I'm Back! Revamped!

The madness never ends!

       I'm not. Alone.

        This time I brought some friends!

Not the most friendly bunch, are they?

Hey guys! Still been pretty quiet when it comes to posting, but so very soon I shall be changing that~

Not that it is way past over, I shall be showing off the Pirate Fish Guy here for all to see. Yay. 

First up: 

    The Low Poly Mesh.

Even though this project went for about a month of work for one character, and there was obviously some parts that was very annoying to work with, but all and all it was fun.

UV Mapping

Of course, not all of it was fun and games. Uv mapping for certain areas was pretty difficult. Strange enough ,it wasn't even the pieces others have told me would be the most difficult. The hand and head did not take long. But I had more trouble with the belt and buckles more than anything else. Things didn't go as smoothly all throughout as I would like, but it was a good experience regardless. 

UV Mapping; clean.

UV Mapping. Test.

As fun as UVing was, my favorite part was actually the sculpting. Messing around with ZBrush to get that right texture was great. I got to bring the character alive and that was one of the best parts I got to work on. Though, I think I got a little too happy with making him closer to reality than making him a more cartoonish representation that was shown in the original concept art. But then again, he did say to go nuts and have fun, so to speak. So, I made him more towards what I like to do while also experimenting. Now that was fun.

 ZBrush Turnaround Video.

I think he came out really nicely. It also didn't take me as long to do it as I thought it would. Which is surprising to say the least.

I think the one part that was the most annoying was the Bake Mapping. Originally, I mapped using Maya. Usually it works just fine, but for this guy, it never came out right. Black spots everywhere, details that was so strong on the sculpt never showed on the low poly mesh. It was annoying. Because of this, I had to find another way to do it. It was suggested to me to use the program xNormals in order to get a cleaner bake. Unfortunately that wasn't the case.

But then, Substance Painter came into the lineup. I was told that Substance Painter also does bake mapping and it is extremely accurate so long as the UVs are alright. Skeptical about it, I tried it anyway and was ecstatic with the result. The end result created a clean bake along with an ambient occlusion map (something I really dislike doing through Maya) to accurately obtain that look I wanted.

          Normal Map.                                                                    Ambient Occlusion Map. 

It was neat! I loved the fact that it just smoothly transferred onto my low poly mesh and just looked like the high poly one without that strange blackness occurring. Because of that, I wondered why I wasn't using it earlier. It cuts down so much time, especially with painting. The choice of painting on the Sculpt or the UV's themselves? Madness! Though it works so well.

Substance Painter; 3D and UV painting mode. 

Doesn't he look great? Next would be to show you all how he looks like in the world I created a while ago. Though, I think I shall wait to do that after I rig him for Common Core. Maybe that will go quite well, or well, hopefully that will go very well. Would love to see this guy waddle around with his short legs. 8D