As Mike previously mentioned- I NEED TO STUDY MORE 3D CHARACTERS.
Matthew had a wonderful suggestion for the team to look at the old man in The Little Prince (2015). I love how it hasn’t taken much sculpting to make him look old- there is just more emphasis on the eyes and large nose.
While sculpting I also studied the character Geri from Pixar’s Geri’s Game (1997). Although he’s a very outdated character, I still believe he is so appealing.
I absolutely loved the new rendition of The BFG (2016). I loved how huge the giant’s ears are and his large nose. Although he’s quite angular and almost pointy, like Geri he is still such an appealing character. I’ve gone for more of a softer edge to my character to match Samuel’s sculpt and my drawings.
Sculpting Progress:
Each piece of clothing was first modelled within maya and taken into zbrush to sculpt and add detail before retopologising and baking the high resolution sculpt onto the low res model.
Finalised sculpt:
UV Shells after retopologising:
I made Walter a lot more compact and lighter resolution wise after the experience of working on Samuel:
This is the tutorial I follow within x-normals when rendering out the normals and also baking out cavity maps to add detail to the ambient occlusion layer to get the best results:
http://www.donaldphan.com/tutorials/xnormal/xnormal_occ.html
For retopologizing I simply made my high poly model live and used the quad draw tool within maya 2018.
Normal Maps baked and applied to the low poly model before exporting to substance painter:
Substance Painter Progress:
Walter was quite different to texture than Sam, as I had some metallic areas to mask out (W on the hat and brass buttons). I was really excited to use metalness as I hadn’t before this project.
Head Maps: Normal/Roughness/Base Color/Radius color
Hat and Shoe Maps: Normals/Roughness/Base Color/Metalness
Outfit Maps: Normals/Roughness/Base Color/Metalness
Applying Maps and setting up Subsurface Scattering:
At first I had the character very low poly, but since this is a short film, I increased the polycount on the hands and face so there were no hard edges rendered. I also had to remove the buttons on the sleeves because they did not move well with the rig and often floated or moved inside the jacket mesh:
Abigail Gelston 