Portfolio 2 Week 2

  1. Schedule

       Week 1: Gather reference, for hair style mainly source from pintrest and google images, trying to use real life hair style references. Gather references for how to layout hair cards as well and then gather references for how professionals display their hair grooms in Artstation. Make the basic blockout for the hair style in zbrush, set up lighting and scene in unreal. Establish blockout for hair textures as well.

      Week 2: Set up scene in maya to use xgen for hair cards and utilize the modifiers to help generate the cards, and further refine the blockout for the hair card textures. Once done start the initial placement of cards on the head.

     Week 3: Continue placement of hair cards this will take up the majority of time for this project so I would love to have two weeks to try and place the cards as well as establish the braids for the hair style. Once done fully get the unreal scene ready for presentation, including fixing some console commands and material set up in Unreal Engine.

    Week 4: Fully take some shots of the hair style and work on compositing, and tweaking and adjusting the hair style for the final artstation post.

    For this week I worked with getting the hair cards generated and baked all in Maya/Arnold. Initial placement of the cards will start after this turn in since I decided to take care of the hair cards fully for this week. Going through the resources I found that I didn't need as many cards as I initially sketched out so this is extremely helpful. I also found ways using the AOV channels in Maya to get all the textures I need without having to jump into another software.

Reference Board

Here is my Color map, since everything is generated within Maya and Arnold, I can iterate on this Color Map whenever I want and change the hair color based on the shader.

Here is the Alpha Map, this is packed into an EXR with the Color Map.

Here is my AO Pass.

Here is my custom ID pass.

Here is my roots map, this generates a gradient for the hair that will be used later. I can also invert this and generate a tips map at any point.

Here is my normal map.

Here is my direction map also generated within Arnold using AOV passes.

Here is my Z depth pass.

Here is a shot of my Xgen generated hair strands that I used to make the card textures you can see that minimal guide placement was used effectively.

Here is a top view of what I eventually rendered out. Some cards were omitted since I didn't necessarily need them, but in the chance that I do it is incredibly quick to generate these now that I am fully comfortable with the process.

Here is my modifier stack that I used to give more complexity to my Xgen strands. I will go more in depth on these for my research post.

Here are some custom AOV passes that I made to generate the different textures that I needed. I mainly referred to our past experiences in common art to figure these out.

And lastly this is my Unreal scene, no real changes have been made here since my main focus was on generating these textures and getting those as clean as possible.

Sprint 3 Delivery

 

Portfolio 2 Week 1 Start

 1. Schedule

       Week 1: Gather reference, for hair style mainly source from pintrest and google images, trying to use real life hair style references. Gather references for how to layout hair cards as well and then gather references for how professionals display their hair grooms in Artstation. Make the basic blockout for the hair style in zbrush, set up lighting and scene in unreal. Establish blockout for hair textures as well.

      Week 2: Set up scene in maya to use xgen for hair cards and utilize the modifiers to help generate the cards, and further refine the blockout for the hair card textures. Once done start the initial placement of cards on the head.

     Week 3: Continue placement of hair cards this will take up the majority of time for this project so I would love to have two weeks to try and place the cards as well as establish the braids for the hair style. Once done fully get the unreal scene ready for presentation, including fixing some console commands and material set up in Unreal Engine.

    Week 4: Fully take some shots of the hair style and work on compositing, and tweaking and adjusting the hair style for the final artstation post.

Portfolio 1 Week 4 End

      1. Schedule

       Week 1: Gather reference and then start building out mesh for character. Blockout for the upper body and head as well as any accessories and clothing for the character. Move to blocking out the proxy for the hair as well (The hair proxy will serve as a curve conversion for Xgen). Once these shapes are established, begin doing a high poly sculpt for the face and the clothing. Set up Unreal lighting scenario and camera rig to establish lookdev early.

      Week 2: Continue high poly sculpt for the body and the clothing, focus on facial muscles and selling expression. Continue detailing from week 1. Refine pose if needed and focus in on selling a specific angle. Begin retopology pass and either have it done or 90% done for week 3. (If retopo is done work on UVs).

     Week 3: Finish out UV pass and begin baking process. Baking should be relatively simple and should not take more than 20 minutes to finish. Once bake is established begin a texture pass. Goal is to have textures completed and lookdeved in engine for this week. Begin initial hair pass in Xgen.

    Week 4: Complete hair pass in Xgen. Finalize all materials and lighting set up in Unreal. Establish beauty shots and product shots for the character. Collect photos for UVs and Topology. Composition pass in photoshop to finalize picture quality. Create ArtStation Post.

So I finally finished my piece and I can say that I hit all of my targets for this piece! The character sits at 45,000 tris and runs in real-time. 

And just as a personal milestone I made it on the front page at the time of posting!

 

Sprint 2 Delivery

For week 2 it's a second pass for the proxy of the mesh. Here it is in engine!

Here it is in zbrush!

 

Portfolio 1 Check in 3

      1. Schedule

       Week 1: Gather reference and then start building out mesh for character. Blockout for the upper body and head as well as any accessories and clothing for the character. Move to blocking out the proxy for the hair as well (The hair proxy will serve as a curve conversion for Xgen). Once these shapes are established, begin doing a high poly sculpt for the face and the clothing. Set up Unreal lighting scenario and camera rig to establish lookdev early.

      Week 2: Continue high poly sculpt for the body and the clothing, focus on facial muscles and selling expression. Continue detailing from week 1. Refine pose if needed and focus in on selling a specific angle. Begin retopology pass and either have it done or 90% done for week 3. (If retopo is done work on UVs).

     Week 3: Finish out UV pass and begin baking process. Baking should be relatively simple and should not take more than 20 minutes to finish. Once bake is established begin a texture pass. Goal is to have textures completed and lookdeved in engine for this week. Begin initial hair pass in Xgen.

    Week 4: Complete hair pass in Xgen. Finalize all materials and lighting set up in Unreal. Establish beauty shots and product shots for the character. Collect photos for UVs and Topology. Composition pass in photoshop to finalize picture quality. Create ArtStation Post.

For this week I accomplished my goal of completing retopology and UVs, however I did switch around my week 3 and four schedule to start and finish the hair earlier since I knew it would become a hassle if I pushed it back too long so the rest of the material work will come for the next week!

Here is a detail lighting pass in Unreal showing more of the normal information!

Here is an IRay render from Substance Painter showing the WIP for the textures.