill list at the bottom, with the help of creating a more realistic garment and in a tidy way. MD is a super powerful tool and obviously im still learning the ins and outs of how to really manipulate cloth]

[The retopology inside of MD was a bit fidgety due to the lack of tools/shortcuts available in this version, but was pretty straight forward. I started with a very large and basic retopo helping myself with the 3d view to line up the vertices as best as possible. This will help me later down the pipeline in Maya when stitching the different patterns together to create the basemesh. Once i was happy with the topology i subdivided a couple of times and then duplicated the topology to the side]

[Bibliography]
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
- Becoming An Expert In Marvelous Designer - Aleksandr Kirilenko
- Cyberpunk Bomber Jacket - MRDavis
-  Mastering Marvelous Designer - CGElves

Some Links to very helpful artists
Evgenia Petrova - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCQM8a8ti6piGVgFPnfttwUA
Marianna Yakimova - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCNHjeuyc4ogntFQKnict7vg/featured
Daniel - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCT_Y4okpd6G0DUaNl1bT1sw
3D Gladiator - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCTyC4mw11lUEsHd7yWvBbjw
Travis Davids - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCniZ7Qzbv17NvoCypCzB4Ow

| -03- Blockout |

[This is the first timelapse of a series ill be making which will help me keep track of my workflow as well as get me in the optic of producing more videos and such.]

[The timelapse shows the start of the blocking out for the character before diving into a more detailed asset creation. For the pants i used the same base mesh topology and used simple extract techniques as well as the dynamics simulations inside of Zbrush. This helped me loosely create the pants and add some garmen/material to the nude base mesh.
Similar methods for the neck and torso pieces with some group loops to help create some paneling in some parts.
The hair was giving me a hard time trying to emulate sculpted hair right off the bat and decided to decimate it to create a more stylized and faceted look, which works more effectively in this blockout phase.
I then merged all the visible parts and grouped them together to be exported as Obj. and imported into Marvelous Designer as an avatar. This initial blockout will helps me visualize the Jacket creation of the model better having some landmarks and shapes]

Yo everyone! I'm excited to take part in this contest and hope to learn a lot from yall. I've made only a couple of real-time models so i hope to document and create a nice workflow for myself in future projects with this cool concept art + project. 
Ive made an outline of the important sections or milestones to be able to keep track and progress of the project.
-01- Character Analysis
-02- Base Mesh
-03- Asset Creation
-04- Retopology
-05- Asset Refinement
-06- Uvs
-07- Texturing + Lookdev
-08- Project Analysis

For now this is my rough outline for approaching this project.

| -01- Character Analysis |
[ Here i am analyzing the concept art provided. Since it was in a pose i quickly photoshopped the concept art to create a Front view to get a look at the proportions correctly. I really like the proportions for this character which gives him a really nice and stylized silhouette.]
[Ive color coded the main components that make up the model in order to identify how to proceed with the asset creations.]

| -02- Base Mesh |
[ I decided on using Character Creator 3 for the start of the base mesh. This is a super powerful tool which will come in handy later down the pipeline for things like posing, animating and more. I started the basemesh creation with one of the Digital Human default characters. I started by using the morph sliders to change and tweak the proportions of the body, then GoZ exported in a t-pose or a-pose to allow the back and forth between zbrush and CC3, where i manually moved and adjusted some areas with more speed than in CC3. Re-imported it back into Character Creator and saved the base mesh file. Once i was happy with the Base mesh i posed him to a more similar pose from the concept art to help with the asset creation. 
After exporting once again with GoZ i seperated the Head from the body so that i can concentrate later on with more detail on the face sculpting and detailing, as well as applied the texture as polypaint to the basemesh by importing the maps into Zbrush. This helps with the process to have some color information.}