Aurelie
Aurelie is someone who wakes up one day in the future, so far in the future that humanity has reverted to a medieval era with swords and sorcery. She adapts and strives to bring back the ancient comforts of modern society!
Process:
In my second semester, I started exploring Zbrush for organic modelling. Using youtube videos I taught myself the basic functions of the software from appending, dynamesh, zremesher and sculpting using clay buildup, move, dam standard… This process felt intuitive, powerful and made me enjoy sculpting characters.
Once my sculpt was nearing completion, I moved on to learning Marvelous Designer. In Marvelous I was able to try different looks on Aurelie. I found the process of crafting a base cloth in Marvelous and exporting into Zbrush to sculpt additional folds the most efficient.
I exported without thickness and as separate pieces which allowed me to have greater control when Zremeshing. In Zbrush I weld points and added thickness using dynamic subdiv. Additionally I added high poly details like pores and armor trims before retopology.
I then took my sculpt into maya and used the quad draw tool to create deformation edgeloops and retopologize the body and face and clothes.
Subsequently, I researched the process of exporting both low poly and high poly into Substance Painter for baking. I came to understand the capabilities of baking for optimization and realism. I then used PBR materials, fill layers and alphas to create the dress as well as hand painted skin.
Finally to create hair I decided to learn Xgen, this process was long and arduous… I learned to use splines, region masks and modifiers to create a groom. My biggest difficulty was exporting/importing the groom to my working file.
Given more time I'd like to dial in my render settings to increase the believability of my groom.
As a final touch, I experimented with an advanced skeleton plugin to pose the character. This process taught me the basics of rigging and weight painting.
Aurelie was the culmination of my 2nd semester at Emily Carr 3D and was made possible thanks to the patient instruction of Gilberto Jimenez Enriquez and Nicole Almeida. I had so much fun from beginning to end learning new and challenging programs and overcoming technical hurdles.
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