Young Oogway

l wanted to make a character like this for some time. After watching Kung Fu Panda I wondered what Oogway would look like if he were young. So I took my Wacom Tablet and started sketching. It took me some time to get the right look especially for the face. But it was a lot of fun creating it. I added a wine jug since he is in his younger years and wouldn't mind a drink once in awhile. I gave him a monk spade as a weapon because it seemed passive like his wooden staff but when time came he could use it in battle. I hope you like it !!

All the screenshots seen below are from the viewports of each of the programs (Mudbox and 3DS Max). No Photoshop touch ups have been made.

Here I was experimenting with making Oogway younger. I first drew out the old one and then tried to make him look younger. I took away the wrinkles and added some harder edges and took away the saggy skin. The result is the most top right head which is the final result.

This is the character sheet that I made for modeling purposes. It includes the Spade and the wine jug.

This is the Mudbox sculpt created for the character. The base mesh was created in max and then imported for sculpting. This is the front of the mesh.

This is the back.

Here is the remodeled low poly mesh. I remodeled around the high detail sculpt to make sure all the detail would be captured in the normal map. The final tri count came out to be 7,470 tris.

This is the back.

Here is the UV map for the character. The more important parts like the shell the head and arms were given more space. Since the character was symmetrical I only mapped half of it to increase texture space. I used a 2048x2048 sheet for all of the textures.

Here are the texture maps generated in Photoshop. Maps included are the defuse, normal, Ambient Occlusion and specular maps. The AO map was blended into the defuse map to create more depth and shadows. All the textures were painted with a tablet. I bought one just so I could improve my painting and wow does it make a difference. Painting with a mouse would have been painful. It was the best $360 I spent, too bad the new Intuos 4 came out after I bought it.

Here is the base mesh with the normal map applied. Also there is the wine jug that is 1,404 tris, it was not normal mapped due to its simplicity.

This is the back with the normal map.

Here is the front view with defuse and normal maps.

This is the back.

A close up of some of the texture detail. A lot of attention was paid to make the skin surface seem bumpy. I did not want to have the same texture as as he did in the movie as the spots seemed to show his old age. Instead I opted for a scales look and less colorful.