Making of Paragalis - part 1

Step Eight: Creating the Digital Sculpt

Part One: Establishing the Detail Flow

The first thing you need to do when creating a sculpture is to identify your detail flow. This means you should visually breakdown where certain details are going to be placed on the object and how intense they need to be. This is an important step to master since it’s easy to lose your way when sculpting! Personally I believe this approach and level of observation will result in a more focused effort and a better sculpt when all said and done. You can see from image below that I broke down what areas required what details and how they will be distributed throughout the model.

Minimal level of detail: This area should contain a subtle amount of surface detail corresponding to the surface and or material type. Usually this area is made up of broad sections on the sculpture and doesn’t contain much visual interest. In regards to Paragalis I made this area consist of stretched skin which at first glance may appear to be quite intense but will be pushed to the background once the model has been baked and textured.

Moderate level of detail: This area will make up most of the detail on the sculpture and will usually contain a broad sense of visual interest. As you can see from the image below, Paragalis is mostly made up of moderate detail, which contains general muscle, skin, and fat information.

High level of detail: These are the areas that should contain extreme levels of surface information. Usually these areas are kept to a minimum to increase their visual impact and presence. When it came to Paragalis, I focused the high level detail to the tentacle like a mouth, tongue tip, back hump, feet and parts of the top skin.

In closing all objects whether there are people, places, or things require different levels of detail, which can vary quite a bit since you can easily go from the modest to the extreme. The most important thing at the end of the day is to recognize what you’re making and how it’s going to be perceived by the viewer. Now what that means in terms of game art is to always have your creation readable at various distances without losing its purpose.

Part Two / Building on the Curve

So now that I have a good idea on how to approach the model, it’s time for me to start sculpting out the forms. You can easily see that I move in steps from the images below.

Base Mesh: This is my imported mesh that I’ll look over and make slight changes to, usually I’ll only adjust the proportions and positioning on certain elements here.

Rough Sculpt: In this step I’ll quickly start applying the rough muscle mass making sure to only make broad strokes and staying away from any high level details. I encourage you when in this step to shy away from going into too high of a sub division level! Make sure to pick a moderately detailed subdivision level and work on it until you can only see the rough forms taking shape. The reason you want to do this is so that you can avoid obvious lumpiness, misshaped details, pinching, etc. When it came to Paragalis I went from the base mesh “body only” which was 2064 polygons to the third subdivision level, which was 33,024 polygons. It was at the third sub division level where I spent a good deal of time roughing out the sculpture.

Refined Sculpt: I subdivided the mesh two more times and proceeded to the next step once I was satisfied with the rough sculpture’s forms and level of detail. This is the step where I focused on pulling together the details such as muscle mass, skin, nails, fat, etc. It’s important to keep your energy and attention focused on working with the detail you have and making sure that it’s what you want before moving onto the next step.

Polished Sculpt: Now it’s time for me to add the finishing touches to the sculpture. This is where I add the teeth and focus on the little things like the skin, back hump, tongue, or anything else that will make the sculpt feel more alive.

Step Nine: Retopology / Optimizing the model

All right, now that I’m happy with my high poly mesh it’s time to convert into a low poly model, so where do I start? Well I have a few options available to me in this task and I’ll make sure to give a brief overview of each of them. Up until this point I’ve tried to stay software neutral but looks as though I have to get a bit specific in terms of the functions and workflow. From here on I’ll be going over a few features in both Zbrush 3.1 and 3ds max with Polyboost. So let’s start with option number one.

ZBrush 3.1 retopology workflow:

ZBrush as we know has a cool set of tools and one of them happens to be its ability to build new topology over an imported mesh! Below, the quick start guide pretty much shows how I get up and run when it comes to building new topology in ZBrush. Before I begin there are few things you need to know when you’re just starting out:

- When creating your low poly mesh you can deselect by clicking on the canvas, and when you want to select vertices just click on it.

- To delete a vertex hit “alt” and click on the vertices you want to get rid of.

- To create new edges just click on it, “preferably” in the center of the edge”.

- Make sure to hit “A” regularly preview what your retopologized model will look like.

- If you would like to have open holes in your retopologized mesh then set the “Max Strip length to 3 or 4.

- If you would like to move the vertices you created around, then go into move mode. The “Move” button is right next to the “Draw and Edit” buttons.

Once you’re done editing those vertices you can switch back to draw mode.

1. The first thing I have to do is to import my Mesh into ZBrush as a tool.

2. Once my mesh is loaded I select a zsphere and draw it on the canvas, after that I press the edit button.

3. Then in the rigging tab I select the model that I want to retopologize. When that happens the tool momentarily shares the same space as the ZSphere.

4. After that I click on the topology tab and Hit "Edit Topology". The mesh is the only thing on the canvas at this point and it turns brick red.

5. Then go into the Transform palette and turn on symmetry