Female Viking and WASP Inspired Mecha

This is two of my projects I made during the visual effects diploma at 3dsense media school.

Lookdev Character -  Female Viking

I made this female Viking character based on 2D concept art.

Reference: HE XIAOSONG

My Reference Board 

Sculpting Process

 I started from creating characters face by Zbrush. For her face, I used the face of an actor as reference to make her look gorgeous and fierce. I also used Zwarp techniques for adding skin details from 3d scan.

My tip: When I sculpt, I like to add makeup and hair blocking to help me see the expressions of the character and how it looks when it is finished.

I made body and props in Zbrush and Maya. Clothing was done in Marvelous Designer.

Hair and Fur

Xgen is one of the time consuming process. I created 4 separated descriptions which are side hair, main hair, braid and fur for easy control. I also made a few tests with modifiers to create the best result.

Texturing 

For skin details, I used Mari software, Texture and 3D scan from XYZ website.

For prop, I mainly used Substance Painter.

lighting and Rendering

Lighting and rendering were done in Maya.

Hard Surface Character Model -WASP Inspired Mecha

Here is my mecha project. I did this model 90% in Maya and 10% in Zbrush for sculpting the wrinkles detail. It was one of the most challenging projects for me.

Credit: I would like to thank Marco Plouffe (Keos Masons) for allowing me to use his design as my reference.

My Reference Board

Modeling Process 

My Tip for Making Hard surfaces:

- It is really important to visualize shape and form, and plan everthing ahead before execution.

- Always start from blocking. I make the correct proportions first without considering topology.

- After I got the blocking with good proportions, I start to figure out the topology and add details.

The only one part I needed to sculpt was this part because it was an organic shape with many details. I used high poly to low poly method to bring the details back to render in Maya.

After I was done with Mecha, I decided to make hangar for the background by using modular technic.

Texturing 

I created all the textures by using Substance Painter and I used 2K texture for 140 uv tiles to get the best results.