FMP - Week 3 (Valkyrie)

Unwrap, hard surface & and opensubdiv

Day 1-3

So this week I have planned to have my high poly finished by Friday in my plan. I'm currently beginning to re top my armour pieces in 3ds Max so i can then use opensubdiv or turbo smooth to create my high poly and then bake. I have never really done hard surface like this before, I've only ever worked with small simple items or shapes that are not this complex. I found that my workflow for re top does not work at all for this hard surface technique as I had lots of pinching in my work due to the fact that I had not made my quads flow round the geometry and had used triangles in lots of unnecessary places.

This is a good learning curve for me though as I know now how to improve next time and how not to make the same mistakes.

I have been experimenting with different shoe designs and wing shapes too. I struggled last week to follow the concept of the shoes and after trying quite a few times I decided to think of an alternative that would flow better with the overall design. Here were some quick ideas in Zbrush:

I decided on giving her heels, though not my first choice as they are not functional, I think they are very aesthetically pleasing for the character. I tried making biker like shoes that have armour over the toes and were flat footed but they gave her a bottom heavy look that grounded her which i didnt like at all. After getting feedback on these designs I decided that as she would be flying and landing something to absorb her landing force would be a cool idea, so i decided on using running blades. Here is the final idea (that I have not yet polished).

My Zbrush model hasn't changed much I have just redone the panels lines on the under armour and will start on the secondary under suit once I have finished the armour pieces.

Here is the max finished open subdiv armour:

Day 3-5

So yesterday (wednesday) I spent texturing Bastet so I didn't work on the Valkyrie. But today i've been cleaning up all the errors in max on my armour and ive taken it into substance to bake and test using a variety of hard surface techniques, for example using the height fill with a mask for panel lines or using a layer with normals to stamp onto the armour etc.

Here's the bake with a basic material on:

I'm quite happy with the outcome but I know that doing the panel lines and normal detail in substance is going to take me quite a while so I need to save myself some extra time for that.

Anddd, the wings. Ok, so I've kinda been putting them off to prioritise the main body of the character but I need to start on them now. So Kat showed me this brief explanation/tutorial that Katie Hallaron had made on 3Dtotal -

(https://www.3dtotal.com/tutorial/2063-the-making-of-the-harpy-photoshop-zbrush-by-katie-hallaron#.VfdgZpeOvnM).

Where she had explained how she went about making the wings for her Harpy character. So I currently have blocked out the basic shapes of the feathers in max and i need to decide on the silhouette of the wings before I continue.

Here are the ideas I have so far:

After asking for feedback I was advised to think about my final pose before I decide on a wing design as both will effect eachother. I think this was good crit and so I created a small mood board of poses that I think will reflect the characters personality and style etc.

I personally am leaning more towards the centre middle pose maybe with one clenched fist. I really like the ideas of using the middle centre pose with a rock or some other prop to have her leg up on but I'm not sure if i will have the time to do this.

Day 3-5

So after obtaining some pose reference to determine what wings to make. I played around in zbrush using transpose master to create a rough idea of what pose she would have.

After getting feedback on this idea, it was apparent that that the main flow line of her right leg should flow into and around the wings like in the bottom left image in the research board.

Here is the current state of the main mesh with the low poly armour.

I got a bunch of helpful crit such as:

Have the wings flow with the lines of the body, not break it up.

Research Freya from smith for inspiration.

Bring the legs together so not as big thigh gap

Rotate bottom half of legs, she looks knock kneed at the moment.

Also after looking at the poses I think her silhouette and character would benefit incredibly from me creating a spear/polearm for her, to help he eyes flow through the compostition. However, I don't know if I should spend the time to make that now or wait until the main character is done.

I found I was getting quite frustrated with the face as I was using one image which was a drawing for reference which was so stupid of me. I'm going to redo the face using a celebrity as reference, I'm thinking Natalie Portman or Elle Fanning as they have similar proportions to the initial concept.