Lip Sync 004

3D Techniques for Feathers

Taking a step back from the concepts for a bit I decided I would look into solving some potential technical issues in regarding to creating the character and surface detail.

My plan for the project is to use Zbrush but I am open to using other techniques if I see fit based on my later concepts and how the techniques look in 3D.

I used Sketchfab as a search source for various solutions, this lets me see topology, textures and isolate methods easily. Because Sketchfab is a realtime application there are a lot of simple and effective tricks used to create visual effect without utilizing too many polygons. I created a text document taking notes on various Sketchfab creations:

• Low Poly Mostly Texture - Some transparency: 01 | 02
• Alot of Transparent Planes: 01 | 02
• Alluded to feathers using silhouette: 01 | 02
• Modelled Feathers + texture: 01 | 02 | 03
• Modelling + Extruded Planes for transparecy: 01
• Effective texture work on retopo + Normals:  01

Now that I've gotten some ideas for execution I've headed back to character concepts. Trying to capture some sense of gesture and posing through the concepts. I found that one of the problems I am running into is that I haven't fully established the final goal of what the character is to achieve, causing my designs to vary drastically with some vaguely working and others barely working at all.



Liking the contrast of a small head, thin legs and almost entirely upper body. exploring through different poses, expressions and squash and stretch. Some tests of what he may be wearing. Because chicken legs knees are equivalent to our ankles (in a sense) it is difficult to draw them bent backwards in a manner that looks natural. I may create a box hierarchy in Maya to quickly block out posing and basic lighting information to develop character over the top.




Using the bottom right doodle of what the feathers may look like I took a sphere into ZBrush using various tools, sculpted a poly-painted a feathery design. Textures UV's are generated in ZBrush for speed and have some strange artifacts but final character UV's will be clean.



3D View. Topology is a simple ZRemesh in this test. The low topology works well combined with the textures, perhaps even better with either Normal & AO map or Displacement.

Material Test by George Smith on Sketchfab