Animal mount project- Lynx

 

For the first 3D project of second term our brief is to make a full pbr animal mount which features an animal from real life that exists or did exist and a detachable saddle/ other type of baggage. I am looking forward to this project as I have not tried making any character with a pbr workflow yet so I am excited to be able to use substance painter to texture my animal. I struggle a lot with retopping so this project will give me an opportunity to practice good topology keeping in mind deformation loops and other technical skills which I will need to be able to put into practise for humanoid characters also. I will make a start to this project by collecting some reference images of the animal I would like to make so that I can start sculpting. 

Reference board

I knew from the very start of the project that I wanted to make a snow lynx as my animal character for this project. They are one of my favourite animals and have been since I was little as I was very interested in bobcats and cats in general. Another reason why I also chose to make a Lynx is because i want to push myself with making it look like it has really fluffy fur with out the use of hair cards. I really enjoy sculpting so I plan on trying to fully sculpt the fur on in a semi stylised way. After looking at some other refences of models online I didn't really like the models which didn't have sculpted fur and had just relied on texturing to create the fur, this is another reason I want to fully sculpt the fur. I am also hoping that with the baked details some generators in substance will pick up the details and help me create a texture faster than If I t was just flat sculpted. The images I collected for the board above have a range of snow lynx and normal land lynx on them as they have many similar features and I feel like having a mixture of a few different looking ones will allow me to create a cute and accurate representation of a snow lynx. I have also been looking at a general skeletal structure for tigers and normal cats as I cant find many muscular and skeletal references for lynx online so I have been looking at similar animals instead. 

Sculpting

After I had blocked out my Lynx using Zspheres I unified the mesh and began bulking up the body of the Lynx making sure to refer to the refences often. I found this stage quite awkward due to the amount of fur that the lynx had I had to kind of take into consideration how I would be sculpting the fur onto its body and how this would effect the anatomy of the cat. I was trying to get it to look as close to the refences as possible as I want it to be as anatomically correct and convincing as possible. I wish I had not used zspeheres for the blocking out process and I had just used normal subs tools as I feel that during this stage I was having to vastly correct a lot of the structures that I had previously formed due to the lack of control I have. I am relatively comfortable using zspheres however I struggled a lot with this and now I am having to correct any errors I previously made.

I have begun to start refining the initial blackout with some more shapes such as muscles and banes sticking out. I has consistently taking into consideration how the fur would fit onto this hence why it looks a little bulkier than it should as I wanted to be able to sculpt into the model later when I begin to add details on. it still looks highly unrefined and not accurate enough so I will go back in with the move tool to correct any anatomical errors. I have been referring back to my refences throughout this process so that I can input accurate and convincing changes. Some of the bigger tufts of fur I also blocked in as these need to be sculpted at a lower subdivision before I can zremesh them to make the topology neat. 

I began blocking in the shapes of the fur and started sculpting in the direction in which it grew so that I could get a nice clean sculpt. Once I started doing this I realised that it was going to take me hours to finish it especially as I decided to sculpt both halves of the model individually. I realise now that I should have tried to use my time in a more efficient way by making a custom brush on zbrush to make this process faster using alphas, this is something I will consider doing next time. I used a lot of refences for the fur to help me understand how it grows on the animal. For example I noticed how on the back of the legs and belly it was a lot longer and thicker than on the back of the lynx, I tried to replicate this as I was blocking out the fur.

After receiving some feedback it was noted that the head of my lynx was too small so this is something I corrected at this point, I hadn't sculpted too much yet around that part so making the correction was relatively simple. I masked put the area i wanted to make bigger and did it that way, then sculpted to correct any imperfections. At this stage I am just going to continue sculpting the fur, however I might simplify the fur on the body a little as the fur towards the front of the lynx is more fine and complex compares to the main body. I will continue to look at refences both of the lynx and of other fully sculpted animal models. I am hoping that the fur details will bake nicely into my low poly model. 

Here is a progress shot of the fur sculpt I am still not completely happy with how the fur is looking so once I have finished the initial block out I will go in with a dam standard brush and further refine any chunks of hair that need to be split up. On the face I will do more light and subtle strokes and the fur on the face is quite short and close to the skin. I can also add details on substance painter that do not need to be sculpted into the model.

Retop of the Lynx

When it comes to retopping I am not very confident at all so when I was doing this I had so many issues that I was struggling to find solutions to. I ended up redoing the feet and legs so many times before I got to a result I was more satisfied with. I know there is a long way for me to go to improve my retopping however I now have a much better understanding of deformation loops and how to make polys all link together. My first mistake when retopping this which I realised towards the end was that I should have blocked in the deformation loops before I did anything else as it would then make it a lot easier for me to join up the sections. I struggled a lot in the later stages when trying to connect everything together and yet still maintain nice loops and flow. When I do this next time I will be lopping everything off first with very minimal topology and then building up as I started off too high poly so the whole process was a lot slower trying to fix any errors. I spent a long time trying to fix some spirals I had on the legs and feet. Another issue I had was trying to find a solid refence for a lynx. I used some mesh refences from cats which did help a lot however there wasn't many good ones for me to use. I spent a long time on this part of the process as its something I have really struggled with in the past and I will need to work more on in the future to strengthen my skills as a character artist. however from this I now understand how to go about doing a retop which requires loops and clean topology for rigging and skinning for an animation. 

I tried to have all the loops in for the face as this is one of the most important parts of the animal. I also had more dense topology as I wanted the bake to be nice and smooth. I had some issues connecting the face up to the body due to the face that I did have more dense topology and I had to make sure that the loops on the neck and front legs matched. It isn't perfect however I think I made a lot of improvements in my retopping skills and I feel more confident to be able to do this again on a human or another animal. My next step will be to start making the saddle using my retopped animal to get nice clean topology on the high poly sculpt as i forgot to sculpt the fur on a separate layer whoops.

Saddle sculpting

I am going to fully model my saddle in Zbrush as I think this would be the easiest way to do it. I am using my retopped lynx in order to take the topology from the back and make it into pieces of the saddle. I have done this so that i will get a nice clean sculpt. Plus I forgot to sculpt the fur on a separate layer therefore there was no way I was able to get rid of the fur. therefore I retopped my main animal before I made the saddle. I think I will do this in the further when it comes to making character assets because ripping off the topology was very neat and clean. This was i think was more efficient. For the actual design of my saddle I didn't use a lot of reference only a couple of images from Pinterest because i already had a good idea in my head of what I wanted it to look like. I wanted to make a fairly generic looking saddle that was pretty and clean. I had never done hard surface modelling in Zbrush before therefore at the strat I was finding it very hard. Some things I learnt whilst doing this initial block out were- the use of Zmodller. I used this to create a rip around the bottom piece of the saddle as this I am going to unwrap separately and make into a metal trim with leather inside.

 

After referring to some references of fantasy type saddles online this was my finished sculpt of the saddle. I used a mixture of both 3DS max and then zbrush to create some of the assets as I found that I was quicker and more efficient using max rather than zmoddeler. However I would like to look further into zmodeller as I want to be able to get really good at it as there is a lot of things I will be able to use it for which will help my sculpting in Zbrush. I found the saddle to be quite challenging compared to the sculpt of the actual animal because It was hard to get each piece of the saddle really clean and precise. I spent a lot of time making sure the saddle sculpt looked clean as I wanted it to bake really nicely. I could have utilised Zmodeller a lot more than I did looking back. I mainly used it for insetting and creating extruded edges. In order to get the edges of the straps and around the main panels I kept decreasing the amount of tris until it was very low and I could use the move tool to clean it up, then I increased the density and the edges became nice and smooth and straight with no strange bumps or pinching geometry. Also I found that using the retopped version of my lynx was ideal because any geometry I extracted off it was already quite clean and easy to smart subdivide if i wanted any bevelled edges to create a more natural realistic look. 

Here is a back view of the finished saddle. Whilst sculpting I had ideas of what king of materials I wanted everything to be so I tried to add small tertiary details to reflect its properties. I used a leather alpha on most of the leather parts however I later came to realise that the bake was not going to pick up any of these details due to the texture budget being too low. In the future for efficiency I will take into consideration which tertiary details can be done in substance painter instead of sculpted. I was going to make some stirrups for either side however I decided against it because the lynx was so small and low it didn't make any sense to have them on, furthermore I was concerned about the tri budget as I didn't want the rest of the saddle to look overly low poly and faceted. One thing I did focus on when making this was to have a creation of different surfaces included in the piece. I used zmdodeller to add a metal rim onto the bottom panel to create structure and also to add a variation into the piece. 

This was the initial sculpt of the bag I did in 3dS max before taking it into Zbrush to be sculpted and textured. I would like to be able to create something like this using zmodeller next time. I did the same thing with the any hard surface assets such as the buckles.

Saddle retop

The process for the saddle retop was relatively straightforward compared to the actual lynx body because there was no areas which would heavily deform due to the placement and material of the saddle. I used a retop refence of another game ready asset from online just to make sure my topology looked correct and not wasteful. Due to my lack of time I had fir this part I ended up remeshing some small elements such as the horns as they did not need to deform at all. I did neaten up the topology back in 3ds though just to make sure it wasn't wasteful. 

Since I struggled quite a lot with retopping the Lynx I found this to be a lot easier as I was more used to the various tools that helped me speed up the process. I also understand a little more about different techniques that can be used during a retop and what specific areas I need to pay careful attention to. I was only a few tris under the budget for this. I  probably could have reduced the geometry further however I wanted everything to bake cleanly. I chamfered quite a few of the edges on the straps because I really wanted the leather to look smoothed and natural rather than very sharp and faceted. 

Unwrapping

For this project we had a texture budget to follow which I took into consideration during the unwrapping process. The saddle, body, head and eyes were all assigned to different texture sets. The above screenshot shows the pack of my objects. There were a few things that I moved onto a separate shell so that the textures wouldn't bake strangely. I also made each different piece a separate object to further support this. I didn't want to retop it all as one as this would make it extremely hard to unwrap and texture. When was was doing the unwrap I also considered which parts would be different textures. I tried to pack everything as efficiently as I could by placing islands insides ones with hols in the middle. I deleted a lot of the topology in places that weren't visible to save tris. This actually helped a lot with packing as I found I could use up a lot more of the texture space.

I was really happy with how well my saddle was unwrapped as all the pixels were even and didn't deform in any areas. I am really looking forward to texturing this as there are a lot of ideas I have when it comes to colours and a lot of different surfaces that I have included. 

For the unwrap of my lynx I split up the head and body onto different texture sets as the head needed its own shell so that It wouldn't look really low resolution. I tried my best to keep any seams to a minimum as I knew that when it came to painting these out it would be very difficult as wasn't going to be able to rely on generators for the whole process. Also going back and forwards between the head texture set and the body would be time consuming. I will be painting out any seams as best I can. 

Here is the unwrap of the head. I may also be adding some little tuft pieces onto this at some point as I have a lot of tri budget and texture space left on this. I will either do the tufts with alphas or just sculpt and zremesh. 

The final unwrap thus far. 

Baking a texturing

I was really happy with the bake of my lynx, it had picked up all my fur sculpting really nicely and I am looking forward to adding texture. I think I will use a mixture of generators and hand painting. I was worried about how well the fur would be picked up but I think this result is good. I wanted to challenge myself to do a fluffy animal with no hair cards as I like sculpting so I'm hoping that the amount of time I spent sculpting will pay off when I start adding generators. When the Lynx is in unreal I hope that the lighting will be able to pick up the ao of the fur well. I didn't have to play around with the settings too much as I didn't have any baking errors. The eyes initially baked a bit funny however I realised it is because I name them wrong so the actual body was baking onto them which I didn't want. I fixed this back in my 3ds max file. 

Here is the other side of the finished bake.

I worked hard with the texture so far and have used many layered with a mixture of grunges, generators and paint layers to build up a selection of colours and depth. I want my Lynx to be relatively stylised but not too simplistic and minimal due to the nature of how I sculpted the details of the fur coat. There's still quite a bit of editing that I want to do to it as I'm not really happy with some areas of the body and I need to paint out some visible seams around the neck. As this is only the first pass I will continue to look at reference images to try and accurately make an appealing texture. The eyes in particular need a lot more work as they looks very simplistic and flat. I also need to fix the roughness on some of channels as its abit messy at the moment. However the generator are picking up the details like I had hoped so this is giving me a good base to start with. 

For the rosetting on the coat of the Lynx I edited my own alpha grunge to use in painter. In photoshop I played around with the levels of a tiling texture and blurred it out around the edges to get a softer finish as originally when I tried to apply this they spots looked much too harsh and graphic. I may play around with this a bit more later if I have time just to get a nice finish that I can quickly apply with out having to hand paint each one on. So far its ok though. 

Saddle bake and texture

My saddle also baked nicely as I baked the objects individually to avoid errors in between the different parts of it. I am really looking forward to texturing this. I have collected some refences of materials such as leather, metal and ivory. I could have done the stitches in painter instead of sculpting them, next time I will use painter as Its going to be fiddly to paint over them neatly. 

Here is the more or less finished texture for my saddle. I'm really happy with how its turned out. I may tweak some of the maps a little bit later but for now I am going to put this into unreal to light it and then edit things as needed. I used a lot of masks for this so that I could texture parts that didn't have separate UV islands. I used alphas for the little tribal decals and stitching. 

Alpha I made to make the embossed silver decals.

Unreal presenting

I put my Lynx into unreal and lit it using a dark night concept however I am already unhappy with what this looks like with this lighting. I think I might consider changing it to have an evening setting instead as I think having harmer colours light it will bring out the textures better. At this point I still don't like the texture on the Lynx so I will go back and do some more passes. The ground plane will just be an off white colour to mimic snow. 

Here is my fully textured saddle in unreal.

This is before I messed with the lighting and went back in with the texturing of the main animal. I also started making a base so it wasn't just standing on a white plane. 

Final outcome

Overall I am relatively happy with this project. I was really worried at the start since i picked to do a fluffy animal and we didn't have the budget to use things like hair cards for this particular character therefore I chose to do fully sculpted fur. I think in hindsight I could have done the fur differently to save time as I was set back quite a bit because of the sculpting part. I will need to plan out my time more carefully in upcoming projects. I am most happy with my saddle design as I spent a long time constricting and texturing this asset. I think this was the most successful part of this project. The Lynx itself is ok but there are elements i would have liked to have added such as alphas and hair cards to separate out the fur some more. I found the texturing of the lynx particularly challenging as the generators didn't pick up the fur exactly how I wanted them to. Another thing I found hard was the retop. I had never retopped character fully before with custom deformation loops so this was hard for me. I eventually got the hang of it however there are still some areas which need improvement. I did have to use some tris but only in areas where there was no deformation. the finished screenshots look ok and I'm happy with my lighting however there are areas which need improving.

Week 9- Still life setup with plaster head

 

This weeks task as to draw a still life set up using the plaster head from last week along with a mixture of other items such as a ball and a wooden box. In this piece i really wanted my composition to stand out and pop against the fabric background as I have found that many of my previous pieces so do so and having the fabric be a very prominent part of this piece I wanted it to look highly contrasting whilst also correcting any mistakes in drawing the head that I made from last weeks tasks. I like the dynamic angle I chose to draw from this week a lot more than last and its given me the opportunity to practise drawing facial features again. Since the head was very light compared to the background I wanted to get the tonal values right and not have it looks to similar,

First I started by sketching out some thumbnails with a grid so that I could relay them onto a final piece whilst still keeping my chosen composition. I made sure to have the objects on different levels in order to create a sense of depth. I also likes how the fabric created a nice even movement to the piece. Having the head offset to one side creates a more interesting piece, rather than if it was to sit in the middle.

After this I used my grid lines to sketch out my composition, this time I made sure to use more construction lines on the face. However I noticed that the mouth was way to high up in relation to the nose and I was able to easily correct it as I caught the mistake early on. The perspective of the face and the distance between the features and how the angle would effect the size and placement of he eye was something I really pushed myself to improve from last week.

I began rendering the face however I should I have start by shading in the darker fabric as this would have given me a sense of what tones I could then move up by, I feel like I ended dup shading the face too dark and then having to knock back some of the shadows with a putty rubber. 

At this point I realised my mistake and then started shading in very dark values to the fabric behind the head keeping in mind the lighting which was reading to the different objects.

Overall I am much happier with this weeks task than I am with last weeks as I learnt from a lot of the mistakes I made from last weeks plaster head constriction and then applied them to the task today. I wish I was a bit more careful with my values however I am happy with the use of my line weight on the ball which is much further forward than the other 2.

Week 8- Plaster head

 

Following on from lasts weeks task of drawing a human skull we have now moved on to drawing a plaster head. I have always struggled with drawing faces accurately since they require I high level of understanding of facial features and proportions as like the skill it is very clear when the stricture of it is not accurate. This task was more about focusing on the technical stricture of the face and how elements of tone would be used to portray these. This task was highly challenging for me and it took my a lot of time and correction in order for it to look a bit convincing.

I started off my drawing a few preliminary sketches just so I knew which plaster head I would like to draw for this weeks task. I enjoy drawing harsh shades so I opted to draw the top one as it features some stronger more angular area of shade and light. I wish I had spent a bit mire time practising the constriction  of the head and maybe picked a different angle as the angle I chose to draw from was very challenging since it wasn't completely front on so all the features of one side were a ton bit lower and smaller. There was a fine line between them looking wrong as I found when drawing them. 

This was my initial sketch of the head before I started correcting the features that were out of proportion. I wish I had used more measurements so that I could have gotten the distance between the features closer to the plaster head. 

As I began rendering I tried to keep in mind line and and where my light course was coming from. I also noticed that my head was looking very wide so I tried to correct this error as much as possible. The nose was very challenging for me because of the slight angle of the nose. It looked very strange when combined with some of the harsher shadows that were being created, 

This was my finished piece. I wish I had picked a different angle to draw from as I wasn't very happy with how the position of some of the features ended up looking especially the distance of the temples. I think my shading was accurate in relation however my skills with head constriction still need a lot of work. One side of the face also looks slightly raised. Overall I need to make better use of construction lines when drawing my next human face.