Demo Reel 2023 - Yigit Han Alpinar

In this post I'll show you the skills I learned in my 18 months of training in Pixl Visn Media Arts Academy. I thank everyone who helped me get this far.

The Bard

The Bard served as my inaugural Demo Project, marking the beginning of my creative journey. I established a set of criteria to guide my choices what do make as my first Project. My Goal was to craft a comprehensive character, Zbrush for sculpting and learn more about Marvelous Designer. Seeking artistic inspiration, I searched on Artstation, exploring my saved Collections from all the talented Artist. Among these, Stefan Stankovic's concept instantly captured my attention, it was decided that it will be my first Demo project.

Planing is Key

The first thing you should do is Plan your Project.

I first analyzed the concept for a longer time. I looked in which time the character could originate, how tall he could be in which age he is grad what his history is. I looked at what clothes he wore and what his body and face shape was like. What kind of hair he had and what kind of feelings he expresses in the picture and what materials the fabrics could have. After that I was able to collect a lot of references on the internet which helped me a lot to visualize everything in 3 dimensional space.

When looking for references it is good to have many from different perspectives. Also to have other variants and also to look how it other people before you have done such things.

Sculpt

I have my Reference and my Concept so I could start to Sculpt in Zbrush.I started with a spherical shape first sculpted the body shape and proportions. So I created my own basemesh which I could still modify the shape. At the beginning it looked strange but it is also because he had no clothes no texture no hair eyebrows or there was basically no life. But that comes with the next step, first was the proportion important and the base.

After my base I have also begun to block hair and clothes. This allowed me to put more and more life into the character. I strongly edited the head shape adapted the body more to the character and you could already see more of the character.

Lets not forget to make cool Clothes.For the clothes I used Marvelous designer. For this I brought the Neutral-pose into Marvelous and was able to customize the clothes for him there. After that I brought the clothes into Maya to give a good retopology and that to Zbrush to edit something there. 

The shoes and hat I was able to model in Maya and the feathers I used in Zbrush with Fibermesh.

Where I have now everywhere the Retopology and uv unwrapped, I could pose everything. To do this, I modeled the character in the pose and could then also simulate the clothes in Marvelous that also made other folds when sitting. Now I had to improve everything. When everything was finished, the micro details were added. Where I used brushes for the skin and created details for the fabrics in subtance and then created them in zbrush as a displacement map.

Texture and Shading

Now the textures and shading are missing. I made all the textures in Subtance Painter. For this I also backed everything from high Poly to low poly. When everything was ready I put everything on maya and looked how it looked in the render.

Clay        -        Diffuse     -        Specular    -        Subsurface Scattering         -        Beauty

I used different Skydome's to see how the shaders worked on different light scenes and adjusted everything.

As a last step we also had to match the character with the background that Lusie Rolle did and also did the lighting for the scene. Once we optimized the Scene there we could start rendering and you can see the result here.

The learn Process

I learned a lot through this project. In the beginning I learned how to plan a project and what I have to pay attention to. I learned the process of working from Marvelous to Zbrush. How to pose, what to look for in Retopology, how to save time and where to save time. How to add micro details. How to bake the high and low poly in Subtance Painter well and how to put everything together to make it all work in Maya. And especially by mistakes that have occurred by learning from them and by next project will be better.

Deer Skull

The Deer Skull was my "smaller" project than the other two projects. I made this project alongside the Extreme Dino. It started at the same time as the Dino and just spent an hour every day on the Skull. The Dino had for me as a Project higher conditions to be finished, but for that I have also planned the Skull so that I get a very good Sculpt with the time I have. That does not mean that I have not put less fun a and heart blood in the Project like the others. It just meant it was a different challenge that I had and also successfully completed. For me it has become a cool project that I also want to share with you.

Like the previous projects, I start planning and looking for some references and preferably from as many perspectives as possible.

Sculpt

At first sculpted four Speedsculpt to get my eye used to what the most important shapes for the Sculpt and improve it afterwards. Then I choosed one and moved foreward. The next step was to make the shapes as good as possible. Through many references I saw where I had to model what to get as close as possible to the original.

Next, add asymmetry to the sculpt and the last tiny details that you see in the sculpt. Then I used Zremesher for time reasons and unwrapped the uvs in Maya. Finally, I added micro details and finished the sculpting part.

Texturing and Shading

The next step was to paste the skull into Subtance Painter and bake the high poly to low poly. Then I could use different masks for the textures to get a cool bony texture.

Not to forget that we still have to bring it in Maya and shader it.

Clay           -           Albedo           -           Diffuse           -           Specular           -           Beauty

After that I adjusted the light and downloaded a log of megascans and posed everything and animated a few cameras to give it a cool look to present.

Extreme Dino

This time I wanted to do something more anatomical but also cool looking and in my collections of artists I found that Hamisch Fraser made a modern redesign of Stegz from the old Exreme Dinosaurs series. After that I knew that this would be my next project.

Because the character was very muscular, I had to learn more about anatomy and I already had acquired anatomy knowledge when I was doing the bard, but I wanted to do more. Where i also started with the character i looked more closely at references and read on anatomy books like "Anotmy for Sculpters". After that it was easier for me to sculpt the character. For his Expression and his cool Design was to study Reference very Important to make it in 3D.

Sculpt

This time I made a more sporty Body Builder Basemesh and later changed it to fit the concept more. Therefore, I first used a basic Skeleton and deformed from an old model that I have already modeled for myself to learn. After that I added the muscle parts.

Honestly, the head took me a few tries to make the head, because it never fit like as in the Concept. Either the shape was too realistic or too basic. When I then thought about the movie Ice Age and looked more closely at their facial features I noticed that I can make the head cartoony and then took the Ice Age dinos as a reference.

Next came the spikes, teeth and remaining features that I worked on and so I matched him like in the Concept. I could not forget the clothes and his accessories and modeled some in Maya and sculpted details in Zbrush.

With him I took more time to make a good retopology. and have paid attention to some muscle groups that there edgedloops go around. In addition, I have also made sure that I do not get too much size differences.

At the end where now everything had a retopolgy and everything was uv unwrapped

I could give him a pose with Zhpheres and also take care of the rest of the details like scales and microdetails.

Texturing and Shading

The texturing and shading was the same as with the bard except that I made a cage on the high to low poly bake to fix texture errors. I separated parts like the spines, teeth, and tooth floss and they were not inside but all outside. This saved annoying mistakes and allowed me to work faster.

Clay         -        Albedo         -        Diffuse         -        Specular         -         Subsurface Scattering

Now only cool camera movements, a cool studio background was missing and everything had to be exposed cool and then I could present him and could render.

With these three projects I had many cool challenges and was glad that I could finish my project. With every project I learned something new and could implement new Skills.

Credit:

Project The Bard:

Lookdev/Lighting: Village environment by Luise Rolle

Assets:

Village environment by Luise Rolle

Mediterranean Olive Trees in 3dSky by khalifeh-modern

Plants Quixel Megascans

Project Deer Skull:

Assets:

Burnt Tree Log by Quixel Mega Scans

Project Extreme Dino:

Assets:

Damaged Asphalt by Quixel Mega Scans

Music: HoliznaCC0 - Big Ass Robots

I hope you enjoyed my entry here are my Social Media to follow my journey along the way.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/yigit-han-alpinar/

https://vimeo.com/yigithanalpinar

https://www.artstation.com/yigithan_alpinar