My Twitter

I decided to post my WIP more frequently on my twitter, it's experimental, will see how long I am able to keep updating before I got tired of it :D

My first Tweet!

*Update 23th April*
I am working on some freelance jobs now so there will not be frequent update for some time..

Artstation Challenge Nvidia Metropia 2042 Work Update

This is a work created for Artstation Challenge Nvidia Metropia 2042 - Characters of the Future. I didn't complete my submission properly so this is a blog post prentending that if I was given a second chance to submit, or rather it is a practice for me to be more prepared for the next challenge.

After the challenge ended, I spent a week or so tweaking the result (and a few more days to render and work on presenting)

A list of what I did (that I can think of right now)

* Change the camera angle
* Change the HDR (this is a big change to the look)
* Add some more lights and tweak the existing one (position, color, intensity)
* Add a butterfly for visual interest
* Rotate the eyes to face the camera, previously it was looking really straight
* Tweak the Xgen hair more, previously it too clumpy, I added some noise and cut and stray hairs
* Tweak the position of leaves and add some bump + spec
* Fix the hoverboard textures
* Add a badge to his jacket on the right shoulder
* Add displacement to the yellow side of hoodie
* Add some red tint his google's glass and make it slightly transparent (it's doesn't look that transparent though)
* Change the pose of his left hand
* Shrink the shoulder area of the jacket a bit, previously it looks puffy and fat I think
* Add some details (pores, tiny wrinkles, bumps) to his facial displacement map and create specular and gloss map

I have also learned more about the importance of presentation and will be taking it more seriously next time.




Below is the part where I pretend like I was doing a final submission (it's was a practice!):

Hi, meet my character Charles Whale, a 17-year-old teenager who likes to explore and travel. In year 2042, the world is still a great place to live in. Technology has evolves and solve many things like pollution and so on. As humans comes to appreciate more of the natural environment through technology and how beautiful they can be, we seek to create a more beautiful world.

I decided early that I wanted to create a male, as I want to break out from doing female characters, and also because I wanted a character that is more strong, like those main characters in anime. He should looks like a traveler guy, that loves nature and explore places.

My inspiration of the character comes from Renton from Eureka, one of the very first thought that comes into my mind when I try to design him. That's where the hoverboard comes from. After watching Mamoru Hosada's Bakemono no Ko (again), I decided that I wanted a character like Kyuuta/Ren, that's why I try to make his hair look like 'grass'. For the suit underneath the clothes, I was inspired by Gantz and for the shoe, I peek at Air Gear's design. The googles are inspired from one of my old project and also Claus Valka from Last Exile. The badge on his right shoulder area of his jacket are inspired by Masaru Emoto, I was reading his book during this challenge and in his book, he envisioned an organization that research on water, I thought that was pretty cool. That organization is called WISE CRYSTAL, and I have an idea that Charles's dad could be one of the researcher inside. I design the crystal shape, or actually it's a snowflake shape.


Software Used:
Zbrush
Marvelous Designer (clothes)
Autodesk Maya
Nvil (modeling and retopo)
Arnold (rendering)
Xgen (hairs, eyebrows and eyelashes)
Advanced Skeleton (rigging)
Knald, xNormal, Substance Painter (texture creation)
Photoshop (texture creation and composite final image)

Basic No Light from Arnold:

Character Front, Quarter, Side and Back:

Hoverboards:
With my limited skills in hard surface design and modeling, this is what I come up with. My efforts have been poured more into the character unfortunately.

Zbrush sculpts:

 

Butterfly:
I spent about a day trying to create this butterfly to add some visual interest but it doesn't look right. I decide to come back to it later when I have more time, that's why I don't topo and uv it, because I wanted to create a proper butterfly later. So I just gave it a white shader for now.

Maya Scene:

Nvil Hoverboard Scene:

 Marvelous Designer Scene:

Substance Designer Scene:

Hair creation with Maya's Xgen:

Compositing in Photoshop:
My composite is pretty simple, I just use a few layers of passes from Arnold's AOVs (emission, indirect and specular direct) to enhance the look. The background is a HDR that comes from HDRI Haven, I am using the one named Spruit Sunrise. Before this I was using Autumn Hockey which doesn't work very well with my character.

Wireframes:

Textures:
These are the textures for the 4 main parts of the character and 1 set of texture for the hoverboard. For the eyes I modified the one that comes with a tutorial. For the teeths, I am using Free 3D Teeth Model from 3d Gladiator. For the leaf I am using a maple leaf texture I found here.

All the textures are 4k in size except for displacement maps which are in 8k.

Face

Suit

Joined cloth

Jacket

Hoverboard

Concept and References:
I sketched out the character below around the 3rd day of developing this character. I wasn't good at drawing so I couldn't draw too many and develop many variations and after I have this, I just go into Zbrush to start sculpting based on this initial idea. The other parts are drawn when I reach the part.

Charles of Artstation Challenge Nvidia Metropia 2042 - Characters of the Future

Most recently, I participate for the second time on another Artstation Challenge, Nvidia Metropia 2042 - Characters of the Future.

I managed to almost finish it this time. However there are still things I like to improve so I will update here again.

This character is my own design. You can check out my progress thread on Artstation here.

Software used: Zbrush, Marvelous Designer, Maya, xgen, Arnold, Substance Painter, Photoshop, xNormal and Knald

Zbrush sculpts