Jake started out as a concept in ZBrush using dynamesh. He is based on steampunk genre.
I wanted to create something out of the way, something not humanoid, which I usually create, and full of mechanisms from top to bottom.
I wanted to create something out of the way, something not humanoid, which I usually create, and full of mechanisms from top to bottom.
The project took three weeks of execution, excluding the research time and rendering tweaks.
Physical camera render of the character in a scene.
I spent two weeks on modelling and create assets in Maya. Low poly assets were created in Maya, and then were used as insert meshes in ZBrush. This really helped me in keeping low poly count, cause I was initially aware of the fact that it would go out of hands.
The best thing about ZBrush is the brushes.
Creating complex hard surfaces in ZBrush is way more easy than any 3D package. I used mostly clip, trim, polish brushes after making the base form through dynamesh sphere and clay.
You can refer here for more details: Jake, Just Jake
You can refer here for more details: Jake, Just Jake
Next phase, Look Development: It took a while for me to find the right textures and a workflow. The choas was UVs! I had to go through 157 different meshes to UV them correctly. I could have used PUV tiles in ZBrush (which is the second best thing to do!) but then I would have to use ZBrush itself for painting textures, which is not what I wanted (for poly painting you have to go beyond one million poly for high resolution textures).
Additionally, UVs get unreadable, which was undesirable.
Technical reference: Material Creation Workflow
I wanted to experiment with VRay. I created base materials using color and bump maps from my texture library. The renders you are seeing just have the base material added to them. I dropped the plan for adding more details like corrosion, distress, scratches using Mari. Although I did, but dropped.
