War Ox - 战牛
Hi there! I’m Álvaro Redondo, a character artist who has worked as a teacher for 10 years at a local art & design school, ESI in Murcia.
Although I worked in different areas of cinematic and video game production, my passion is creating characters, testing and developing new work methodologies, and learning new tools.
Below I’m going to share, in a general way, the process I went through to create the Chinese champion, War Ox - 战牛.
Objectives
The theme of this edition was very interesting. I was able to learn more about other cultures that I don't know so much and apply what I learned to the design of my character so that he feels identified within that culture.
I decided to choose a country that was not my own.
I also like making characters with fantastic armor, and love adding a great deal of detail to my sculptures, so I wanted a challenge that prompted me to try new techniques to obtain a character with these characteristics.
My free time to afford the challenge was also limited, so one of my goals was to be able to finish on time. I also wanted to create all the utilities and libraries that would be used in the development of the character.
Lastly, I wanted to get a chance to test Xgen to make the character's hair.
Idea
To be within my objectives, the first thing I thought about was choosing an oriental culture, since many of them have very characteristic and detailed styles that would allow me to make designs with many details and to investigate and learn a little more about them.
I opted for Chinese culture and began to research it and its history, myths, legends, and ancient warriors while looking for references. I quickly found a lot of them wore fantastic medieval armor that was amazing and it really encouraged me to continue with my idea. I wanted to create an armor of this style!
Another idea was to incorporate the Chinese calendar and zodiac into the character design. As the Chinese New Year would be celebrated during Art War, I decided to choose the zodiac animal that represented this year, the Metal Ox. This would reinforce the design to create a warrior in metal armor and incorporate the Chinese motifs of this animal.
Martial arts are another aspect very present in the culture. I also thought of representing this aspect of a great master of warriors, with the characteristic gray hair and beard, which suited another of my objectives mentioned above, the use of Xgen.
In this way, the general idea is that every year a millenary warrior wakes up and appears who defends this nation and aligns himself with the sign of the zodiac from which he draws his power. This year it would be the warrior of the Metal Ox, War Ox - 战牛.
In the following image, you can see some of the references ordered by search categories, but many more were used:
Sketch
Before starting to create the model I like to make a sketch of my ideas to be able to visualize them better. First of all, I focused on defining the shape of the body, as I think it is important can to make a proper design of the armor that fits later.
The sign of the Ox is associated with strong, persistent, and determined people, as well as patients, so I decided to think of a warrior who had a strong body. Of all the variations I decided to take a muscular body as a base.
The next step was to define the hair, with a beard and hairstyle characteristic of old martial arts masters that can be seen in many cinematographic movies with a certain fantastic look.
Once the body was defined, I began creating an armor design, also with a fantastic look but respecting the parts of the armor and plate patterns that can be seen in Chinese ancient armors.
To this, the ox head, motifs, and horns were added to give it the fantastic touch that made reference to the chosen zodiac animal and later an asymmetrical touch with the clothing and the shoulder pad.
A legendary hero should also have an amazing weapon, so after doing a bit of research on the ancient weapon types of that country and some depictions of its mythological characters, I decided to choose the Guan Dao with the same motifs that were applied to the rest of the armor.
Finally, the colors of the flag, red and yellow, were applied to integrate it into the design.
With all this, I already had a clearer vision of my initial idea and it allowed me to plan the production process.
Blocking
The next step would be to transfer the sketch to a 3D model to see if the design worked correctly from all points of view.
I began to make the body in the same way as in the sketch seen above because he would mark the position and shape of the armor. It was made from a mannequin at the start point and using Dynamesh with the brushes shown in the image to define the shapes.
In the next step, I made the main pieces of the armor by mesh extractions from the body, or other primitives or basic shapes. All of them were adjusted to maintain the silhouette of the character's body without leaving an overly thick armor look.
Using Zmodeller and primitives, I created my own kit of simple models and insert meshes for the ornaments and pieces that were going to be repeated. In this way, the modeling process would be streamlined and unified.
Some of them are divided into polygroups appropriately for use with stroke in curve mode and modifiers of size, triparts, and welpoints. Others would be used as micromesh. In all of them, I paid attention to the topology to be able to add divisions appropriately defining the edge hardness with creasing.
The following image shows some of the simple shapes created:
A heightmap was also extracted from some of these pieces and the Alpha FromMesh option, to make simple repeatable patterns in Substance Designer, and to use with the Surface Noise tool later.
Modeling
Most of the pieces were remade from blocking, starting from simple geometry and basic shapes. Then I apply a mesh extraction from a mask, Zremesher, Finally, they are adjusted and giving thickness with Zmodeller, paying attention to the edges that will be creased. Then I used the previously created library to apply the details and patterns with insert meshes.
UVs were created with UV Master and applied with Surface Noise tool and UV projection. Here it is important to define the orientation of the UV islands well so that the pattern follows the correct direction. Instead of applying the noise bump, I used the option to apply it as a mask and use the Inflat deformer. In this way, I had better visual control over it.
The clothing motif was performed similarly to the armor details but in Substance Painter. Although this type of detail does not need to be done at this stage and can be done later in the texturing step, I wanted to include it in the sculpture simply for fun–to play with the grayscale value, and to have a better presentation of the sculpture.
I was applying polypaint in grayscale to the whole model to differentiate some pieces from others and have an idea of how it works in terms of value, contrast, and depth.
Finally, I added some characteristic objects to reinforce the character's design, such as the liquor gourd, the amulet that would include the stars of the flag, and the sword (dao).
The body was Zremeshered by polygroups to define the loops and topology of the character as there was no polygon limit requirement for the model. The rest of the detail was done through subdivisions and the micro detail through layers and morph target since this method allows adding and balancing the detail in a non-destructive way.
This would be the final result of the sculpture:
Retopology, UVs, and backing:
As there was no polygon limitation, I use the lowest level of division of each model part that I had and made the UV process leaving a uniform textel density and avoiding distorted areas. The parts of the model were grouped into materials and the UDIM format was used to have the highest quality of texture in the final image.
All the texture backing was done in Substance Painter, activating the option to search by name to avoid conflicts between the different parts of the model. Displacement maps were obtained in Zbrush.
Texturing:
When texturing the character's skin, I focused a lot on the face, as it is an important point of attention. I used some base materials that Substance Painter provides to add skin reliefs, then the tones, details, AO, and roughness variations. Almost everything was applied with hand-painted masks using different brush presets.
For the armor and other elements, I followed the same procedure, starting from base material to have the correct metallicity and reflection values, but varying the color and adding layers with variations in the different channels until I had a final result more detailed but not excessively dirty or worn. Finally, the AO and curvature maps were used to enhance certain details.
The whole process was carried out using Substance Painter's UDIM workflow, using a studio environment lighting to see the color without variations, and was exported with the preset for Arnold.
Materials:
Once in Maya, aiStandarSurface materials were configured and applied with the same environment lighting that was used in Substance Painter and using the maps obtained without any special configuration.
Hair:
The hair was made with Xgen, creating the guides by hand for the different hair groups. Clump, cut, curl, and noise modifiers were applied to give the final shape, and an aiStandarHair material with a gradient map leaving the root a slightly darker shade.
This is the final result after applying the materials and the hair:
Rigging and posing:
At this point, I didn't have much time, so I made a simple rig in Maya to the body of the character that would allow me to pose it. For the pose I decided to put the character in a defensive position but with his guard down–giving the feeling of being unprotected, but this being a strategy of an experienced warrior that will provoke the attack of his enemy to deliver a decisive counterattack.
Lighting and render:
Arnold's area lights were used for the lighting in a simple setup, where the main light was coming from the skydome. A fill light and a rim light were used to enhance details and silhouette, and another area light to create a gradient in the background, which was a simple plane curved upwards.
This was the final result of the render made in Arnold. For hair, it is important to increase the quality of the specular samples.
For the final presentation, no post-production was done and only the decorative frames and logos were added.
Outcome and Final Thoughts
After having completed this personal work, I’m happy to have finished on time with quite limited availability and to have been able to fulfill the objectives that I initially proposed–to learn about other cultures and use new techniques and tools that could incorporate into my work methodology. The next thing I'm thinking about is how to improve this result or what new tools or methodologies. I will try.
Finally, I wanted to thank everyone who gave me their support, comments, likes, or followed my WIP in the forum, as well as those who read this article to the end, which I hope was useful and found interesting. Also to thank Cubebrush for making this great Art War experience possible and allowing me to do this article.
Cheers, Álvaro
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