After carving the folds of all the details, I thought that the character still lacked some details that could reflect the narrative of the character, so I bought some damaged alpa from artstation and painted some damaged effects on the places where the characters often collide in the fight, such as the clothes on the chest being cut by the enemy. However, because the character was traveling so far, he didn’t have time to buy new ones, but did some simple sewing, which made the whole character look less monotonous, so this is a narrative problem that I have been thinking about in this project.
I only refer to the character design I drew is very difficult to completely make the body fabric completely, because in the character design drawings I did not draw some folds and details clearly, this is my in element1 is not enough, so I need to in element2 combined with my design of the clothes and some realistic reference, reference to the dress and trousers in the character when the character is stationary when the fabric folds like how, how to adjust the folds will be more natural, this is the part of the fabric I spend the most time in the production of the most important part of the production of the most important part of realistic character clothing.
I get into the marvelous designer software after teaching it in my tutor’s class. After that, I have a deeper understanding of how this software simules fabrics through the teaching videos posted by a blogger named Veryveig on youtube
After making the full garment I also needed to adjust the pressure of the garment on the body, otherwise it would have looked strange, the pressure of the garment was not even and would have led to unnatural folds later on when sculpting more folds of the garment, as the garment needed to be wrapped up I was thinking about where the garment was wrapped around the edges being a bit tighter, and that the tightest area should be the waist while the rest of the garment was more loose. After adjusting these I can proceed to the next step
When importing the straps into zbrush for testing there were some problems that were hard to adjust, because the mesh that marvelous designer used to make the fabric was triangular, I needed to rewire it in Zbrush before I could sculpt it, but there were some objects that would have the wrong mesh when rewired using zremesher, I thought it was the I thought it was an export problem and spent a lot of time on it, then after asking my tutor again I realised that it was a problem with the orientation of the face sheets when settling the fabric, and this problem has made me more disciplined in my fabric making.
Before carving, I wanted to start with a sphere, but I found that there was a very basic human body in zbrush’s library. After seeking the approval of the tutor, I decided to start sculpting with this basic human body instead of a ball, so that I could not only focus on sculpting and learning the muscle structure, but also save some time to sculpt the human body with more details.I didn’t have a clear understanding of the muscles before sculpting the character’s body and head, so I needed to find a lot of muscle references to study before sculpting. I started sculpting from a basic human body without any muscles, I adjusted this part many times, I also learnt a lot about human muscles during the process of sculpting and adjusting, such as the direction of the muscles, the structure of the muscles and so on, in order to make the whole character look closer to the realistic game character effect, I sculpted sinews and some fold details on the arms, I spent more time on this aspect because of the ronin’s hands should have gone through a lot of fights, so it will be a bit rougher, taking these factors into consideration, I will sculpt the hands and arms in more detail.The reason why I would spend a lot of time focusing on muscle sculpting instead of just using a basic mannequin and starting to make clothes is because the structure of the muscles will greatly affect how the fabric simulation will look later on in Marvelous Designer, and because the protagonist is a character who has been through a lot of battles, so the muscles should be very toned.
At the very beginning of the project I planned to make this character as a ronin wearing a ghost mask, so I didn’t need to focus too much on the face sculpting, but then I considered the gameplay, and this character, if used as the protagonist of an open-world game, the protagonist should be able to choose to wear or not to wear a ghost mask, and this factor was one of the more important points I considered during the production process. So originally I just referenced the muscle model’s face and sculpted the face to be more three-dimensional to fit the mask, but the whole scene and the main body is Japanese style, so I needed to sculpt the character’s head to be more Asian-like. In this part I encountered a lot of difficulties, the Asian face is not easy to sculpt, because the structure of the bone is relatively flat, there are many subtle changes in the structure of the face is difficult to sculpt perfectly, so I modified the character’s head before I looked for some skull analysis diagrams to analyse and study, in the process of analysis, I also use zbrush for sculpting the skull to practise, which will make me more familiar with the study of the skull. This will make me more familiar with the study of the skull, after gradually understanding the structure of the skull I also have to look for some suitable references of Asian faces and refer to their facial features for sculpting.
In my opinion, to make the character’s head more realistic is to add pores, skin textures and folds to it. In this part, I purchased the skin texture alpha brush released by an artist on artstation, and then drew some bumps and downs on the skin at appropriate positions. I need to consider that the character’s face should be the most rough at the cheek position. There are also more pores, so compared with other positions, I will pay more attention to the texture effect of this position, but these effects should not be too heavy, otherwise it will affect the normal effect of later baking. These are some problems that need to be considered in each step of the production process.
My research on the Japanese town in element1 was not perfect, so before I made the modular kit I looked for more references to study how each floor of the buildings in the Japanese town were built, and what was around the buildings that I could refer to, such as some of the shop signs, the menu billboards, the lanterns on the side of the road that could light up the street, etc. During this period, I just watched the animation blue eyes samurai under the recommendation of my tutor, many scenes in this animation are based on traditional Japanese towns, so I studied this animation in depth, and I found that traditional Japanese towns are generally two-storey, the ground floor will be used to operate a number of shops, and the first floor is used as accommodation, etc. After studying these, I divided my modular modeling into four parts Roof, first floor, middle floor, and then the ground floor, I follow this logic to refer to these pictures I found and then make them, I can build different kinds of houses at a later stage
After creating a modular kit I used the same method I used before, to create a material sphere with all the material effects, to increase the efficiency when creating other modular kits later on.
In the process of building the ue scene, I found that the whole scene was very monotonous and needed some plants to add effects, so I followed the teaching video of the blogger to learn the basics of the software speedtree. The operation of this software was somewhat difficult, and it would be very confusing when I learned the operation of the blogger. There are many parameters to consider for this software for making plants. Therefore, it took me three days of study and research to learn this software, and it was difficult for me to make the reference I was looking for after the tutorial. In this way, I needed to understand the underlying logic of making plants by this software before I could make a good plant. At the beginning of making bamboo, I found that the number of bamboo faces was very high, and it was not suitable for putting bamboo into ue, because there would be a lot of bamboo. If I did not control the number of faces, the computer would crash and other problems during the later rendering. Therefore, I optimized the number of faces of the bamboo after learning other teaching videos about this software from the blogger and added the effect of wind blowing to the bamboo and leaves, which was the most satisfactory to me, because it made the scene look more natural.
I had some problems with the lantern material, I couldn’t put a point light source inside the lantern and make it glow in unreal engine, so I changed direction and made the lantern a self-luminous material, the top and bottom parts of the lantern should be darker because they aren’t illuminated by the light in the middle, so I used the brush tool to draw this part, and changed the colour to make it look better, in the end I used the cherry blossom pattern that comes with substance painer to add some effects instead of a single lantern material. In the end I used the cherry blossom pattern that comes with the substance painer to add some effect instead of a single lantern material, in the final rendering of the environment this pattern will make the overall atmosphere better!
When making the material of stone lanterns, I followed the thinking logic of making stone foxes. First, I analyzed that stone lanterns would be affected by natural factors. Stone lanterns are in contact with the ground all the year round, and the effect of rain erosion and weathering will occur. Therefore, in this part, I used texture mapping to make the basic texture of the bottom layer of stone first. I will make some distinction between the stone of the stone lantern and the stone of the stone fox to ensure the diversity of the whole environment, and there are many factors to consider when drawing the moss, where there is easy water accumulation, the moss will be more than other places, so I will draw more moss when dealing with the bottom of the stone lantern to distinguish from the top half of the stone lantern.There are two different models of the stone lantern, so I created the material effect of the stone lantern as a material ball. Even after the material is made in these two models, I can also use it in other projects I make in the future to improve efficiency
