FMP - Week 12

 

As is the workflow now, I headed into Marmoset this week to bake my high poly mesh onto my low poly for Judgement before going into Photoshop to lay down the base colours.

Having completed 2 models now, I was faster at getting a sense for what colours I should use for the base and how I can push and pull these colours (especially on the gold areas). I had to be a bit more considerate on the skin because I wanted it to transition between a light, flesh tone on the front to a darker blue tone on the back. The transition between these 2 colours on the model could get a bit muddy and awkward when painting so I had to thing of how to combat that. I did so by taking the red that I’d introduced after feedback and using that as the bridging colour between the two. I think this worked best since it was a warm colour like the flesh tone but was strong in saturation like the blue tone so it felt unifying and not out of place or overwhelming.

The overall painting process went smoothly though- I began with the torso as that was the biggest area to handle then did all the gold pieces at once before going over everything with some more detail. I spent most of my time getting the back to look correct, really trying to get the muscles to read well but not look too detailed to the point it was blatantly obvious that the model was symmetrical. That was probably the biggest challenge when it came to painting this time around. Since the High Priestess and Justice had asymmetrical textures, I could be as adventurous as I wanted (within reason) when it came to texturing details. But with Judgement I had to make details much more subtle or else the whole thing would look odd.

There were some minor tweaks made along the way as I textured though that differed from my original concept. I don’t think these changes detach anything from the character, I think they just weren’t really necessary after looking at it in 3D as a whole and/or they made Judgement look strange in some way. For example, on the concept there are holes in the helmet that look like eyes. It may have been a case of poor execution but after texturing them into the model, it didn’t read as well as I’d hoped, especially from the front. It just didn’t look good so I decided to retcon it. Maybe in future I could have experimented more with making some kind of eye socket but since my time left is limited on the project, getting rid of it was simpler than spending more time fiddling around.

I’d also done this texture pass without the tail on the model. I’d decided that I would go for the alpha approach of making what is effectively a tube as the tail and making it translucent with a misty texture to it. I’d started the textures on the main body before coming to that conclusion so just decided to carry on as such and I’d texture the tail separately which isn’t an issue.

Overall though I like the textures on Judgement so far, I feel like I’ve really refined how I approach hand painting textures and am much more confident with understanding how to approach texturing now than when I first started.