Small update on textures. The dress is almost done, just needs the lines on the sleeves and a highlight pass on the metals. I'll be moving to the legs next.

I've been posting progress to this on Twitter and Polycount so I thought I'd do a quick overview of my progress here!

The amazing concept is by Alexis Pflaum and can be found here.

The blockout process:

I used a mixture of Zbrush and Maya to achieve my shapes. My intent from the beginning was to paint without bakes so I tried to keep details on the model to a minimum in Zbrush.

The topology:

Although I tried to do topology as I went, there were still parts that needed cleaning up.

The Value Blockout:

The Greyscale:

Although I was not baking any sculpt details, I still did bake an AO and Curvature in 3d-Coat and a Light Direction map in Marmoset to get the shadows.

Colour Block-in:

To add colour I utilized gradients and layer masks in Photoshop to isolate areas and apply different colours.

With just over a week to go before I need to finalise this character, I'm getting happier with the results

To start off, I reworked the whole body's proportions again to match up with what I referenced.

During this process I further detailed the clothing and reworked the pants completely.

Next I decided to tackle the haircards. Of all the things left to do on the model, that is the most time consuming from a modelling standpoint. Not only did the body get a rework, so did the face.

With the body going through so many changes I've had to go in and refine quite a lot, or even restart pieces from scratch.

As of now, the final parts needing completion are: Hands, Belts, Skin Details, and Eyelashes.

So after a fairly long break from this project, I am continuing!

Since I was away from it for so long I revisited the proportions and anatomy

After the big changes, the clothes no longer fit the body so I had to adjust them.

After all the changes made, I am 100x happier with how it's turing out. 

Next step it to finish up all the fabric folds and belts.
  

Had the idea a while back from the Flipped Normals Warlock challenge to flex my skills and try something more on the realistic side.

After sitting in it awhile I wanted to dive in and try and finish it so I put together a mood board.

When picking it back up, I had previously only worked on the face, the face itself going through many itterations. So came the first anatomy blockout:

I wanted to save on time in the future, so I utilised my female base mesh and re-targeted it

Once I projected everything onto the clean topo I could refine further and block out the clothing

Since blockout I've been able to detail the pants and shoes, with minor details to change on the pants to go.

Another week another update!

This past week I've managed to rework the mushrooms, paint the rocks, and start painting the foliage atlas.

The rocks in particular were a challenge to get feeling right. They were repainted about 6 times in total before I got what I wanted.

I'm still not 100% happy, but that mostly cause of UV scale and errors that I would fix if I went back. The errors are minor and the scale just makes them a little blurry.

For the ground plane I used a mixture of two textures. Although it still needs work and is slapped together rather roughly, I needed something in now to get a better feel of the colours.

The grass texture I re-used from my last environment, and the dirt I made rather quickly and need to work on it more.

The major thing I worked on this week, was foliage! Again to start, I pulled up zbrush and sculpted the shape I wanted roughly for the top of the tree. The rest would be painted on planes in an atlas.

While the foliage atlas is still very in progress I've gotten a good sense of what I need to fill it out more. I also used it to create smaller branches at the base and top of the trunk.  

Hi Everyone!

About three years ago I made a small environment based off a concept by Juliya Revina! To test how far my skills have come since then I thought this would be a good project to remake and document my process here.

I knew the first thing I had to do was put my old piece side by side with the concept and figure out how I could improve it, not only to be more accurate, but overall more appealing.

Once having them together, I immediately saw parts I knew could be improved.

• My textures were blury
• I found I faked parts of the render by painting over the final in small areas (the fade on the ground, the glow, and the grass)
• The rendering order on the transparency was messed up
• Shapes were off on the foliage
• Most ground clutter was missing

My old version is what I would consider a mess.

I started my remake by taking in the old tree trunk into ZBrush as a base. Everything else was to be remade from scratch.

I finalised a rough sculpt of what I wanted, baked, processed my maps, and started painting starting with the trunk to get a feel of where I was heading with the style.

Just with what I've made so far my scene is already more "alive" and more interesting. Making this so far has been really enjoyable to see my improvement! It's insprired me to keep going and I can't wait to start all the foliage!