WXS-07 'Depopulator'

#1

This is a personal project I’ve been working on - on and off - for the last couple of months. When I started it was with the aim of creating an entire hard-surface character completely in Zbrush without falling back on the 3dsMax crutch.
I found an interesting concept by Jerad Marantz, and decided to go with it. It’s just a single front perspective sketch so I had to design/improvise the rest.

I’m just going to use this thread as a kind of progress report/process on how I created the project. I thought it might be of interest to any beginners or lurkers. :slight_smile:

The original character is a ‘Marauder’ from the Thor universe, so as the initial challenge turned to a full-blown project the character background evolved. There are several Latin derivitives of the word marauder: preadator, and the word I chose for the character, depopulator. So this led to the background story…(which is always a good idea as it often drives your design decisions)

It is the cliched near-future. Earth’s population has tripled again, and is untenable. Governments have banded together to brainstorm on a ‘final solution’…Sci-Corp win the lucrative contract…

Sci-Corp Industries has been commissioned to engineer a depopulation strategy with little allowance for liberal footnotes. A drastic measure has been devised: 7 foot tall, genetically engineered mutant-cyborgs!

Enter WXS-07(weaponised-xtreme-system) - cognomen Depopulator. Latest prototype.

I started with a pre-built basemesh and just pulled the forms around to define the silhouette. This initial ‘clay’ can be anything really, a sphere, a Zsphere, whatever. It’s not important as I’m just looking for the initial forms/silhouette. Then it’s on to Dynamesh concept sculpting.

I just use the basic brushes in the image above plus snakehook and a variation in the clay brushes.
It’s mostly just carving/building out forms, sketching placeholders, and pulling things around. The process
is loose and at no time am I being too precious or needlessly noodling on specific parts, which just stunts
the process and wastes time needlessly. This is just the concept and will eventually be retopologised
for the clean, final result.

More to follow soon…

#2

Once the concept sculpt is complete it’s on to retopolgy. There are several ways to do this in Zbrush: Zsphere topo, Topology brush, Zremesher. I mostly used Zsphere topo as the aim is to create the silhouette of each piece of armour with very sparse topology and use creasing/subdivide/Zremesh for the final sculptable topology.

And I also used the slice curve/Zremesh method for some parts

#3

Creating the arms was just a matter of drawing out the parts with the curvetubes brush and using move topological(or mask by polygroups) to tweak the layout. Then I deleted the backfacing geo for easy unwrap and added extra detail using Zmodeler.
For the interlocking armour sections I created a simple insert mesh brush and positioned them the same.

Here’s another piece done using simple Zsphere topo and Zmodeler to add detail:

And the final sculpted result below. Because I used a combination of Zbrush detailing and Substance Painter normal map detailing it was
important to set up a workflow that resulted in sculptable topology that was fast to achieve for each piece(nearly 40 in all) and avoided
unnecessary complex manual retop that wouldn’t have served as good sculptable topology unless a lot of time was taken to build it to
suit sculpting. Plus as the pieces were built with no backfaces/thickness this makes it much easier to unwrap(all of which was done
directly in UVMaster) Lastly I decimated with ‘keep UVs’ checked and the asset is ready for texture painting.

#4

The Zsphere topo/Zmodeler/Crease/Zremesh method I used for the majority of the objects can be found in part 2 of this 3-part vid tutorial series I have on my YT channel.

//youtu.be/M6UPK-FXROE

#5

And also the SliceCurve/Zremesh method is shown(also on my channel) here:

//youtu.be/xtGEghClPsw

And here:

//youtu.be/nlYVd4RPvig

#6

Early in the process of turning the rough concept sculpt into finished pieces I began working on the head sculpt. The head started life as a trusty sphere, and was then dynameshed.

Usually as a sculpt progresses I will work at a very low-res most of the way through, Zremeshing when I can’t get the forms I want with the topology I have. I always work low like this and only go up to a higher res when refining the forms and adding tertiary details. I see a lot of beginners in Zbrush
jumping up to a ridiculous high-res when they haven’t even got the basic forms in place. My rule of thumb - both for hardsurface modeling and organic sculpting - is : only add geometry when you can’t get the forms with the geometry you currently have. The great thing about Zbrush is that the tools and
workflow work so non-destructively that you can change or revert this stuff any time you want, duplicating subtools and re-projecting all day long. :slight_smile:

As the back part of the head was going to be under the helmet it didn’t need the same density for sculpting, but I still wanted geometry
there for SSS shading/lighting in the final render, This is where polypaint density comes in handy.

#7

Man, this is great work and i’m glad that you show the steps involved. Using zBrush often seems like magic because few people show how they get the results they achieve. It’s something i’m gonna have to figure out if for no other reason than rapid prototyping of models.

#8

This thread is an incredible resource. Thank you!

#9

@Telemachus Thanks for the comment. Yes, ZB can seem like voodoo to the uninitiated…:slight_smile: I highly recommend it to all. It’s an amazing toolkit. Would really help you in your rapid prototyping endevours.

@Joo52 No problem, mate. Glad you’re finding it useful.

It was important to sculpt the head with the finished helmet/headgear pieces in place as it had to look like the flesh
was being compressed .

When sculpting organics I have a few matcaps that I switch between, and I will always use the Basic material as it reacts to Zbrush’s interactive
light. I can’t stress how important this is when sculpting as a lot of the matcaps won’t give you a true representation of your sculpt. Sculpting
is essentially manipulating how light and shadow falls on your sculpt. So it is imperative the light is constantly moved around to check how the forms
react.
This is one of the best things for me about the Keyshot bridge. It allows me to instantly check my forms under true, physical 3D lighting.

#10

Something I forgot to mention earlier is the step in the process that can be taken advantage of to derive a game asset, if that is the intention of the project. Or if at a later stage you want to have the option to create a game asset you can save out the tool for later use.

#11

As I mentioned earlier, all Zremeshed parts were unwrapped directly in Zbrush using UVmaster. A simple one-click job as
the parts were all single-sided geometry(no thickness) I didn’t in this case - as each part had its own texture sheet - but
the UVs from UVmaster can easily be tweaked/scaled/normalised/combined/etc in your 3D application later on.

#12

And here are some clay renders of the final model. UV-ed/decimated and ready for texturing in Substance Painter.

#13

The only critique I can offer is that from a movement standpoint, I don’t think his mouth would be able to open and move with that metal plate around his jaw that’s connected to the rest; so maybe tone down the size of that?

Aside from that, this dude is awesome

#14

@Exbendable, thanks for the feedback. most of those parts around his face/jaw are industrial rubber. You’ll see when I post up the texturing WIPS. :slight_smile:

This was definitely one of the factors I often considered when creating the character: mobility and practicality. Especially with a bulky character like this in oversized, heavy armour. I also liked the idea of him waddling around in his prototype status, embarrassing the team of scientists/engineers who created him. :wink:

#15

This looks great. What kind of normal/height work do you intend to do in substance painter? I see you already have little rivet-like spots on the edges of the hard surface panels.Is there anything other than material-specific height information (e.g., raised rust spots or micro skin detail) that you’ll be putting in with textures?

#16

@Joo52 Thanks for the comment. I’ll be posting up Substance Painter WIP images later. Yes, micro-detail like bubbling paint/superficial scratches/etc, and some of the rubber elements have panel lines and raised nodule detail. This is all captured in the normal and height channels and can be combined in Vray with the Normal Bump map node.

Towards the end of the modeling process I started to think of my final illustration. The last few projects I’ve done, I’ve taken them straight from Zbrush to Keyshot to render passes, and finish up with a paintover in Photoshop. This process has been popular for a number of years now and can be quite liberating in comparison to days and days of shader look dev/render testing that often accompanies rendering a straight beauty pass from Vray(with render element passes) The Keyshot process is different(but can be done in any renderer including Zbrush) as I’m just rendering passes of different materials/lighting which will be masked and heavily painted in Photoshop…So with all that said, this time I decided to return to Vray for the endless hours upon hours of watching tiny render buckets crawl across my screen…:slight_smile:

Then I hit a complete spell of indecision on the colour scheme I wanted to go for. I tormented myself and became obsessed to the point of abandoning the project for nearly 2 months as I was not sure what direction in which to take the colouring!! There is so much well-known sci-fi work out there with easily recognisable and iconic colour schemes that this was a much harder decision than I thought. Eventually I settled on the scheme below, having tested the good old orange/white/grey scheme…the black/red theme…the blue/yellow theme…and a few others.(another fantastic bonus of SP:trial and error/iteration/realtime colour scheme brainstorming;) ) The military drab olive/yellow/black(and tiny hints of orange, later) worked well for me in the end, I feel. So that 2 months lost wasn’t procrastination, it was research, dammit! :slight_smile:

As crazy/compulsive/ocd as this may seem to some, this was probably the most important point in the project for me and I just refused to continue until I was 100% on the scheme. If you’re going to give many, many hours of your life to a personal project, don’t rush it. You’ll only do it once so make it count.

The primary reason for the choice of rendering in Vray was Substance Painter. As I had the character fully UV-ed, I thought it would be a great opportunity to run the entire lot through SP and see what comes out. Plus I wanted to see what the high-poly workflow would be like and also an excuse to play with the SP Vray export preset. Here’s an early look-dev test with the first iteration of the smart material to test the export preset and set up the basic shader in Vray. This is just with a few base layers and some blocking out/masking.
And also, a major plus for the texturing/rendering in Vray Vs material render pass comping in something like Keyshot is that you’re not locked to a camera view, so you can set up the shot from any perspective and have all that texture detailing for free;) whereas in the other workflow you have to recomp/repaint from scratch for every illustration.

This was a smart material that I built up from scratch in SP. The beauty of it was that I could build this template material and run all the other assets through it, ensuring consistency throughout.(as I think I mentioned earlier there are nearly 40 different armour parts) and because all the parts were still high-poly I couldn’t just bring them all in to SP together. But with the smart material I wouldn’t have to as I knew it would work seamlessly on all the parts. I’ll post up the material tree in a later post.

#17

Another Vray look-dev test with the SP material taken a little further:

#18

Wow, a very interesting project. Not only artistically but educational as well. Although I don’t specifically use the toolsets, but nonetheless there’s processes here that I can definitely apply in my own work. So thanks very much Daniel for sharing your workflow and opening this thread, duly bookmarked.

#19

@sacboi, thanks for the kind words, mate. I always like reading through threads with a bit of a breakdown so I thought I’d take the time to develop one for anyone interested. And because it’s nice to have a look back on the project this way, once you’ve completed it, I feel.

Some more Substance Painter screengrabs:

And another early Vray look-dev test:

#20

Some more SP screengrabs:

So by now I’m sure you can see the benefit of creating/using smart materials. Think of texturing an entire game like this, ensuring consistency across all assets with the same material theme. And also the ability to change the colour scheme/dirt/grime/scratches very quickly by just tweaking or enabling/disabling layers.