The Moss Fox: Texture on Substance painter + Unreal Process

Substance painter

After unwrapping all my character assets and the Fox itself, I quickly move on to substance painting. The process and the speed I go through each part of the colouring was quite fast, I am even scared of myself. First, stopping in one day and now finishing texture in about a week?

Unwarpings of the fox in Substance and how it baked

The main fox texture

Mask Texture with emission glow

Alpha leaves (for fox body decoration)

Cauldron Texture

Potion and book texture

Testing In UE4

Throughout the entire process of painting, I have another screen showing how the texture would look on UE4 at all times, checking on the roughness and colour of the texture that can be deceitful on the painter.

I have two detail of the emission engraved on the mask, in the end, I choose the one on the left as the right was too busy.

The vials are made in to transparent texture and see-through so I added a gimmick of water/potion inside halfway in the model itself.

Making a glow material and mixing it with emission from Painter, I create the mushrooms on the fox's back to glow. Creating a magical feel to the character.

The Moss Fox: Retopping and Unwarping UV + Assets

 Process

A small problem with the retopping process blogging on my fox was that I managed to mindlessly tr=retopping the entire fox in 1 day and I did not realize I did not take screenshots when it was already more than half finished...The retoppping of a creature was quite fun now that I made it once, to do the same method again as the creature makes it very fast to push through the work.

I slowly build up the retops and create masks and other accessories for the fox. The hardest part of stopping this character is the mushroom.

UV Unwarp

The unwarping was also an easy straightforward method. Making sure each piece has its maximum area to work with while all of the stays in the same ratio throughout.

The body UV

Face UV

Mushrooms and crystal on its back UV

Assets

as my concept of the fox was it was going to live in a potion-making room and was a transformed/cursed alchemist. My fox will have a cauldron it can stay near. My initial idea was that the fox will sit inside the cauldron. But because sitting inside the cauldron would block the detail of the fox in the final piece. I make the cauldron hold potions instead while the fox sits on the floor.

I added in moss on the side on the cauldron in the end to harmonise the design between the Moss fox and the assets.

Human Body Dynamics. Using Indian Ink and Ink Washes

 During this week's session, I have to produce a timed series of sketches of a nude model in different poses. I did not have time to take a lot of pictures of the process so I will be talking about the further understanding of drawing the human figure with the use of ink and inking techniques.

First sketch

Second Sketch

Third sketch

Because of last time, I enjoyed drawing curves on the human body a lot, with this model with a leaner build and skinnier. I find myself struggling to stop myself from giving the model more curves than he has. With inking techniques of wet runny ink progressing to the hard-line and concentrated ink, I found myself enjoying more and understanding more of the wet painting style that requires me to build up the model with blobs of ink and shapes rather than the thin lining. I would like to improve the weight line of the lining-only picture to create more dynamic and shows he foreshortening of the limps if I can redo it again.

The Moss Fox: Zbrush

Process

ZSPHERES used to create the base

After converting the mesh for the body, I have the ears by extruding the masking area.

Goofy

Rendering process and sculpting the eye lids. I was given feedback by my friend that it doesn't look like a fox enough.

there we go!

Elongate the body to make the limps easier to animate later on.

The mask is based on a Japanese Kitsune Mask with swirling patterns but I added the touch of my own creativity in and eyes symbol that was used by our group.

Masking the area on its back randomly to extrude it up, I transfer it in to patches of moss

Final Piece

I am very content with how this turns out and I really like the strokes of the hair that I created. The fox has a face design both with and without the mask so the detail is an extra bit I am proud of.

Alpha Decoration

Because the body was empty and my character have a disadvantage over the others because it is an animal, it will not have clothes that are detailed enough to rival others. So I decided to make leaves grow from its body, covering blank spots.

Nude Figure on Black Paper

 With this week's task. I get a chance to experiment with ‘positive and negative space’ but use white pencil/chalk to create a drawing.

Process

The process is nothing much as it is mostly rendering after rendering. I first start with a sketch and I slowly build up from what I have

During this process, I was told that my leg position was drawn wrong but because the black paper is a square, I do not have more space to draw out.

I fixed this problem by connecting two papers together. I use photoshop to erase out the gap the two paper created.

I then try to finalized the picture before the tie is up to draw.

Final Piece

The result is not what I am proud of and I have come to learn how hard it is to control chalk as I draw. With one mistake while blending, it can be caused my area that needed to be a hard edge to smudge and I have to retouch again. Because the surface of the chalk is big, I can not make smaller details with this piece. In the future, I would use a bigger canvas and draw the figure even bigger to have room for details with a large surface chalk tip.

Boss Monsters: Initial Ideas

For the next task of this term, we have to create the Boss Monster that will appear in the Arean that I made. I have a few ideas for the boss already and I was sure of what I wanted it to be.

The Puppet Master

My concept for the boss is that the boss acts as a giant hand that strings a tiny marionette that the hero has to fight as its first phase, and when the hero defeats the first stage of the puppet. It will be revealed that the puppet was not the main boss at all. Luring the Hero to think they have won, the Puppet master will manifest itself from the stage as the wall tears away, revealing a much bigger boss that controls the entire arena.

First Moodboard: General Concept

Second Moodboard: references from media and art

My main focus/concept on the boss will be; Hands, strings, mask, and carnival based.

References:

https://thirdarchive.net/post/164604361347/akiya-kageichi/amp

https://twitter.com/akiya_kageichi/status/462617991616528385

https://butlerbookbinding.tumblr.com/post/132515721599/photoset_iframe/butlerbookbinding/tumblr_nwwg52P8tl1qhttpt/500/false

https://www.pinterest.com/pin/AeHtWkbwNZkS_GbywSdijV7pTsl3YS1LB3-6A0n-mauiBvZQxmlkQKw/

http://eyefordesignlfd.blogspot.com/2013/08/childs-playdecorate-with-antique-toys.html

https://www.artstation.com/artwork/xJby3W

http://img.nie.163.com/images/2013/10/22/2013-10-22_376159.jpg

https://www.artstation.com/artwork/ZGla1G

Group Project kickoff: The Moss Fox

 This week's task is the beginning of a group project. The main theme of the work is transition. Our group decided that our group story will based on " Humans cursed to slowly transition into different creatures scavenging through an abandoned structure."
While my friends are interested in making a human character, I wanted another try; to create a fantasy animal apart from my saddle creature project. 

The Moss Fox

Initial Sketches

Close ups

In the end, I came up with a Moss Fox. An ancient alchemist was cursed to transform into part of nature's curse as time ate his human body and forced him to live in a form of a fox. My character is the end of the spectrum of our group, a character that is completely eaten by the curse and transforms into a full animal. His hero assets will be a cauldron, a few potion vials, and a book.

Focus on Anatomy:

The task this week is to focus on human anatomy with life-drawing figures used to practice. Due to the limited time to work, I could not take a photo during drawings for the process of the work but in this post, I will explain how much I have furthered my understanding of drawing the human figure.

First sketch

Second Sketch

Third sketch

Fourth Sketch

This week's task is the most enjoyable task I have done so far. I really enjoy drawing anatomy more than I initially thought as I mostly draw busts of half-bodies. During the session, I have come to understand and enjoy the curves on the human body, how it forms, and their location that could create thicker line weights when I draw the folds. The mixture of drawing both muscle and fat of the human body makes me use both soft edges and hard shapes while drawing. I would not like to do anything different if I am able to do this task again but wanting more time to work on the piece, it is understandable that I am to draw in a short amount of time to test the skill and how fast I can observe and draw. 

Saddled animal: Texturing and Unreal engine

Process

Because of how sandy and natural the Jerboa have in nature, It does not consist much of colour and is easy to paint. It took me only a few days to finish the entire process of painting.

Unwarping and baking in Painter

The texture on the jerboa

Because the texture on the baking of the fur did not show up well, I create a height map of fur on Substance Designer and apply them on my character in Painter.

I added more blushes and value to the Jerboa, adding gradient and a soft blush to give it more dynamic.

Before adding them all to unreal, I create a platform to enhance the environment its in. Because Jerboa is a desert mouse, I give it a sandy platform. 

The sand was made unreal with a little help from my friends.

Unreal Engine

Throughout the process of making the texture, I make sure to test the texture on Unreal4 too due to how faulty Substance painter can be when showing texture and its real colour display. 

Adding Post processing box and changing the temperature and blooming effect of the scene

My lighting setups.

Final Piece

And my Jerboa is done! The jerboa is a lot more round and adorable than I initially have as a reference but the more I look at it the more I adore the round little guy. I think I did rather well on the texture especially the body of the jerboa. If I did not make the lamp so high poly, I would make more assets and decoration to the scene like a small tree or plants.