Legacy of Kain Models

[The_Hylden]

Hi Michaela,

Had some major issue with my computer, which is why I’m answering you a week later. But yeah, that’s a way to do the workflow that you’ve listed, Zbrush to Maya, Photoshop to paint. (I used 3DS Max for the unwrapping, but whichever) I agree that it is time consuming. I don’t think there’s a method that’s totally easy for hair. I don’t know. Perhaps it might be easier to do hair planes, or hair curves to hair planes, in Maya. I’ve seen a tutorial on that, but I didn’t delve into it too much.

For eye reflection, this guy’s I found pretty nice:

http://www.zbrushcentral.com/showthread.php?43743-Reflective-Eyes-Material

You can play around with the reflection image to adjust that. If you have corneas separately overlapping, you can use the toy plastic, or I believe I used either chrome, or Hair2 modified on a render of human Kain. And make the cornea transparent. Rendering hair planes in Zbrush is another thing. I haven’t found it to do well with alphas. I might just not know of whatever secret it is to do it… If there is one. For Fibermeshed hair, I did find the modified Hair2 material to work well.

Update on John’s parents. The fully posed models, both his mother and father complete. They enjoyed dancing, so placing them in that pose, in their wedding attire, was agreed upon as the best pose for them:

[The_Hylden]

The posed models were hollowed out and split into printable pieces for the client. I’m holing all goes well on his end.

In addition to these, I’ve been working on fixing elder Kain’s low poly model. All of that is about done. I’ve transferred most of the texture information over. Some final tweaking is needed. Looking online, I was able to find renewed hope in some scripts that I could use in Maya to rig and animate, taking care of much of that grunt work. I hope it works so I can maybe get back to what I originally intended in animating these Legacy of Kain models. I also am then about to get back to those other models, since that’s been back-burned for a time now.

[Fae]

Hey Patrick,

sorry I´m answering later too ( in my life gives some little problems - c´est la vie…^^)

Really nice good new work from you I like the dancing pose! Keep it up!
You work with Maya and 3ds max together? Wow, two great 3D-tools!
Witch program take you to rendering?

And yes I think similary, it gives no easy way to make good hair. But in the future I would try different ways to make fine hair.

So Patrick, I wish you a fine weekend and a good new start in the next week.

best greetings
from Michaela

[The_Hylden]

Hi Michaela,

Thanks, yes I mainly have been using Maya for some retopology work, 3Ds for some UV cleanup.

I’m trying to get rigging down in Maya. I thank those out there that have scripts available to help with this, because this is not my strong suit at all. When I started out making the Legacy of Kain models, it was with the intent to remake scenes from the series, with my models animated. I lament on how convoluted much of the processes for this all is. Maybe one day, it will seem intuitive.

For renders: for the models I’ve just made with the couple dancing, it’s just using Zbrush and matcaps with lightcaps; for the Legacy of Kain models that have been textured, which is just the human and elder vampire Kain so far, I used Marmoset Toolbag 2. I’m looking into using perhaps Vray, or Mental Ray, for any animations I might ever wind up finishing. Or regular beauty shots.

If I can figure out what I am doing wrong on the facial rig, perhaps I can get something animated to show before I grow old and/or the world blows up I really hope so…

[Djordr]

Not sure I’m qualified to comment on these but I’ll do it anyway, I find the details destracting. It’s like you sculpted detail that could fit within 1 million polygons then subdivided the model up to 30 million to add a tiled skin pattern or some little dots here and there, which makes it look more realistic in the final render. But I think spending less time on that and more time on the 1 million would make your sculpts look stronger.

[The_Hylden]

Hm, I know this is a really, really old comment here. Life issues prevented me from really getting to much of this sooner, but if you were referring to the skin details on the husband and wife models shown on the last page, those bump details were only added using noisemaker to add to the model for the client’s viewing, and it turns out for helping paint the model later (which wasn’t something I was asked to do initially). However, the models were intended to be 3D printed small, so I was not going to spend time adding accurate skin pore data that would never come across in the end anyway. I explained that on a previous page, but didn’t mention it on the last one.

I finished those models before last Christmas for the client. He printed them as a present for his mother. His father, her husband, died of an illness a couple of years prior, I think. He went me a video of her unpacking the present and very happy, some crying. It was very nice to be a part of bringing her, hopefully, some good.

In addition to the above, I have done a lot more on the Legacy of Kain models. My dad’s had some health issues and the past few months have been pretty hectic. I had to shelve this for a good while. I never showed the Lieutenant Raziel I completed, so I might as well start there.

Marmoset Renders:

[The_Hylden]

More:

[The_Hylden]

Specularity is a little hot. I’ve modified the spec and gloss a bit since this, along with a little saturation change. Raziel as a human:

Renders in Zbrush:

[The_Hylden]

More:

[The_Hylden]

More:

[The_Hylden]

The Raziel model was a reworking of the Lieutenant Raziel model from Soul Reaver:

http://legacyofkain.wikia.com/wiki/Raziel
This is the final armor for human Kain, and I reworked his skin a bit:

Attachments

[The_Hylden]

More:

[The_Hylden]

More of the sword:

Zbrush

Marmoset:

[The_Hylden]

This is an animation test in Maya that I did with Evolved Vampire Kain:

https://youtu.be/xd_qPS4Uy5g
And this is a long video in Unity 5, showing a lot of the assets I’ve done. I need to optimize it so it doesn’t slow down so much. It was made more for the fans of the series. Once it’s optimized enough, I can edit together a proper trailer and hopefully add animated characters, make it playable.

https://youtu.be/W8GMzEGm8Go

Attachments

[The_Hylden]

Some more stuff: The Soul Reaver, fully aged, some finished shots of the Guardian Statues I showed ages ago – my first time using Substance Painter for texturing.

Reaver, rendered in Marmoset Toolbag 2:

[The_Hylden]

Statue, rendered in Marmoset:

[The_Hylden]

Wraith Raziel is done.

In remaking wraith Raziel, I wanted to keep as much of the GlyphX cinematic model in mind, but also try for as much enhancements to realism as felt right. For instance, the GlyphX model was not modeled to be what vampire Raziel would have melted away into. The proportions are very different on things. His ear has migrated up his face; his arms are a lot longer and his legs are a lot shorter. Just for a couple of examples. Perhaps this was to reflect that his visage is warped due to waking up in the Spectral Realm and its distortion, along with this being basically what Raziel thinks he should look like. Anyway, for this recreation, I’ve made this model fit proportionally within the vampire model. So, this is what would be left over if his skin and flesh burnt away. Reasoning that the cartilage melted away from his lower ribs, that’s the reason they are unconnected to the sternum. Some of Raziel’s design was always concept over reality, and so the reason he has a nose, ears, hair, and the thin wing membrane left at all basically has to be chalked up to style over realism. I tried to think of logical reasons for things like the ribs where I could without completely changing the original character concept.

This is the real time model, rigged and posed out of Maya.

Modeled in Zbrush and Maya; textured in Zbrush and Photoshop; Rendered in Marmoset Toolbag 2:

Worked on defining further muscle groups that would have thickened in the back to support the wings. Also, having ripped away the large bone base, I left a deep cavity exposing both the double spine split he evolved and some of the shoulder blades, and then I added some fleshy remnants of the wing’s flesh hanging off. The rig in Maya has blendhsapes, sculpted also in Zbrush, helping to correct for the muscles contracting, like here with the right arm pulled back.

Attachments

[The_Hylden]

[The_Hylden]

[The_Hylden]

Long time since posting in this thread. My redesign of Ariel as the living Balance Guardian and the ghost bound to the Pillars from the Legacy of Kain games. Her dress was briefly seen in the first game, Blood Omen, as a red dress with a gold vertical gold trim/sash. I kept these colors, redesigned the dress as a more classical looking one with a mix of the 12th and 13nth centuries as inspiration. Velvet with silk gold trim, symbols from the game stitched into the sash, gem stones, and other calligraphy. Gave her a bronze belt with each plaque depicting a discipline of the Pillars (Mind, Dimension, Conflict, Nature, etc. with Balance the oval with the lady in the center), and in the roses, some of the unifying elemental energies also in the games, associated with the Pillars. Her likeness is a mix of looking at concept art for Soul Reaver 2 and of the actress who provided the voice and likeness for her in the games, Breaking Bad’s Anna Gunn. The first renders are of her lighting the Balance Scales, seen briefly in the first game before she’s assassinated. Sculpted in Zbrush, textured in Zbrush and Photoshop, with some Substance Painter 2 for the belt. Realtime model rendered in Marmoset Toolbag 2 (backdrop in the first render out of a scene I’m recreating in Unity 5):