493 Final Presentation

Hello everyone! My name is Nicole Jackson and this is what I have done over the past 15 weeks.

My first project was the carnivorous plant.

The concept art that I created for the project

Carnivorous Plant by Nicole Jackson on Sketchfab

My second project is the therizinosaurus sculpting.

The concept art I found and am using as inspiration

The side orthographic view that I created for the project

The initial zspheres sketch based on the orthographics

Thanks for the wonderful class! I hope you all have a wonderful break and happy holidays!!

Week 15

This week I have been working on creating a zsphere armature that will be the basis of the Therizinosaurus sculpt. I tried to recreate the proportions of the concept orthigraphics as close as possible with zspheres. It is not quite right in some areas (such as the face) where the zspheres couldn't quite recreate properly but I will fill in those areas later with zsketch and/or sculpting. I am also much happier with how the front of the dinosaur is turning out. I was having problems drawing it but once I had the 3D shapes to move around I was able to get what I wanted much quicker. While working on this armature I noticed that I was able to work a lot better and more efficiently with zspheres, as well as zBrush in general, than I have in the past. That has made me quite happy since learning zBrush was one of my main goals at the beginning of the semester. The next step for this project is to do a few more tweaks to the armature until I am really happy with it and then start using zsketch over the top of the zspheres. I haven't had good luck with zsketch in the past so I will see if I can get better results this time.

Summary of the Semester

Hi! My name is Nicole Jackson and I am a Modeler, Texture Artist and Rigger.

My main goals for the semester were to learn zBrush and to get one or two projects that I could put in my portfolio.

I decided that for my first project I would sculpt a carnivorous plant. I was inspired by the following reference image.

I then created my own concept art:

Once I had the concept art, it was time to start sculpting in zBrush. The first part I worked on was the pot. I wanted it to look like an old and very damaged clay pot.

I then used zspheres to create an armature for the plant's stem and head and began to sculpt in detail.

Then I created low poly meshes in Maya for the leaves and then posed and arranged them in zBrush until I was happy with the placement. 

Then I smoothed the leaves and began adding detail to them. I also added some waviness to the leaves in order to make them look more interesting and started attaching them to the stem. I also worked on adding roots to the plant. I wanted the plants to be thick like those of an orchid. They were created using zspheres.

Once I was finished adding detail to the sculpt, I used zBrush's retopology tools to retopologize it. I wasn't too worried about the topology since the mesh was never meant to be animated but I wanted it dense enough that it could hold enough of the detail. The topology was a little dense around the edges of the leaves and there are areas were the topology wasn't as good as it could be but, for the most part, I was happy with it.

The next step was to create UVs so that it could be textured. I also used a checkerboard pattern texture to test the UVs for distortion and proper resolution.

Once the UVs were finished it was time to texture. I decided to use Substance Painter to make the textures. The following was the final results:

Carnivorous Plant by nicolej on Sketchfab

I also started working on another project: a Therizinosaurus. I came across a piece of concept art of a Therizinosaurus and I though it would be fun to sculpt in zBrush. 

To make it easier to sculpt, I created some orthographics based on the concept art as well as a skeleton reference of the therizinosaurus.

I will not be able to finish this project by the end of the semester but I will continue to work on it and hopefully it will turn out good enough to put in my portfolio. 

I didn't get as much done as I wanted to this semester but I am a LOT more comfortable working with zBrush and I have at least one project that I can use in my portfolio so I'm happy.

Week 14

This week I've been working on refining the orthographics. I changed up the proportions and tried to make the anatomy more accurate (at least as accurate as dinosaur anatomy from an incomplete skeleton can be). I also started working on the front orthographics but I've never been very good at translating side orthos to front orthos. I don't like how it is turning out so I'll need to work on it quite a bit before I'm happy with it.

Week 13

For the past week I have started working on my Therizinosaurus project. As suggested by one of my classmates, I decided to create my own orthographics first. That way, it will be a lot easier for me to work from rather than the concept art alone. This is what I have done this week.

These are the two references that I worked from. The first is a skeleton diagram that I used for the shape and then I added some of the design elements from the second concept image. It still needs a lot of work and I need to do more anatomy reference before I'm finished but I am happy with the results so far.

 There isn't a lot of time left in the semester so I probably won't get much farther than the concept art and maybe a basic sculpt but I am planning on getting as far as I can and then continuing this project after I graduate.

Week 12

This week I finished the carnivorous plant project.

Carnivorous Plant by nicolej on Sketchfab

I have also spent a lot of time collecting reference material. I am planning on sculpting a therizinosaurus is zBrush based on the following reference image.

The Therizinosaurus was a dinosaur with the largest known claws of any animal. The claws could get as  long as two feet in length. The Therizinosaurus was an herbivore and likely used it's claws to collect leaves and for defense.

It was also likely at least partially covered in feathers.

Other reference and artist renditions:

Week 11

This week I have been working on texturing my carnivorous plant project. It took me a while to get the file ready and imported into Substance Painter (I had to revisit a few of the Substance Painter Fundamentals videos from 420) but I finally got it imported and was also able to import a normal map that I created in zBrush (although it was upside down to begin with---strange).

I spent about 10 hours or so texturing it and I am pretty happy with how it is turning out. I haven't gotten very far on the pot and roots yet but those shouldn't take very long at all to texture compared to the plant, which is now finished. I also worked on exporting some of the maps to make sure it was working correctly. I also noticed that there is a preset for Sketchfab which is where I was planning to put this model so that was a great find. It seems like it will export the model and textures straight to my account there so it will make exporting the whole thing a lot easier.

My textured plant model in Substance Painter:

Pot and Roots, WIP:

At the moment, I'm losing a lot of the detail of the pot so I'll have to find ways of bringing some of that detail back. Also, I haven't gotten to the dirt yet so, at the moment, it is the same color as the pot. I did have the dirt finished but then substance painter crashed and I lost an hour or two of work. So, now, I'm working to repeat the work that I lost.

Week 10

This week, my time was spent creating low poly models for the pot, the plant and the roots, working on the topology and getting the pieces UVed.

First of all, I used zremesher in zBrush to get low poly versions of my high poly meshes. Zremesher did a fairly good job in most cases but some areas, such as the teeth did not come out correctly. Now matter what I tried, I couldn't keep the detail of the teeth in the low poly mesh. So, instead, I imported what did come out fine (the leaves and vine), cut off the parts that weren't coming out correctly (the head) and then imported a high poly version of the head. I then used the high poly version as a template for retopologizing with the quad draw tool. This was a very tedious process and took almost 10 hours to complete.

I was also having problems with the quad draw tool. After a while, adding a new polygon began taking around 10-15 seconds to finish which made the tool virtually unusable. I did some searching on forums and found that this is caused by a buildup of construction history as well as a glitch with the tool where it will create additional shader nodes. As long as I deleted the construction history and reassigned the shader occasionally, it worked fine after that.

I then worked on UVs which, compared to the retopologizing, didn't take too long (around 2-3 hours). Here it is with a test material assigned.

Pot UV:

Plant UV:

Roots UV:

Week 9

Last week, I mainly worked on placing the leaves and getting the basic shape worked out. This week, I further tweaked the shape of the leaves and worked getting more interesting shapes into the leaves. I spent around 8-10 hours shaping the leaves, making the leaves wavy in certain areas, as well as connecting each individual leaf to the main stem.

I also spent several hours creating roots using zsketch and moving them around to get the shapes I wanted. I may decide to add a few more roots running down to the floor and/or in the back but, for now, I'm finished with the roots.

I am pretty much finished with the sculpting of the model. I may still add a few leaves around the plant's head because I feel it needs something. My original concept art has small thin leaves around the top of the stem but I wasn't liking the look I was getting with those. I am going to try larger, broader, leaves set up similar to flower petals. I was thinking about making them look like the hoods of american pitcher plants (below image).

The next step is to prepare a low poly mesh as well as getting it UVed. I am going to use zremesher to get the low poly models from the high poly ones and then I can bake the normal information onto it.

I also did some research for the color scheme I want to do. I'd like to do a primarily red color scheme with some lime green highlights. The images below are the approximate look I'm going for (as well as the image above).

Week 8

This week I have continued work on the carnivorous plant sculpt. I spent a lot of time trying out different leaf types and moving them around to get different shapes. I also tried to get holes in the leaf surface to see if that would look good but all of the methods I tried gave bad results. I wasn't able to get a good looking leaf with holes so I decided to go back to the nepenthes style leaf that I was originally going for. Once I was happy with the placement and shape of the leaves, I extracted the geometry and smoothed the leaves. I also added a vein down the center of the leaves. I also tried a another version of the leaves where the edges of the leaf were wavy but I didn't like the overall effect so I went back to the smooth leaf version.

Once the leaves were finished, it was time to start attaching them to the stem. To do this, I have been merging the leaves individually to the stem, dynameshing it to connect them and then using sculpting to smooth out the connection. This is a slow process because I had to move around the base of each leaf to make sure that there wouldn't be any clipping of the leaves and that there was sufficient space between each leaf. I am liking the look of it though so I think this will turn out well when I finish. The only problem I have with this is that the leaves are no longer separate from one another which could make it a lot harder to texture properly. I would prefer to have the leaves attached to the stem though.

Once I'm finished attaching all of the leaves, I 'm going to finish adding the roots and make small sculpted detail and then I will work on getting it into Substance Painter to texture it.

Week 7

I have been having a lot of problems this last week. I tried doing the leaves in several different ways but none of them were coming out the way I wanted them to. Eventually, I created very low poly planes in Maya and shaped them in Maya and then imported them into zBrush. I have gotten a better result doing this. The leaves still need some work placement wise but they are very close. I may decide to rotate them a little further away from the pot or add a few more leaves so the plant looks a little more bushy. I will get the leaves shaped out how I want them and next I'll mask out the portions that I want and extract the geometry. This way, I can also get the holes in the leaves if I want to.

Unfortunately, this is all I have to show this week because I spent a lot of time working on things that I later scrapped. I also worked on the little leaves around his head but those also turned out pretty badly. I'll try again another day and, hopefully, I'll get a better result.