Creative Portfolio Development

Cyborg Alien Bust - Final Textures Above are the final rendered shots of my cyborg alien bust rendered in Marmoset Toolbag.

Cyborg Alien - Details I wanted the alien to look rough and aged so I made his skin dry and cracked. To achieve the look I wanted it was just a case of layering up multiple layers of different skin textures. For the eyes, because I had previously modeled in the cornea separately to the eyeball, I could give the cornea it's own reflective texture so that it resembled a more realistic eye.

Cyborg Alien - Beginning the Texturing I started off with the texturing by layering up the skin tones using separate layers for the reds, yellows and blues that are found in human skin, known as the 'colour zones'. I continued this technique throughout the body. I also exported all of the textures I had at this point into Marmoset Toolbag as seen below. It was important to do this early on so that I could test the textures out in real-time and make sure everything was looking right.

Cyborg Alien - UVs After finishing the unwrapping, I packed the UVs for each texture set. Below are the packed UV maps alongside the corresponding texture sets they're assigned to on the model. For the eyeball, I just unwrapped one and then mirrored so that they shared the save UVs to save on texel space.

Unwrapping When it came to unwrapping the alien bust, I decided to split the textures up into 4 UV sets. I first unwrapped the whole model and then created a texture set for the head, the body, the armour and the eyes. In order for these texture sets to be recognised in Substance Painter, I had to give each texture set it's own material so that Painter would know it had a separate UV. Above is the UV checker pattern used to check the UVs weren't stretched and to help maintain even texel density across the mesh. Below is the retopologised mesh with the four texture sets split up by material.

Cyborg Alien Retopology After the high poly sculpt was finished, I created a decimated version to export into 3DS Max ready for retopologising. I like to start off retolopy in big chunks, getting the main form of the mesh first, and then go in and refine the geometry for the smaller details. All in all, the low poly mesh came to 72,311 Tris.

Final High Poly Sculpt After finalising the cyborg alien creature bust, I created a better light setup and rendered some images and a turnaround.

Adding Micro Details The last stage of my high poly sculpt consists of sculpting in the micro details such as skin pores/wrinkles and scratches etc. I added all of these features using various alphas in ZBrush as they are quick to use and offer lots of control.

ZRemeshing and Polypainting As the mesh so far had been made completely using Dynamesh in ZBrush, I thought it was time to start combining the separate subtools of the creature into one. Since the design of the face isn't going to change drastically from now on, I chose to ZRemesh it so that it had lower geometry and I could step up the subdivisions as and when I needed to. As the mesh wasn't going to keep the detail of the Dynameshed model, I had to project the details over once the mesh was ZRemeshed. Above is the ZRemeshed version of my mesh at it's lowest subdivision level. Polypainting In order to add visual interest whilst continuing sculpting, and to help get an idea of materials and colours in advance, I decided to do a quick Polypaint over the model in ZBrush. This also helps when creating pieces to fit in with the design as it allows to quickly experiment with ideas.For example, I'm not sure whether the ...

Refining Design Further After picking a better armour design and improving the face of my creature sculpt, I started to refine the character as a whole. I started thinking about how the armour would fit together and could be incorporated into the alien creature's body. I also wanted to have some sort of mechanical piece included so that it gave a nice contrast to all of the organic armour pieces, and also I could add some emissive lights later on in the texturing stages. I added some feather like strands out of the back of the creatures skull. I feel that this adds to the silhouette and makes the creature seem more organic. However, this was just an experimental piece of geometry and may change later on. I went through a few design iterations on the shoulder guard shell piece. I feel that it looks organic and as if it could be a hard shelled creature/skeleton that the alien has used as a defence piece, maybe as if maybe the alien creature...

Changing The Face Whilst continuing on with the sculpt, I re-evaluated the creature's face and expression, and came to the conclusion that it didn't look angry/creepy enough for the look that I wanted.  I went through a couple more variations of the face and played around with expressions and ended up with a snarl like pose. The above face is what I chose to continue to work with as I felt it worked well with a snarl and made the creature look more menacing.

Changing The Armour I decided to start roughing out some more armour shapes in Zbrush to see if the designs that I liked in Photoshop worked as well in 3D. I started off by picking my favourite design from Photoshop and working off of it in Zbrush, just with basic shapes so that I didn't spend too much time on small details. I feel that the most interesting and fitting design is the above one as it looks as if the creature has incorporated the armour as part of his body and I feel this works well.    

More Concepts I continued experimenting and trying to narrow down a concept for the armor that my character was going to have. For these concepts I reused a few bits that I liked from the previous concepts I had and added pieces together.

Armour Concepting Recently I have decided to start concepting armour in Photoshop instead of ZBrush so that I can brainstorm rough shapes quickly and iterate more.  I used a screenshot of my creature from ZBrush to use as a silhouette to draw over to get the forms right.  I mostly used the lasso tool to get quick, crisp edges to make the armour look hard surface. Concepts At this point I'm not bothered about colour, more just the silhouette and overall shape of the armour. From here I will go on and start picking aspects that I like and continue refining it until I get something that I'm happy to start modelling. Reference/Inspiration Below is a moodboard of a selection of armour pieces that helped aid my designs and helped generate the concepts.

More Armour Experimenting I've been continuing to concept what sort of armour I want my character to wear and how it would fit over the skin and where it would connect. So far I am still just concepting ideas by blocking out rough shapes and flattening them down to make them look hard surface. Overall so far I am not happy with the armour design and I will need to put a lot more thought into how it will fit together and what sort of indents/pipes etc I will add to it to make it stand out more and look more believable/alien.

Refining Creature Concept And Anatomy I have continued to refine my creature concept by improving the anatomy and adding extra details to the face and mouth. I decided to detach the lower jaw so that I could get a better view inside the mouth, and so that I could add gums and teeth easier. I also improved on the anatomy slightly to get a better feel of how the creatures bones would stick out and it's skin would crease and wrinkle etc. I still need to improve further on it but I feel it's getting better. I experimented with adding hard surface exo-skeleton bones that would be extruding out of the skin.

Creature Design Progress After just chipping away and making multiple changes to my character design, I feel like I am getting somewhere closer to the alien design I am after. I started blocking in some rough anatomy to help bring together the realism of the character, and started playing around with what sort of armour/exo-suite I want my character to have.