SlaveDriver, Game Ready Model

This post will be both about the high poly zbrush model and the low poly, as I haven't wrote about it yet. The third character for the Alpha project was originally going to be a cook, or a butcher. He went through a lot of variations and ideas, and I finally decided I will give up on the theme of a butcher. The reason was is that there is a lot of butcher characters, a concept that has been done over and over again, therefore I felt like I would be just copying the same thing once again.

After some feedback, I decided he will be a Slave Driver/King, which perfectly fits in with his appearance;brute, aggressive, scary. The backstory for him is that one day he might have be a slave himself, after freeing himself (or chewing off his hand) he run away, and one day came back for his revenge.

 Different variations
However, even after I knew who he is, I couldn't figure out a good clothing for him. There isn't too much reference out there, so it was quite hard to figure it out.



This is the result I came up with. He has some armor to protect him from potential attacks' spikey shoulders give him bit of a bulky shape, building up his shoulders. Also another thing to notice is the mechanical arm, which in the world of Del Toro would be a very viable concept. Further on I gave him a whip, which was the only way I could think of, of showing he is a slave driver
Overall I wasn't very happy with the results; the clothing didn't fit in, there was something missing from the character.

Beta.

Inspiration for the shoulderpads

Here I decided to jump back into Zbrush and do almost a complete redesign. First of all I knew I have to improve the shoulders, they weren't a final thing anyway. It was one of  not many ocasions when I tried hard surface inside Zbrush, it was quite fun with the us of Zmodeler. After I hade the shoulder pad base, I created a spike brush , inspired by guild wars 2 heavy armor

Quick ideas for new appearance

I was quite happy with the face. The main change it received was eye sockets (and eyes of course). At first I had an idea of him moving around using smell, or tasting the air with his tounges. But in the end I decided it will be better to give him some eyes.
 Here I was trying a sawed eyes concept

Another important change was the leather covering his legs. I had an idea of him wearing a leather of disobeyed slaves to show his status, and to warn these who are even thinking of stepping forward. On top of that I wanted to keep the idea of wearing armor for protection, and gave him a chain mail using nanomesh.

Here is the final result! I'm much more happy with it than the Alpha version,. It has better composition and sense, and still speaks "SlaveDriver"






Next step was the retopology. And quite surprised, It took me just two days for the retopology. No issues there, everything went rather easy. For the chain I used Zremesher, it was probably the fastest way to go about it, I was quite short on time. Also this time I decided to increase the polycount for the head/face. Previous two times I kept behind on the polycount, and thought I will go bit higher this time (for the face that is). The result was great; smoother edges, transitions, and better normal map quality.










I decided to combine the 'socks' and the body to save up on another mesh, it baked out quite well. Another issue I was left with was the chain mail. Basically I gave up on it, having no idea how to go about it. I've tried two methods, one was trying to project the vertex color which resulted in the same way as with the goblin; bleeding alpha map. The other way was creating a custom Chain mail material, which I had left over from the goblin. In this case it looked terrible, resulting in me making it a ripped shirt (which turned out even better than having a chain mail?). Later on I've been given an advice, to treat it more like an environment not a character, meaning to use a tiling  texture for the chain mail. Now it is too late to try this method out, but next time I will for sure, sounds very interesting!

Next was DDO, and it was nothing but buggy, making my textures disappear or appear in a weird way (messing up the layer modes)

DDO

marmoset

In the end, I am very happy with it. It has a better design, and looks like a slave driver even without the whip. If I could change something I would give the chain mail another go, and make the skin a bit more glossy. Also I think the textures could use a bit more work.


For the posing I decided to go simple, I used the Zbrush "super average male" for playing a slave in the scenario. Both got a simple rig and quickly got posed. It needs more work, but I think it gets the idea across! (more at https://skfb.ly/NGvR)