 STEP ONE : BASE MESH
The first step was to bring in a low poly base mesh. I took a base human mesh and changed a few things, namely the ears for Wolverine's mask, added a few quick props (belt and pouches) all in Max.
I will be giving away the human base mesh on my new Gnomon DVD and on this site shortly.
At this point, it is important to have all the items you will need to begin the sculpt. This is basically a glorified armature.
Once finished, I merged the OBJ into Zbrush and broke the parts into new subtools to use later.
This skinny little guy needed to be bulked up. |
 STEP TWO : PROPORTION
Next, I sketched in where I wanted the muscles. I also started to adjust the proportions, which I would be doing a lot more of as I went along.
It was important to start laying out how big he was going to be. Wolverine is short, but strong. I knew I wanted to make some big crap-kicking boots and add some of the costume details, so I began to sculpt those in.
Working in layers, I edited his shape, sculpted in some muscle and bone, and used transpose to change his stance. I would do this many times during the process, checking him in different poses and with different materials.
Also, since this was going for my personal work, I gave him a small, bemused grin. |
 STEP THREE : BEGIN DETAIL
I needed to solve some of the design issues in his costume. I knew I wanted to do something similar to the comics, but with my own little adjustments.
Gathering some reference from comics, biker gear, and SWAT equipment, I started sketching in some ideas on new layers.
Once I had few things ironed out, I began sharpening some details and adjusting his facial structure.
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 STEP FOUR : REFINE DETAIL
I now had his basic costume design, but needed to add seams and stitching, bang up his shoulder pads and continue to adjust his skeletal and musculature to be a bit more beefy.
During this stage, I began adding large wrinkles and folds in costume and in muscle. In reality, none of this would show through leather, but this was a stylized comic book character so why the heck not.
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STEP FIVE : TERTIARY DETAIL
This step should be left for last and is one I usually leave for texturing. Material, skin, hair, etc is all brought up here. Since this would be output into resin, I wanted to do it in the sculpt. If it was for games or film, I would probably have solved some of this in the texturing pass.
Once this step was done, it was time to make the low poly game version. I gave myself a limit of 7000 triangles...
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STEP SIX: GAME TIME
Here we have the final wolverine model, posed inside of Max. The first image is his lo poly model at about 6k triangles (under my goal, huzzah!).
His silhouette held up so I moved onto the map extraction process using Xnormal. I love using this program for ambient occ and normal map processing.
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STEP SIX : GAME TIME 2
This is the normal map pass with wire.
A quick note on the rig, it was made in Max with biped very, very quickly. I used Zbrush to clean up some areas that got pinchy as well as some areas, like the hands, that could have used more work. In the final sample stills they seemed to hold up. |
STEP SIX : GAME TIME 3
The diffuse map has his AO map baked in lightly to enhance detail. Sometimes clients request that or they will request to use it in the engine. For the sake of easy demonstration, I baked it. |
STEP SIX(AGAIN) : GAME TIME 4
The diffuse map was mostly made with photo textures. The AO map was on a seperate layer set to multiply at about 20%. Some good old fashioned painting was then used to complete the look.
In my next Gnomon DVD, I will go into this process a LOT more, detailing how to paint these types of maps.
You can also check out my older DVD's here to get a better idea of how I like to make my maps, though these are more cinematic/film centric. |
STEP SIX(MORE!) : GAME TIME 5
The AO (Ambient Occlusion) Map, in simple terms, is baked shadows. Or concave and convex areas of the hi res sculpt baked into the low res UVS that help in painting and enhance detail. It was generated with Xnormal.
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STEP SIX(END IT!) : GAME TIME 6
And finally the ever lovin' normal map, also made with Xnormal.
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PART 2 COMING SOON
In the next chapter, we will go into detail on preparing the hi res sculpt for rapid prototyping...
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