Goblin Alchemist-Game Ready Model

Moving on to the Beta project, my aim was to prepare the three characters to be game ready, using Maya for retopology (with a bit of Zbrush help) and Quixel Suite 2 for texturing. In the end I would present it using Sketchfab (https://sketchfab.com/jukkathewalrus) for more possibilities like: Free camera movement, setting up a scene with PBR lighting and so on. However I still tried other renderers like Marmoset, Unity 5, Unreal, Quixel. In the end, I think Sketchfab has the worse rendering out of all of them, thought it is easy to set up and accessible online.

Once again this is the result of the Alpha project; sculpted in Zbrush and rendered in Keyshot. Looking at this I had to analyse and think through how I would go about retopology and texturing. The biggest concern was the beard and the chain mail wrist guards, for a simple reason; I haven't done any models that would have a chainmail, or hair. having that challenge in mind, I proceeded with the retopology.

 here is the early stage of head retopology. At first I thought I give the Zremesher a try, seeing it being able to handle topology quite well. Then I would remove unnecessary edges. The issue I had was uncontrollable loop edges, in the end I decided to redo the whole head manually



here is an early low poly version, with normal maps already assigned and baked. Here you can see that the beard is missing, and the chain mail is just a decimated version from Zbrush. Naturally along the way new challenges occured. This time I realised I haven't done, or I've been avoiding doing strings and any kind of ropes in my models; I thought it's time to give it a go. It took me quite a time (still haven't perfected it!) to get the projection right, without weird issues, like black spots on the Normal map. Shoelaces took me the longest. At first being a decimated version from zbrush, then a projection onto a plane; it works great and is much easier than projection it onto a cylindrical shape, however I wanted the shoelaces to have a form.

There is a notable difference between the low poly and the Alpha project goblin. During the Beta project, I received some feedback, saying he doesn't look like an alchemist enough, which I agreed with. Doing some concepts, and sketches I added bunch of accessories to his backpack, adding more to his Alchemist appearance. As he constantly moves around the world, the pot might be helpful to cook potions, leafs could be helpful herbs that could be needed anytime , and so on. I like the new look much more!

 As I said, I did some unity previews, giving me a good idea of in game appearance. I used the blacksmith scene that untiy proved on their website, and I absolutely  enjoyed the scene lighting.

I was still left with the issue of the chain mail and the beard. For the beard I tried various methods. In zbrush i tried placing the cards with a curve brush, which was a good approach, however I confronted issues with uv maps. So in the end I placed the cards manually. What took the longest was getting the texture right, the alpha transparency to look decent; I still think I could have done it better.
For the chainmail at first I tried to take the high poly chainmail from zbrush, with vertex color (black) and projecting it using Xnormal; however the alpha map was bleeding into eachother, overlaping chain mail rings. Next idea was to create a custom material inside Quixel and apply it this way. It turned out OKAY. not too happy with the results, but I had little time left so I moved on.




Here is the final result of the texturing (Marmoset render). I like how it turned out and how close it stayed to the original concept and textures. The character consists of 5x 4k textures , which can be easily reduced if needed. I struggled a bit with deciding how many maps I will need; I ended up with Body, clothing (including the backpack and assets), beard, leafs, and eyes maps.
Next step was posing him and giving him a suitable environment to tell a story, and make him more interesting than just an A pose character.


Here is the posed model (more at https://skfb.ly/MToY). I did a quick rig, nothing amazing, just good enough. Dragging his cart, his home on wheels, with everything he will ever need. The idea for the cart came from his traveling aspect. The backpack isn't enough to carry things like food, heavier equipment, and various potions.

LowPolyInsindeMaya

Sketchfab Model Posed

Unfortunately I didn't quite finish that scene up to a standard I would want to. My aim was to make it look a bit like the Hellboy's troll market (initial inspiration for this project) adding lamps and a paths, couple assets here and there.

Overall I was happy I have proven to be able to take a character from concept to a game ready character, fully textured and presented. If I could improve anything it would be the beard and the chainmail, give them a bit more work and quality. Also, perhaps reduce the maps quantity.