A GAME READY CHARACTER
ROSA EDEN
In this post you can see my progress in the creation of Rosa Eden - a 3D character recreated from an illustration by Tasia M.S.
THE CONCEPT
I decided I would recreate the character in
Tasia M.S.' illustration - Rosa Eden. You can find Tasias work on Instagram and her personal website here:
https://www.instagram.com/tasia.m.s/?hl=en
When planning, I decided that I would first create the character alone and recreate the illustration by posing the character and creating the background as a stretch goal.
Sculpting a stylised character was difficult for me, especially as I aimed for it to be a game ready character. I wanted to stick to the style of the illustration whilst also having my own touch to it.
I decided to make the dress simple, as from the pose in the illustration it's difficult to tell what exactly is going on.
I started sculpting in Zbrush.
THE sculpt
I started with sculpting the head. At first the eyes were too wide, the lips weren't exactly right or her face shape. I needed to work on the placement of her ear as well.
After consulting multiple times with my lecturers I made changes to her face by lifting her cheekbones more, making her lips fuller, altering her eye size and ear position. I have always struggled to replicate the likeness of a character, so it took a lot of work to get her face to the point where I felt like it was representative of the original character. I also used Curve-tube brush to create the hair, and then using Dynamesh to mesh the base of the hair together. I used the Clay Build up brush with no Alpha to give the sculpt that painterly feel that we see on the hair in Tasias' illustration.
The ruffles on the dress were perhaps the most challenging part of the sculpt other than the face, but I enjoyed it very much regardless. I used the Standard brush for this and then manipulate the mesh with the Move Topology brush to place it where it needs to be. To get these results I looked at the way curtains fold.
For the dress I decided I wouldn't mess with the mesh until the character is posed, so that I could alter the look of the skirt to have the right folds to suit the pose. I also used the Polypaint brush to give me a rough idea of how the sculpt will look like once it's actually textured.
I also changed the material on the subtools in Zbrush to what I imagine will be appropriate for the final presentation. I used the Toy Plastic material for the eyes. I specifically used "Rapunzels'" eyes from "Tangled" by Disney as a reference to practice convincing eyes, as I have always struggled texturing them.
THE topology and Uvs
Once I got to the retopologising stage, I made sure to UV along the way. I separated my mesh into 3 material groups:
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Body
-
Clothes
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Wings
body
clothes
The body group consisted of the main body, hair, and all of the face details.
When the character is posed, the skirt will have more folds.
The clothes group consisted of the dress, all sleeves, ribbons, and shoes.
The skirt of the dress has topology too, as the pose in the concept that part still has to be visible.
wings
The only thing in the last group was the wings. They are quite large, and to keep the resolution as high as possible I gave them their own material group. This would help me get that painterly look more easily, as in the concept they are the most painterly thing out of everything.
bake and texturing
rig and import into Unreal
I started setting up my scene by importing my mesh to see what everything looked like - and with a few texture tweaks I felt like I was happy with it, so I moved on to rigging.
As I'm not an animation student, I thought that I would save a lot of time rigging my character by uploading it to Mixamo. With a few corrections to the weight painting and a trial of what the mesh looks like posed in Unreal, I was happy to move forward and see what pose would look best.
I considered for a long time to replicate the pose that she has in the illustration, but I struggled a lot with it and I think that in the future, it may be worth modeling some pieces on an already rigged mesh. I had a very difficult time trying to make the dress fold the way that I wanted even as she was in a standing up pose, so when I tried the sitting pose I realized that I would run out of time too fast. This gave me an idea to go back into Zbrush with my mesh and create folds that would look good on the dress as she's already posed.
You can see my first attempt at posing on the left - it's quite obvious that this pose felt very static and uninteresting, so I went back in and looked at a few references of fairies in a pose where they are stood up but also flying in mid-air. These references were mainly taken from Disneys' Tinker Bell movie.
The particle effects you can see here were actually blueprints available on the Unreal marketplace, which have saved me a lot of time.
On the right is my second attempt, that I feel is far more successful than the other. In it, I plan for her to have a miniature rose floating above her right hand (lifted up towards her face) and some particle effects emitting some light to create that magical pixie dust effect.
You can also see in the background of my screenshots I have imported some planes in the background that match the illustration. I colour-picked the illustration through Substance 3D Painter and then used an alpha brush in substance painter to create that pink outline on the plane that's in the front.
Decorative Props
The big rose
For the rose that she sits on in the illustration and will float above in my project, I went back into Zbrush, and masked out a portion of a sphere with some brush strokes that kind of imitated rose petals. I inverted my mask, and then used the standard brush to pull the petals out of the masked area. The result is below.
I didn't want to replicate the exact rose in the original, as it would just be unnecessary.
I considered creating a highpoly version for baking but I felt like there also wasn't any reason to do this, as the rose was just an addition rather than a focusing asset in the piece. So I just baked the lowpoly on top of the lowpoly later on in Substance Painter.
The topology was quite tough to handle, but I made sure to save myself as much as I could when it came to the stem, as the petals themselves were a little more complicated.
To keep it as close as it can get to the actual illustration, I picked out the colours from the illustration itself, using watercolour brushes available in Substance Painter to get that subtle painterly effect.
The Small roses
I went through the same process with the other roses, reusing the stem from the first rose and manipulating it to make them look different to save myself time on sculpting, retopologizing, and UVs.
Composing the scene in Unreal
FINAL RENDERS
cONCLUSION
This project was quite a challenging one for me. Looking back, I think I could have done a lot better on the topology of this model. I have definitely realised that I need to do more research on how to create good topology that has a better flow to it, and isn't as expensive. I think my texturing could have been better, and my rigging skills need improving as well. I also struggled a lot with sculpting the clothing, and I think that that's what I should aim to improve on first.
I do however think that I did reach a good likeness of the character, and that my presentation of the character is true to the aesthetic of the illustration with a touch of my own style.
Overall, creating this character has taught me a lot, but that there is still more to learn. In the future, I aim to create a better flow in my characters and their presentation, and make my models more optimised for games.