Sculpted details (Scrapped feature)

 Sculpting finer details to my model:

Now that the model has been completely UV mapped, I am able to start on the finer details of my model. During discussion with both lecturers and mentors, it was suggested to focus on adding in sculpted details such as imperfections to my model to add more depth and detail. Originally I had planned to do this purely as texture work, but discussions with peers convinced me otherwise. 

One of the mentors I had been discussing my final major project with suggested that I could start by sculpting in finer details within Z-Brush. Once I was happy with these details, I could bake the newly-sculpted geometry as a displacement map to be applied within Maya. This required the UV mapping to be complete before I could start as a displacement texture would work off of the objects UV space. Now that is done, I can move on to this stage of production. I started by importing my character into Z-Brush again. 

Before I could start with sculpting finer details in my model, I ran into a few small issues when importing. Some of the polys of my model were missing. Upon further investigation, I discovered that these faces were missing because they were N-Gons, and Z-Brush must be automatically excluding that type of face from the geometry of my models. 

Upon looking at the topology in Maya, I had discovered there were a few N-Gons present across my model. This was caused when I had added in supporting edges during the Retopology and Refinement stage of production, where new edges were added in a loop across the model. Frustratingly this was an issue I had been encountering during production, and had clearly missed it in a couple of the models. To summarise, when I would add new edges to my models, for an unknown reason the loop would not extend across the entirely of the model, despite showing it in the preview when adding the edges in a loop across the geometry. The loops would unexpectedly stop before looping to the starting point, creating an N-Gon in the topology as a result. 

Unfortunately I had to go through and manually check/fix these N-Gons created in my topology, as otherwise they would disappear when imported into Z-Brush, as seen in the above image. 

Here is another missing poly spotted. 

A few large poly are missing here.

This was the final missing poly I was able to find. 

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At this point, all the geometry appeared to be fixed and was correctly imported into Z-Brush. It was time to begin adding in some finer details to the model. 

In order to sculpt some finer details into my model, I was recommended a Z-Brush brush pack which can be found listed for free here. This pack offers a lot of different brushes for stylised imperfection; I was most interested with the cracks and scratches. Admittedly these were stylised and not necessarily realistic, but I could easily adapt these to more realistic imperfections. I downloaded this pack and decided to start adding some imperfections to my model. 

Using the brush presets, I was able to create a range of large scratches and dents in the model. I tried to implement these sparingly across my design as to not overdo the imperfections, especially as more would be added in the form of textures later on. 

In addition to imperfections, I made a start on some finer details. Here is some creasing created for the glove, which was done manually for both hands to make sure they were non-symmetrical for added realism. I did this very simply using the Standard brush on a low intensisty, smoothing these brush strokes after sculpting them on. I was pleased with the randomness of the creasing and the overall finish. There is some notable clipping happening with the leather strap, but this is something I can easily address later on. 

Here is an updated view of the imperfections, with a basic metalic material applied to help demonstrate the scratches I have started to implement. I have tried to vary them in both length and width, and applying them in possible spots a blade may have struck the armour. For example, you wouldn't expect to see dents on the under-side of the upper arm plating. This should help in selling the realism of these imperfections. 

Here is a close up of the imperfections added to the helmet. Most notably is a very large dent in the upper left side of the helmet. The idea behind this dent would be to reinforce the Visual Storytelling criteria of my project, indicating that a large blow to the head caused my character to be knocked unconciouss, explaining why the knight character gets up from the ground of a recently fought battle. The dent is in line with possible damage to metal armour, though since this image I have smoothed the edges of the dents to give more of a realistic bend rather than the current look. I achieved this by simply smoothing the sides of the dent, and did this for the larger ones. 

I was able to come across another pack of Z-Brush brush presets, this time in the form of fabric tears. I thought these could add some nice detail to the model, showing wear and tear in the leather straps. Admittedly the brush created a rather harsh indentation but I liked the overall result, and wanted to test how it appeared when displaced in Maya. 

I added a couple other tears across the mode, this time to the leggings. I also added some more creasing of the cloth here like I had done prior with the gloves. 

Here is an alternate view of the legs, showing one of the other tears I had added in. 

In the above image, you can see I have added some rough dents to the Stop Rib. This is to give it a bit more sign of wear and tear, adding to the realism. 

For the helmet visor pin, I added a large dent to the pin. The idea being a weapon had severely bashed the pin downwards. Alhough quite noticable, I rather liked this addition as it helped to add some more realistic damage and imperfections to the model. 

I made a small start on some sculpting for the finer details of the model. I used one of the Alpha presets in Z-Brush to create a nice ornate detail on one of the helmet visor bolts, a simplistic detail in an appropriate place, not overdone. 

I continued to add more imperfections, more signs of battle damage and general wear. Although very subtle, I added some slight chipped edges to the blade of the greatsword to signify its use in battle, and that it may require sharpening on a whetstone, an accurate instance of sword use in the Middle ages. 

Here is a view of these chippings from the side of the blade. 

At this point, I wanted to test these imperfections and see how they might work in Maya for the purpose of demonstrating my progress to my weekly mentor. In order to do this, I needed to bake the sculpting I had done in Z-Brush into a Displacement map, so that it could be applied via texture in Maya. 

In order to bake the displacement map in Z-Brush, I needed to go the Multi map exporter option and select Displacement map as the desired output. From here, I am able to bake and export a displacement map. I also increased the resolution to 4k since I felt the increased detail in displacement would be useful so the quality is maintained. More importantly, I ensured the maps were created as 32-bit images, since this holds a lot of very significant colour information and it would be lost at a lower bitrate. Finally, it was suggested to me by a mentor to set the 'Midpoint' value to 0, as a different value could lead to issues developing in my maps. After these settings were set, I baked and exported the displacement maps. 

Here is one of the six displacement maps exported, one for each UV tile of the character. However, when baking a displacement map it is suggested to re-use the model you had worked on in Z-Brush to apply the finer details to, specifically at 0 sub-divisions. In previous images that I had been working on, I had increased the sub-divisions to add more finer quality details, typically around 5-6. Exporting the model at this level of sub-division would not be appropriate, since that is the whole point of baking it as a displacement map. However, exporting the model with the sub-divisions set back to 0 is advised as it apparently helps the displacement map to operate better. This essentially resets the topology back to its initial state, but with the sculpting done to the lowest poly version of the model. This is something I did to ensure the displacement map worked to the best of its ability. 

From here, I was ready to test my displacement maps in Maya.

Importing and Displacing in Maya:

To import the displacement maps into Maya, I started by first importing the newly exported model (low poly) which - as mentioned earlier - would help the displacement map to operate correctly. From here, I created a Displacement modifier in the Hypershade menu, adding in the maps correctly so that Maya would recognise the UV tile workflow. 

Here is the result. Note that the Displacement only operates when rendered, and does not show in the Viewport. Unfortunately the map was not appearing how I had hoped, and a lot of issues were present. Most notably was the large dent in the helmet, which appears to be denting about half of its intended depth before stopping, and flattening as if the displacement did not reach any further. 

Whilst some of the smaller scratches have been implemented well, there is a lot of notable distortion ocurring in some of the displacement. This can be seen in the bottom corner of the shoulder plating in the image above, in which the displacement seems to be causing a lot of harsh and distorted edges. This is not how these details looked in Z-Brush, yet some details such as the smaller scratches appeared to be operating as intended, which added to my confusion. 

Furthermore, upon the edge of the blade, it appeared as though colour banding issues were ocurring. I cannot explain why these issues are happening, though it is clear that - in its current form - this displacement map is not suitable. 

I had raised these issues to my weekly mentor in a hopes of finding a solution. However, unfortunately my mentor was unable to help. At this point, I had already spent a significant time on the knight character, and I am current in week 8 of term 2. In fact, my estimated time spent on my knight character was already severely overdue, due to the production taking much longer than anticipated. At this point, I felt I had no choice but to scrap the implementation of these finer details, as they were evidently not working as I had hoped. This also meant that I would not be spending more time creating sculpted ornate details in ZBrush, and would instead resort to applying these as a texture instead. This was definitely an unfortunate cutback of this project, but one that was justified. 

One thing I was able to do was reuse some of the less-significant details I had created as actual geometry, as opposed to using a displacement map for it. This was only suitable for details done to a smaller and less geometrically detailled mesh. I started small, adding the ornate visor bolts and the helmet visor pin to my character and replacing the plain old ones. Fortunately, since these had been modified and sub-divided on the already UV mapped models, UV mapping was not required for these new models. 

One detail I had added without requiring more geometry was adding variety in the straps, bending them in different ways via the Move tool in Z-Brush. I was able to easily add these in to my current character model. 

Lastly, I imported the cloth-based models to my character as I was very keen on the creased look to these objects, and wanted to keep them in. This did require me to adjust the strap across the hand to properly fit, which was a simple task. 

On a side note, I did attempt to import the sculpted dents and scratches of my helmet model, since I felt that this would play a significant role in the storytelling aspect of my project. However, unfortunately these details were simply too high-poly to be used in my project, as - despite my decent performance of a computer - the viewport would show significant performance loss and strain trying to maintain a series of such high poly models, especially in combination to the previous imported models and my character model from before. 

Reluctantly, I had to scrap all other details done before which had not been noted to being added as geometry in the above images. My plan was to potentially re-visit these details at a later date in production when time was warranted, in the hopes that a lecturer or mentor may have some new information for me in helping these details to work as intended. This concluded this section, and it was time to move on to the texturing of my character.