Hylian Shield - Finished

The project is finished. I have imported my shield into a scene I constructed from Unreal assets, and have it lit and composed very nicely, and produced these final renders. I really love how the atmosphere and environment of the scene gives the object some context and makes it feel part of a world. This is by far the most satisfying thing I have made on the course so far, and I am really proud of the final product. It took a lot of work but it was definitely worth it, as I have produced my best work so far, and I hope to carry on working to this high standard.

Personal Work - Lego Fan Requests

Some more personal work I've been doing to boost interest in the upcoming game 'Lego Marvel's Avengers' on Twitter. This time it's Hercules, Kang the Conqueror and 3D Man, all characters requested by fans of the game. I find it really rewarding to translate these striking characters into Lego form, as it is essentially a different form of caricature.

Hylian Shield - Quixel Texture Pass

After creating my maps in xNormal, I was able to bring my low poly model into Quixel and begin creating some high quality textures. This was the most time consuming part of the entire project; I spent upwards of 25 hours on this part since Quixel was giving me so many problems. I eventually got my textures to work correctly and appear as they should so I could begin texturing my object. Once it was working smoothly I really enjoyed this part as it is very satisfying seeing the model take on a highly polished and detailed appearance. I applied a wooden texture to the back of the shield which gave it a very realistic aesthetic which I love, and the rest was a combination of different metal materials coloured and adjusted differently. Quixel is a great tool I would definitely use again as it has produced some of my best work. Now to get it into Unreal and light it in a scene.

Wolf - Box Art and Logo Design

Wolf - Final Concept Art

Hylian Shield - zBrush Modelling

Have to say I'm really happy with how the shield is looking now that I've added all the high poly detail in. The majority of the detail was sculpted by hand rather than using stamps and alphas as it removes the repetition that can sometimes occur. I did use an alpha for the wood and it created a really impressive texture which I'm fond of. I also imported an image of the Hylian crest and turned it into an alpha so the shield would have a faint impression of the crest like it had been painted on. I'm thrilled with how it's looking as it looks very authentic and exactly how I imagined it.

zBrush - Abbas

I added some more detail to Abbas, and he's starting to look much better. I like the detail in the beard and the subtle skin texture I added (although it's not very visible in these images), as it helps to remove the waxy look he had before. This is definitely a model I want to continue sculpting because I'm getting kind of attached and want to see how it ends up.

Hylian Shield - Maya Modelling

For my 'Triple A Game Asset' project, I have chosen to model the Hylian Shield from The Legend of Zelda. It is mainly my love for the game series that made me want to model the iconic shield, but I also wanted to see how it would look in a realistic aesthetic, since most of the games are highly stylised. I searched for some references to use, and found a physical metal version of the shield that somebody had made, so I used that as inspiration. I began by modelling the low poly model in Maya, using Quad Draw for a bulk of the complex shapes. The curved surface of the shield proved problematic at first, however once I'd worked around it by bending a flat plate the shield really started to come together. I'm really liking how it looks at the minute and I'm looking forward to pulling it into zBrush to add all the details.

Personal Work - Lego Vision

A fun little bit of personal work that I do to keep my Twitter profile active with interest from Lego fans and Tt Games employees. This little sketch is one of The Vision from The Avengers, in Lego form. This one got a strong response, which is always rewarding, and I'll likely continue with some Lego Marvel sketches when I'm not too busy.

Wolf - Concept and Character Art

A whole bunch of environment concepts and character concept work for our group game project 'Wolf'. I'm really liked the stylised aesthetic with the flat colour and the black outlines, as it gives the art style that distinct pop. The character of Rosa went through a few iterations although her appearance has been very clear to me since the start. The final character sheet that our character artist will use to model her gives the best look at her design, as it features the most accurate colour samples and proportions. The environment art is undeniably my weak side, but I think I managed to capture the increasingly desperate tone as she gets closer to the truth, and night creeps in. I anted to avoid our vibrant and funky colour palette being washed out when it turned to night time, so I chose to pick out some blues and purples to maintain the stylised aesthetic and colour palette even when it was dark. I think this worked very well and gives the night time a distinctly vibrant feel to it. I may tone down the colours in the final pieces of concept art just to make it feel more menacing and tense.

zBrush - Sculpting Sessions

First rough practice sessions yielded some nice results. We started out by simply sculpting on top of the default head to try and create something interesting; I chose to exaggerate the forehead, lips and ears to create an alien creature inspired by African art. I envisioned the character as a small tribal creature, possible the elder or chief of the tribe, and so I aged him and created the suggestion of robes. I really enjoyed using zBrush in such a free way; I am very into clay so this is the first time I've really felt like I was sculpting in a tangible medium. It is very satisfying to use zBrush for sculpting as it allows a certain freedom and spontaneity when designing that other programs like Maya don't allow you. It has definitely been the thing I have enjoyed most so far, which surprised me since I was firmly set on the idea of concept art when I came to university. I still enjoy concepting characters but the process of turning a concept into a 3D sculpt is so much more satisfying. We also used the zSpheres workflow to create forms from scratch. I like this workflow and respect the way in which it allowed me to create quickly block out a shape, however the somewhat finicky controls and temperamental nature of the zSpsheres make me much more likely to create a mesh in Maya and import it in that way.

A few sessions later I then created a quick sculpt of a character I usually turn to when it comes to inspiration, one of my own characters called Abbas. He showed up in the first term as my Steampunk character and now I wanted to try my hand at sculpting him using the default skull as a base. I really like how he looks and will definitely carry on at a later stage to add more detail and further refine his features. It's nice to see my characters starting to finally take shape somewhere other than in my head.

In our session on creating armour and clothing from the base body model, I couldn't help but create my own design for the Marvel character Daredevil. I absolutely love how he ended up looking, so much so that I grabbed a quick screenshot and brought it into Photoshop to create a final image. This process just highlighted to me how powerful zBrush is and how quickly I can use it to push out great looking ideas.

Summer Cyborg Project: Creating the High Poly

I sent my low poly version into Mudbox,and spent a good few days remembering how to use everything, but after a refresher, I was soon adding the detail I had been looking forward to seeing on my model. I created the entirety of my high poly model in Mudbox, as I found it the best tool at my disposal for achieving what I wanted to achieve. I did attempt to use quad draw in Maya to create some initial detail, but I couldn't create anything that looked anywhere near as good as Mudbox, so I stuck with that. I really love how the high poly looks, and I expected a lot of the detail to be lost when I transferred the maps to the low poly, but I was pleasantly surprised by how much the low poly looked like the high poly after the transfer.

With my low poly now showing the detail of the high poly, I could approach the final stage, which would be the texturing. Oh boy.

Summer Cyborg Project: Initial Modelling

With my modelling references complete, I could finally get started on the 3D part of the project. Using the tutorial to inform my process, I created the body in separate chunks and joined them together. This was a method I found incredibly helpful and streamlined, and it is likely how I will model all my characters from now on, when it is appropriate. I began with the body, extruding and shaping a cylinder to fit my reference, and quickly began work on the leg.

After creating the basic shape for the body, arm and leg, I mirrored the geometry to create a basic block shape which I could begin to refine and tweak to the shape of the references.

After this, I turned my attention to the more complex structures of the body, namely the feet, hands and eventually head. The feet were quite a challenge as I really wanted to nail the form of the foot rather than making a generic shoe shape. By rotating edge loops, I managed to get create an edge flow which mimicked the organic flow of the foot, whilst maintaining the rigidity of the boot shape. The hands were actually more straightforward; whilst in my assessment model I steered away from modelling individual fingers, I figured it was time to tackle that fear if I wanted to make the robotic hands look convincing, and elaborate. So with a few extrusions I had myself some fingers, and all it took was a some inward extrusions to create the bionic look I wanted.

Then it came to the head. Oh boy the head. I've never tackled anything as complex as the human head, but I really wanted to nail the shape and form this time, as my assessment piece makes me a little bit sick every time I look at the shape of the head now. So this time I followed my reference, built the topology outwards from the eyes, and tried to nail the proportions; and honestly, I'm really happy with what I ended up with. I built the entire shape from scratch, with the exception of the ear which I imported in because I'm really not ready to torture myself that much just yet (attaching the separate component to the head mesh was hell enough), and in terms of the reference, it couldn't match up any better. Topology wise, I think it would be suitable for animation, granted I'd need to subdivide it a little, but I'm really happy with the overall edge flow. I did find however, that I needed to subdivide the top of the head into oblivion to get the desired smoothness, but that's a minor issue, I think.

And with that, my base mesh was complete. A few minor tweaks here and there and a few corrections later, and I had my final low poly mesh that I would later use for my final model, sitting at a tidy 8000 tris (mainly because I'd misread the project brief and thought 10,000 was the limit -_-), but oh well, no use in wasting tris where they're not needed.