Creating the Props

 22-29/10/21 - Week 3/4

At this point in the project, all I have left to finish off is the props, this includes for the clothing and also for the small scene that I want to place my character in. This is what I have in mind for the scene:

I'm hoping that this will add a bit more story and fill out my character a bit more. It's only a few things too so I thought to quickly finish these to have an overall more impressive, finished example of my work.

I first wanted to get the character herself finished off sculpt wise ready for retop as I was aware of the quickly approaching first batch of feedback. To make the belt buckle, hook and straps for the waders I first started in 3dsmax. I feel a lot more comfortable in max to create good looking hard surface as I find z modeler a bit finicky sometimes, so to be quick I didn't want to start testing out my skills with this.

Here is what I made in max, as you can see these are quite hightop as I wanted to get some nice and smooth edges and some detail in for the sculpt, I then want to go back and create a low top for these as this just makes more sense and is easier for me to work out, as they are quite simple I don't think the retop would take particularly long either. These were just created in a simple process and then given more topology and smoothed out with turbosmooth.

Once imported into zbrush I placed them in the correct position and slightly adjusted them to fit the sculpt. Overall, I think these look how I wanted them to and really have filled out the sculpt a lot more, its much more alike to the concept so I'm pretty pleased to see the sculpt in a much more finished state.

As for the ropes and netting this was a bit more complicated since its quite a difficult thing to try to create. For the netting around the waist, I was at first thinking about trying to create the cris-cross pattern onto the netting in 3dsmax by using a method I found in a tutorial but after assessing how complicated it was I have instead decided to make my own texture in designer and place it onto the mesh. I am hoping I will still be able to get results that I am happy with this way.

Following the method I had in my head, I first started in Zbrush and sculpted in the shape I want for the netting. Initially I was going to use just one subtool for this but after thinking about it a little more I decided it would look better if I demonstrated that there was more than one net there since you will be able to see through them. This will hopefully fill the space a bit more and make it look more realistic.

For the ropes, I also did these in Zbrush by using another tool that creates a curve topology, so this was a bit more simple. I also used the move brush to manipulate the shape to exactly what I wanted.

Moving back into Max, I first started by adding the buoys onto the ropes for the finishing touch. At this point, I also need to bring up some of the obvious cuts I have made from the initial design due to time reasons. I have decided not to add the ropes around the arm as not only did I make an error with spacing here so it would be really hard to add in, I don't think it adds an awful lot to the design and I think it is still successful with or without this piece. I have also not done the smaller pieces that were hanging from the belt, again I don't think the design suffers too badly without these pieces and due to time in general it makes sense to leave this out. Ideally, I would have liked my character to include all of these smaller details and I perhaps will try to include them in the future, but for now I believe they are reasonable sacrifices.

Next, I focused on the scene I sketched out earlier and created the low poly for the barrel and planks in Max. I then took these into Zbrush and worked into them to create the high poly, here I also created the fish sculpt that I would use to duplicate into the scene. I did end up changing the shape of the planks overall to be a bit more appealing but other than that this was rather simple.

I also quickly duplicated the fish into the barrel so it can be made into an alpha and retopped both the solo fish and the ones in the barrel to get ready for the retop in general. I plan to arrange the fishes in unreal as this makes a bit more sense to me.

In terms of progress, I am a bit behind at the moment. Referring back to my plan, at the moment I should have finished all of my props last week though I have only just finished. I am hoping to catch up and get as much retopping as I can done for hand in on Friday as I feel it is a good point to get feedback at as sometimes I do struggle with my retopping. If I do have to continue retopping into Week 5 it is not too much of a problem as I have only assigned myself the unwrap for that week as I have to go somewhere where I won't be able to complete much work. I can push the unwrap a bit further into the next week and just work at it slowly over the period of time I am sculpting the next project.

Hopefully, I can get as much done as I can and it won't cause too many issues.