AnimSchool Fantasy Character WIP - Ksenia Malysheva

WIP-1 Blocking

Hi everyone!

I started to work in ZBrush with a simple sphere. I am trying to find proportions and establish all the main building blocks. I think this is one of the most important stages of the process.

your blockouts are looking good! One thing you may want to do at this stage is starting to work out your topology flow. You can use Polygroupit if you don't want to pull the model into a different program for retopology. Just make everything white, then use an rgb brush with black to make the lines where you want there to be different polygroups/topology flows, polygoupit, then remesh with groups and smoothgroups as needed. Might be a good idea to go in with Zmodeler to make some extra edges at the bendy spots, like elbows, shoulders, etc. Excited to see what you post next!

@skullpt Hi Tyler! Thanks a lot! I am going to bring my model to Maya for retopo at some point. Never used Polygroupit before, thanks for the idea, I'll look into it too ? .

WIP-2 body dynamesh

Hi everyone! This is the next stage. I dynameshed the body and added some anatomy landmarks. Since it is a stylized female character my main focus is to keep shapes nice and clean.

WIP-3 hands

And here is my process for hand sculpting. I prefer to make it a separate subtool. I start at the origin with low res blocks. Then I add more and more resolution until I finally dynamesh all the fingers and a palm together.

WIP-4 Face

Hi everyone!
Here is my progress on the face. As usual, I do blocking using low poly geo and trying to find proportions and establish clean shapes. When I exhausted low-resolution blocks, I add more resolution and continue to refine shapes on each step.

WIP-5 Retopo, clothes, assets

Hi everyone!
Finally, I can post my progress. I brought the body to Maya, retopologized it, and made clothes and assets.

Face closup

WIP-6 Posing

Hi everyone! Here is my progress on posing. In the beginning, I brought everything to ZBrush and used Transpose master to make broad strokes. Then I moved back to Maya to refine and reshape. I also worked on the facial expression and tried to add life and interest in it.

WIP 7 - UVs and texturing

Hi everyone! I am new to texturing so I tried to keep my materials clean and simple. I used Substance Painter for that.
I was mainly focused on the face skin, I painted face regions, added some blush and makeup. For the clothes and assets I used very simple textures, mainly utilizing Base color and Roughness maps.
Here is an example of my UVs for the skin.

WIP 7 - UVs and texturing

Maya viewport with the textures turned on. For the eyes apart from Base color map, I added Emission for the nice glow effect.

WIP 8 - Lightning

For the lightning, I like to use Arnold skydome light with hdri image. It allows me to fully light the whole scene. Then I added an area light for the face and two area lights on the back.

WIP 9 - Rendering

Finally! Here is my 4k rendered image without any post-processing

WIP 9 - Rendering

Here is the wireframe.