Personal Project - Applied Anatomy

For my specialism project I will be creating a range of zBrush sculpts applying anatomy as either creatures or as studies.

I will start the project off with a few studies of human skulls - the first being a fetal skull.



This first study taught me a lot about detail creation and about deciding when the right time to break symmetry is. Skulls feel like they should be symmetrical objects but that is far from the truth! The fetal skull was rather easy to reproduce as it is close to being just one whole object. I do however, think I should focus on "less is more" when it comes to detail.



This second study was of a child skull, which was a lot more difficult to create. In retrospect I should have created separate subtools for each tooth as it would allow for more precise and easier rendering.



An abstract creature bust inspired by The Last of Us. I applied some of the detailing techniques I learned from the skull studies to this to create much more interesting skin textures.

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 - sketches for riders gear



A swamp creature mount that was started during a zBrush specialism session. I decided to take the creature further in my own time and complete it. The anatomy is derived from dragonfly, boar and mantis. I also went ahead and textured the final low poly in substance painter which was a very similar experience to painting in Photoshop.

The outcome was okay, however I feel like some export issues muddied up the colours somewhat. I also should have iterated various colour schemes beforehand I feel.

I will create a jockey for the mount as well as a weapon of some sorts.






Originally I was going to give my jockey some kind of sci-fi weapon, however I felt like it wouldnt fit well with the "swamp" theme for the mount. So instead I sketched a quick axe as I didnt want to spend too long designing the weapon.

 - Quick simple axe concept

 - Finished Render

The textures for the axe are much cleaner and better than the one for my mount thankfully. I ended up changing a few details from the initial concept along the way as a design choice, mainly the emissive section and blade details. Overall though im very happy with the final thing. Now for the jockey -



My final Swamp Tribesman jockey. I utilized and played with the human anatomy to create a more believable result. I also opted to keep the clothing and gear similar to the gear on the mount to keep things uniform. Substance painter is getting easier to use each time. I also implemented my fetal skull study for a bit of scale!

Below is all 3 sculpts together!

I'm happy with the outcome, even if there are some minor issues. If I was to attempt this again i'd do more iteration and be a bit more experimental with my anatomy choices. I'd also select a more pleasing colour palette beforehand.



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A caterpillar study. I did this study to figure out how to export textures at a higher quality as well as creating solid UV for optimal texture creation.

I created UVs inside of zBrush using UV master and after texturing I feel like its a much nicer and cleaner outcome! Its so much closer to the textures within Substance and looks less muddy. This sculpt also helped me utilize more detailing techniques.



Another small creature sculpt inspired by Half Life's headcrabs. I tried applying small amounts of human anatomy to the sculpt to get an idea for how the limbs would work and to make the creature feel more meaty.

I also got to play around in Marmoset 3 for this sculpt, which can allow for some much sharper renders with a plethora of additional options. This creature was also slightly harder to UV within zbrush so I had to use the attract and protect brushes to ensure seams do not appear in the wrong places.

   

For this little spook I took what I had learned from the past two sculpts and applied it here. I focused mainly on human anatomy to make him seem more believable yet putting a twist on that with elongated sections and exaggerated proportions. Texturing in Substance is a much smoother experience after doing these sculpts.

I focused on using layers within painter to build up the texture and create finer details such as veins and pores. I am somewhat displeased with the design however, I feel like I did not experiment enough and I kept it quite safe.


At some point during the project I wanted to design some alien plants as a side project. I roughly sketched some shapes out and painted over the silhouettes I liked the most.

Not much to say about these sketches, but it was a nice change of pace. In the future I may revive this side project and do some 3D sculpts from them as I find plant design quite interesting.

Mothman! This sculpt is a mix of various insects (mainly moth) and human anatomy. This creature was quite complex to sculpt, so I used zspheres to block out the form beforehand. The antenna was created from a seperate zsphere tool and imported, whereas the wings were made from extracting a mask on a plane. This really opened up new working methods for me that I wouldn't have considered before. I could even create simple clothing and gear using this method, or apply it to hard surfacing.

After some feedback on this sculpt, I will be extending the body as I did not include a thorax. The legs are also going to be positioned further apart and limited to just the thorax, much like an actual moth.

Game Jam

During Game Jam I worked in a team of 5 on a game centered around the theme of Boiling Point. The game was also required to utilize a fixed camera.

For our game, we decided on creating a small scalextric style racing game named Pace Race. The game would use a temperature mechanic where the car's speed would have to be managed to prevent from blowing up. Pick-ups and simply "pacing" yourself prevent the car from heating up too much, with an array of obstacles reinforcing this mechanic more so.

My job within the team was asset creation and particle effect creation with more emphasis on the former due to time constraints. I felt like deciding on the assets as a team and going ahead and creating was much more time efficient than concepting every single asset out beforehand.

I worked closely with our programmer to create certain dynamic events in the game such as the spawning deer and barricades. I produced a lot of misc scenery for the environment as well.

During development, we ran into a few issues regarding polycount on a few boulders which were easily fixed using zRemesher within zBrush.

Below are in-engine renders of the assets I created:













And here are the particle effects I created for the game:




    

   

End of project character

This is as far as I could get with features in the allocated time due to each new feature added causing countless amounts of bugs and breaking of other mechanics. I would have liked to add a few more maneuvering options for the player but just trying to implement a dash feature without other things breaking was a nightmare!

I would also have liked to flesh out the shooting mechanics more and perhaps make the character move in a lane based system rather than free form moving, this would have allowed me to make the game even faster and not have to worry too much about level errors with spawning (which is what is happening right now)

I am also having problems with my menus and gameover screen as when the game starts, my characters life drains even when they have not spawned, causing an instant death? On top of that, lives dont actually save with each level restart so you can never truely get a game over. Score also restarts, which I want to keep going until you run out of lives at which point it saves. No luck with any of that yet.