Barbarian

Barbarian Character project

The day has come. I put in the final touches on the Barbarian character project this morning. Fixing and color correcting various texture maps. I am happy to share with people the final result! The entire process took about 3 weeks on and off. 

The project started with Caio's amazing concept painting of a bad ass barbarian warrior. I then dissected the painting and figured out how to address the different parts of the character so I don't overwhelm myself. There are parts that can be mirrored and duplicated. The bones are a good example. I modeled 6 bones with general diverse shape, then further detailed it in Zbrush. 

The hardest part of this project is to bring about the feeling of flowing fur in 3D. Hair and fur are never easy in the 3D world, especially for gaming. Before Nvidia hairworks, people usually rely on polygon planes with transparency(which is what I did for this character, but added normal map and flow map on top to simulate anistropic specularity.) and dynamic rigged meshes. 

I got through the whole project without any particular difficulty. With every attempt at something, I always want to learn something new or do something better. With this project, I feel that I learnt to go through the workflow quicker and ended with expected results, which is good for things that might take several iterations.

Here are some more images and sketchfab link:

Barbarian Sketchfab by patrickvdk on Sketchfab

Barbarian Project + updates

3D model paint over

I started a Barbarian project a couple weeks ago. The Barbarian is based on the following original concept by Caio, whos an amazing concept painter. 

Caio's original artwork

I broke down the design to plan for 3D sculpting and modeling, and here is the concept breakdown I painted to analyse the components.

Concept Breakdown

A quick update on the Barbarian project. I am currently at retop stage, which is a complete pain, but you got to get through it for painting textures. The sculpt is done, and the secondary details of the fur  will rely on texture maps. I definitely put in more work than is actually needed, but I do want the model to look good by itself. The painted fur textures, while very important for the read and overall look, cannot be the center stage of the character. I want him to be intimating. I don't want the audience's first thought to be "Such pretty fur!". Anyways here are the caps for the sculpt I am retoping on.