baking and texturing

Finishing my retopolgy i moved on to adding certain things to the game mesh and instead of leaving hair to the end of this process i took some time early to make the hair alphas because there a lot longer on the second character and more important to the the diversity of this character.

Once ide finished my retopolgy i baked down my highpolly detail to low polly i separated the parts out like the head torso and trousers ect and they layered them up in Photoshop so ide have less errors and cleaner bakes.

My main issues i think when texturing the face will be making him authentically beat up and getting the cuts and bruising to look as real as possible, I am also going to make some cavity maps just to emboss more of the cuts in the face to gets some nice sharp edges to the deep ones.

I decided to reduce the game mesh tri count overall for this one because it will be easy to iterate through and because his clothing is a lot lighter and simpler than the first because hes minimalist character that hes been beaten. i also made his weapons and accessory's that he could possible use or have with him that would more likely be in the level with his gear or thrown across the map. 

screenshot of blocked out texture 

Retopoly

finishing my sculpt i moved on to retopolgising mainly focusing on strip modeling because i have a more controlled outcome. And ive found it a faster work flow strip modeling the hole mesh rather than tweaking zremeshed parts and a better outcome because ive found zremesh smooths the silhouette a lot and doesn't have any sharps edges which is what im after in certain places.

My main focus is keeping the loops tidy flowing around the face an braking up the symmetry for the bruising like in the sculpt and adding some more detail in the big cuts rather than just using the normal map.

Quick paint-over to make sure it still looks like my initial concept and not straying to far away from the character im trying to bring through.

The arms took me a little longer than expected i found there quite tri dense because of the nature of the folds and the torn pieces, but i can always go back and reduce them if i thinks its to much on the finished product.

sculpt updates

 Once the concepting was finished i moved onto to the sculpting phase mainly just blocking out the design in the beginning to get a solid foundation to start with.

 One of the main struggles ive been having with my characters in this project is making them look authentic  and realistic. Modeling the character bald i find draw the design away from my initial concept so i need to keep in mind how the face looks underneath the facial hair.

 More updates working through the folds as that was one of my main issue's in the last character again there starting to look clumby. The idea for the fabic is more of a waxy waterproof material rather than wool which is more what it look like at the moment. Also was pointed out to me in my feedback that hes looking atm to similar to the first character because of his size, so im going to try make him alot Skinner and take some time working into the fabric tearing the material to help brake up the silhouette an go for the beaten up look im going for.

Starting to brake up the symmetry in the face and really bring out the swollen features and blood crusting in areas of his face. the main focus for the bruised part of his face will be on the left side and his left eye being nearly completely closed.

temujin concepts

I already new the look i was going to go for with my character s main issue was giving him a interesting outfit and different ways of bruising his face up to look like toe lui has beaten him up. 

So i did some quick thumbnails to get an idea for the costume even thought the design is very simplistic because toe lui had taken away most of his things and striped away his furs. I did some more research into the clothing and the winter the clothes almost look waxy and thick to keep out the cold.

Bruises ideas for reference i looked allot of real cuts and bruises mainly from boxing and to see the different in time from first impact swelling to left for days to bleed and crust over which should give more some interesting design detail's. 

Finished some quick orthographic s for the base of my character so i could start sculpting and then build up accessory and the belt line on top later. 
And some sketches for temujin's props his main thing being his bow and quiver

After my feedback my first job was to rework the trousers because they were looking very clumpy and unrealistic. Originally i started be reworking the old sculpt but i found it alot easier and better time wise just deleting the old one getting some good first hand reference and starting again.

I also went back and found some more research for Mongolian boots and revamped them because they were looking very dull and looking boring and dint actually look like there was a foot inside the boot so it helped to thicken the calf's outs which also helped to make him look less top heavy.

Once i retoped the new parts of the mesh i made some cavity maps to realy make the Armour pop out because at the moment its all blurring and looks very soft. 

Now the legs are looking allot better i reworked some of the loops in the spine so he has a more aesthetic spine and i separated the shoulder plates from the torso Armour hopefully to help with rigging so it will deform a lot better.

re-topology

retopolgy i started by re-meshing some of my sub-tools to get a good start for my topology because the diversion had made my sculpt very high and dense so using z re-mesh i went through parts of the mesh like the trousers and shorts built some topology, the issue i kept having was zremesh would rap loops around the sculpt in spirals not closed loops which would produce bad topology and be very awkward rigging. so i edited some more and playing with the option i got it to make some good loops which i have edited in 3ds max to get what i want.

originally i tried using zremesh and using the topology tool to place my edges but i found the best way was to just strip model it and use a mix of strip modeling and turbo smooth to get it too look smooth through the mesh.

making sure i have the right loops going through the face and getting a few five points where the loops go through each other.

feedback

the main things that were said in my feedback were my folds on the clothing especially the trousers and boots dint look correct, also the hands look to small and the neck and spine look to straight and would look better with a more aesthetic curve. 

And that i may have trouble rigging the shoulders and may want to break them up some more to make it easier to rig which was one of my worries in the begging. I had set myself to finish this character by Friday so over the weekend i can finish my concepts for temujin and start modeling on Monday. So my main job tomorrow is to fix the trousers wrinkles and get it back in 3ds and retoped so i can keep texturing. Im also going to go back and put some more time into my loops because i have a lot of unneeded topology and some places lacking. I think even if i haven't manged to fully complete toe lui by Friday ,im going to starts my second so i don't miss out on two of my deadlines and still keep working on the first characters touches as i go along.