The Traveler
A medieval character who can communicate with modern day and even future people and is a blend of cultures between then and now
I would love to enter this contest this year as a time stamp: so I could look back to this point in time exactly this time next year and appreciate how far I must have gone. My entry is a breakdown of the character I did this year during the Art station Medieval back and forth challenge. The prompt was to design a medieval character with modern influence or a modern character with medieval influence. I designed a medieval character capable of communicating with people from the future era.
#18 - FULL CONCEPT
I made two variations of the concept - one with chainmail and the other with fur. Initially I wanted to choose and keep just one, but what if I could keep the two such that the player starts the game with the chainmail version and after completing series of contests, it changes to fur as a reward for missions completed? This would add to the diversity of materials/shaders I would have to work with and I like the Idea since it presupposes more challenge for me.
#17 - VR HEADSET CLOSE UP
a VR headset designed in the medieval times to take a look into the future and communicate with people. You could set the date, time and location with the exact GPS coordinates and be sure to arrive at your destination in no time. I wanted it to feel like it was designed in the medieval times, and so I imagine the resources availalbe to the scientist/magicain/astrologer who might have made this and felt that it should'nt look all polished up like it was made today or in the future.
#16 - LOW POLY
Total Triangles = 96, 659. I had to make the character in layers because I imagine him being able to take of the headset when he is not actively engaging in combat activities with people from the future and so we can see him with eyes, hair, and change of clothes between chainmail and fur.
#15 - UV LAYOUT
I used two texture sets of 4k each for the character. This is excluding eye, teeth, hair cards and hair cap; I would break these down into individual texture sets, however, I would make sure that the total area used is NOT more than 3 x 4k.
#14 - HAIR CAP
A presentation of the hair cap I groomed and baked for the character using Xgen and Substance Painter. The cut designs were inspired by the "Merchant's Marks" prevalent in the medieval period, used as a distinctive symbol or logo for a variety of purposes like marking his goods and property, signing documents and as a means of identification. Each mark on his head is from a previous master who trianed him in combat as a certification of having passed through him. I intend to use some as Tattoo for his arms also just to increase the medieval feeling in the character. I played around with variants also to know which one was better? is it the Plane one without any cuts, or the faded one or the one with designs...?
Rendered with Marmoset Toolbag 4
#13 - HAIR CARDS
I also baked the maps for my hair cards using Xgen and Arnold. A little post process in photoshop is still required, like desaturation and levels adjustments, but it's no big deal.
#12 - BAG + SCI - FI WATCH
At this stage was when I added the detailed version of the bag and the sci - fi watch. These are part of the modern influence elements of the desing
#11 - BAG DESIGN
I designed and blocked out the bag pack in marvelous designer. I left out the handles intentionally as I preferred to model them in Maya using Live surface/Quad Draw tool to get them exactly where I wanted. And for the other design elements like buckles and stuffs, It would be a combination of Maya and Zbrush. I also did the retopology of the bag here, exported it in parts into Maya, welded verts, transferred attributes (verts position) and continued working from there on correct topology. I wrote a detailed breakdown of the whole process from Marvelous Desinger to Maya and then Zbrush on my arstation post "clothes part II" just because it took me so much time to figure this out and I wanted to put the information out there so maybe I could help JUST one person who may be as confused as I was.
#10 - HIGH POLY DETAILING
I applied high frequency detailing with the exception of the skin. I intend to use Wrap and TextureXYZ to transfer details on the face and skin. It was thrilling to see how the surface feature in zbrush could be used with custom alphas to achieve a very high end result very fast.
#9 - HAIR CLOSE UP
These hairs were all generated using Xgen. I felt really happy when the workflow worked out for me because I haven't seen it in any tutorial nor read about it somewhere. I was just curious and tried it out and am going to spend time on it next time when am making another character. I wrote a detailed breakdown of the workflow in my post in art station, but it would be too long to write here. For those who don't really like zbrush fiber mesh, but can handle xgen, yeti or ornatrix, you should definately check it out... it's a very simple workflow.
#8 - FUR AND CHAINMAIL
For the chainmail, I used IMM brush from Zbrush Central IMM brush repository. Pretty amazing and cool stuffs there. For the Fur, I modelled a few strands and turned them into different clumps, then converted it into IMM insert brush. However, the same technique for making sculpted hairs with xgen (yeti, ornatrix) can be used to make sculpted furs and it gives amazing results also.
#7 - DESIGN CHECK
I used the blue colour as black to see how the design reads in black and white.
#6 - CLOTHES PART III
I added accessories to make the clothing richer.
#5 - CLOTHES PART II
This is the stage where I stitch up my garments in Maya, transfer attributes and add thickness if needed n Zbrush. Anyone like me out there who is confused about the Marvelous Designer to Maya and Zbrush workflow do check out this post on art station. And for my Seniors, kindly let me know what am missing or probably misplacing.
#4 - CLOTH SIMULATION
Designed the clothes in MD and did Retopolgy also. Until I find reasons not to, doing the retopology on a flat 2d pattern in MD is way better than struggling with it in 3d.
#3 - PROPORTIONS OF THE HEAD
I am a very big fan of Andrew Loomis and have read several of his books so I took out the time to make sure the features and proportions of my character are in line with what I learnt from his books.
#2 - ANATOMY SCULPT
the anatomy of a small boy was challenging and fun at the same time because how much could be exaggerated in the body of a five year old boy to make him look muscular and built, like a fighter, and still make him feel like a child and not a dwarf. Even though parts of it would be covered up in clothes, Anatomy is fundamental and so I had to do it.
#1 - PROPORTION CHART
I started by modifying an already existing base mesh to get the proportions of various ages using the head unit as a measurement guide. It was literally a transfer of what I learnt from studying Andrew Loomis and I was happy doing it. it was after this stage I picked the Five years male/boy base mesh and continued with it for the concept.
#0 - REF
Instead of appending all the images I collated during the course of this on-going project, I decided to single out the MAJOR ones that played a huge part in the inspiration of the concept this would be very obvious by looking at the bag and rife. All images were gotten from Pinterest and are properties of their respective owners. The thought of the VR headset came to my mind after I saw that cyber punk bag pack with dates... and instead of repeating the same design on my bag pack I converted it into vr headset... the round element from the sci-fi hand glove is what I used as the lens on the vr headset... etc.
CONCLUSION
This project is still on-going. I ran out of time and couldn't meet up with the deadlines given. However, am happy to see my own concept coming alive in 3d it gives me so much satisfaction looking back to where I started, and that is the more reason why I feel motivated to submit this as a time stamp because am confident that exactly one year from now during the next Rookies awards, I would have fantastic completed projects I would be proud of and would like you to see.
I sincerely would like to thank John Webber from LinkedIn who told me about this contest and encouraged me to submit nevertheless without him, I wouldn't have known such a thing existed... God bless you!
Thanks everyone for your time and good luck to all contestants.
See you June 2024!
Artstation: https://www.artstation.com/anointedjude
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/anointedmelodi/
Comments (0)
This project doesn't have any comments yet.