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.

Week 6

This week I have been continuing sculpting my carnivorous plant. I decided to redo the head so that I could work with symmetry turned on and I am very happy with how it is turning out so far. At first, I was going to give it actual teeth but then I decided that I'd rather give it teeth like a venus flytrap and I am happy with how that turned out.

Once I was finished with the head, I created a tongue and placed that. I like the look of it but I also like it without it so I haven't made up my mind yet if I'm going to leave it in or not.

I also did some work on the stem of the plant. I smoothed it out, filled in the areas that got compressed when I moved it around and worked on giving it a fibrous looking texture. I want it to be fairly smooth so just adding a little texture with the clay buildup brush worked well.

After I was happy with the stem, I moved on to work on the leaves. I was originally going to make the leaves solid and slightly thick like an asian pitcher plant (or an orchid) but, to make it look a bit more interesting, I have been playing around with a more tropical looking leaf with holes in it. I like the look of the leaves but I am having trouble moving them around and deforming them properly in zBrush. They tend to stretch as I move them and they are pretty stubborn. There must be a better way to deform things in zBrush but I haven't found it yet. I may end up sending the base leaf into Maya and then deform them in Maya and import them back into zBrush.

Lastly, I have begun working on the roots. I want the roots to look like orchid roots (venus flytrap roots are similar in appearance to orchid roots) so I started with a zsphere and then used zsketch to block out the root forms. This made it really easy because I can sketch a root shape and then move it around very easily. I am really happy with the effect I have gotten so far by doing it this way (and I haven't done anything other than sketch it out with zspheres).

The following is a video showing some of the work I did. (I lost a lot of it because zBrush crashed several times.)