FMP - Week 2

 

This week for my FMP I started on my sculpt for the High Priestess. This was a very standard sculpt process- going from blockout to refined shapes to detailing. But I also wanted to be efficient with my sculpt process to ensure I wouldn’t be spending more time on an area than I should. So I broke down the ‘sculpting’ to be partly in ZBrush and partly in 3DSMax.

For the base proportions of the High Priestess I did all the sculpting in Zbrush- I created the blockout using primitive shapes, refined it to create the figure then sculpted in the details of the face, etc. I created the base shape for the hair, veil and skirt in a similar way in ZBrush. For the jewellery, armour and chains though I created a lowpoly base mesh for them in 3DSMax first before bringing them over to ZBrush. I thought I could make them in ZBrush to start with using the ZModeller tool as it’s good for making hard surface assets but I knew I would be faster in Max since I’m more familiar with it. Doing this also would save me time during the retopo phase since I already have lowpoly models to bake and texture on. I brought them into ZBrush to give some high poly polish to them.

I exaggerated some of the shapes on the sculpt in comparison to what I drew in the concept for clarity’s sake. Also because this is going in a more stylized direction I thought it would aid to overall finish look. I also have to consider now what kind of rig I will be giving my model and prepare for that now in the sculpt by giving some areas breathing room. I won’t be going crazy with the bones but I imagine at the very least the skirt, veil and chains will have additional bones. Maybe some also for the hair and the necklace.

I envision the retopo will be fairly lowpoly. I had on the brief to not go over 70k tris but I think I’ll be much less than that, probably maximum 20k at least for the High Priestess. Hand painted characters I’ve made in the past have all been closer to 10k tris so I’m giving myself room for more topology since I can afford to.

With all the main sculpting done though I can start exporting the model and heading straight into retopology and unwrapping!