Visual Immersion

TITLE OF UNIT: Visual Immersion
Email – l.howell0120231@arts.ac.uk
30/01/2024

JUMP TO:

• Progress Screenshots Start
• Thumbnails
• The Mound
• Hands
• Columns
• Rings
• Figure
• Hands Texture
• Wormies
• Wires
• Wall Columns
• Videos Linked to PDF

Final Render Series:

Thumbnails:

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I’ve chosen to go with thumbnail one. However, as a stretch goal, to add in thumbnail two, as an environment that you can go through to reach this main domed structure.

Progress Screenshots:

Simple blockout using low poly shapes.

I used a spotlight coming down from the centre of the ceiling to light up the central assets. Listen, who am I without starting with lighting first. The day I don’t immediately put a light in my scene is the day I’ve died.

I will create the central assets using zbrush. These are: the person hanging upside down from the centre, and the stack of hands reaching up for them. I’ll make the hands pile by having multiple variarions of a hand, UVing them and assembling them into the stack. Then I’ll have several texture variations. This should help the pile feel quite random.

Used Duplicate Special to create an instance for a slice of the dome, from which I can create the whole domes design using extruding and bevelling.

Creating the walls by inserting a cylinder and adjusting it to size. To design the walls I’ll model one of the faces and then copy it to the rest.

Once I had finished my block out, I began to model and texture my main assets

I started the mound by sculpting from a plane in Zbrush. I did this using the mask tool and raising sections into tiers. Then, I worked on texturing by throwing some different textured brushes and sculpting some globbuar elements to break up the form.

The Mound

Ikr, disgostang.

I retopologised the high res sculpt in Maya using… wait for it…retopologise. And it became beautiful, like that’s not bad i don’t think.

This high poly sculpt in Zbrush I then brought into Maya and used the Retopology tool to lower the resolution on the object. This resulted in a smoother object with a lower polycount. I then brought the low poly and version into Substance Painter and baked the high poly original onto it.

The texture I used came largely from the Organic Flesh material with a Skin texture black masked on top. This allowed me to paint the texture onto the round globs and give them a more translucent and varied texturing. I then painted some more texture in, like veins, blood spots and other things.

Side Note: After a lesson with Amil, I realised the secret to why the textures look different out of Substance. The lighting! After turning off the HDR environment and changing it to a black and white environment, it looked so much worse, but don’t worry humble reader! I fixed it 🙂

Plugging in the original textures in maya, this is what I got in the hypershade view. I’m not the greatest at this and it didn’t look completely like what I got in Substance so I parked this for a bit to learn more and come back later.

I also attempted to texture the mound in Unreal5, which didn’t go completely to plan (I mean, obviously, what is that) as I don’t yet understand Unreal texturing (whaaatt?? no wayyyy! :0 ) but I think the issue was primarily lighting – another thing I also didn’t understand lol. However, after a Toolkits workshop with Elliot McSherry I finally understand how to do lighting!!! View what screenshots survived down below:

Hands

To create the pile of hands look, I created one hand and UVed and textured it

Next I rigged it in order to pose all the hands easily. This also enables me to create a creepy animation later on. I also gave it a minimal weight painting, to fix the way the wrist bent, but other movements seemed to be fine.

With the skeleton made, I duplicated the hand over and over (135 times, hhhh) and arranged them onto the mound. The only issue was the fact the skeletons unbound from the skin and I had to rebind the skeletons 134 times again 🙁

The render view: doesnt that just disgust you? exquisite

Columns

So obviously the block out was insanely low res. So to fix this I used smooth in maya to add additional topology. It was a bit annoying cos the tool reealllly wanted to make it a thin blob, but I battled and came out victorious, playing around with the Maya Catmull-Clark settings and continuity.

texturing video, going layer by layer:

My texturing involved using the Stone Slate and Rock Face materials in combination, where rock face was between 50% – 60% opacity. This gave me this nice rocky texture that I was after. I also recoloured it to be more cool yellow base tones, as I was after a cold temperature.

I then used the Organic Flesh material on a black mask, to paint in the veiny textures. This also makes it more cohesive with the hand pile in the centre.

Minor textures were then added, like various dirt masks to give the surface some variety.

looking nice and sexy right?

Rings

I used copy attributes to copy the UVs of the hoops to each other. Glorious, and swift

I wonder who had do do the UVs twice because they somehow deleted some faces? hmmm…

Definite upgrade right there, I mean, she’s got curves now.

I then took them into Substance to texture them. I separated them into 3 groups, the biggest ring at the top, rings 2 and 4, and rings 3 and 5.

The rock texture is made the same as the columns, but with some added mossy texturing.

Figure

I started modelling the falling figure using a the zbrush female body project. As I didn’t need to have a detailed human model that would be inspected, I just used that one as it was quick and easy for my purposes. I masked off limbs and such and ended up with this pose. I tried to go for someone falling but wrapped in fabric. The go to look here is a mummified body falling – it’s very in right now, very trendy.

When I had all the body parts positioned, I started to combine everything. Dynamesh was very useful here. I had it turned off originally, as I didn’t want the body parts to combine into each other, but here, that was exactly what I was going for. Très utile.

Essentially it was a lot of building clay to fill spaces and thinking about how the cloth would wrap around a person. Not fully shrink wrapped, but going flat where it would go between two high points. I then began to build up the wrap going between the legs. I masked off lines and gizmoed them to stretch between, forming walls. Originally I was literally building it up w/ clay, but we can all recognise how stupid that was. Tut tut. I also tried the curve tools in Zbrush and didn’t like those either. All my approaches didn’t spark joy here and I left it for a bit.

I was originally planning to continue again in Zbrush, but as I wasn’t home, I continued via my tablet on Nomad. This was actually really good for me as I was able to use the tube tools to create the wraps. It was actually very functional, and while a little finickety, pretty good. I also repositioned the legs to be closer together as having them so far apart didn’t feel great for the silhouette. This one I’m more happy with.

I started with thick strips going across the legs. I will go back into zbrush to sculpt that better and give it more texture, but I wanted the basic wrap made. This, I built up on both sides. What’s great about the tube tool, is it creates it’s own object each time, so it isn’t dependant on the main model, not will it interfere w/ it.

ANYWAY THE FUN BIT. I added some ‘flyaways’ where the wraps were falling off the figure as I imagined them falling. I was really trying to keep gravity in mind, and while simulating it would probably give me a more accurate result, I don’t think it’s the most necessary. I also wanted to keep the silhouette in mind, so added some straps on the sides for depth.

The final look from Nomad:

I took this into zbrush to start texturing the main wrap that goes around the legs. I got to this point. Using the dam standard brush, and using it inverted, to create the lines of the bandages. I merged the threads of the bandages with the extracted sides of the legs, and went about this really wonky, long way of working.

Now the night before, I had done some research. I watch two videos of people making and texturing bandages, and then I clearly decided to ignore it 😀

Amil however, gave me some critique. The form was getting lost in the way the wrap was entirely covering up the shape of the legs. While I could think better of this and move on with my life, I remembered those tutorials that I had already been ignoring, and decided that this would be an opportunity to start anew!!

I moved the right leg into a more dynamic pose, bringing it closer to the other for a better flow through the body. We then decided on having the legs individually wrapped to better see the form of the figure from afar. While this wasn’t the original idea, I was going for a more mummified concept, I think that this will convey the idea of what I want more, especially from afar. As it might be difficult to understand what the figure is from afar.

I started working on the new and improved version in the digital space, but to my horror! The version they use is the 2025, whereas we have been using 2024. So I will have to export it out as an fbx and bring it back to 2024. Very annoying! >:(

I recovered my 2025 file from the digital space and converted it all to an fbx and brought it back to the present. While it got rid of my poly group, it still had them separated through how I’d used zremesher earlier.

Using the Move topological button, I can move the separate loops and arrange them to be bandages around the leg. This works in conjunction with dynamic subdivisions, where I can give it some thickness too. I duplicated these loops twice, so that I could have a nice busy arrangement of bandages, which better hides the fact that they are looping, and not an actual bandage wrapping around the leg.

bandage man is finito

UV >:(

Camera Unwrapping, but some bands have retopo-Ed themselves together. This makes unwrapping them a lot harder 🙁

Js

Nsks

Hands Texture

Finally added in the hands textures. I selected random bunches of hands, and separated them into 3 separate materials for 3 different skin colours and textures. This helps the hand pile feel more random and not repetitive

Wormies

I started w/ maya curves and sweep mesh, then I brought it into Zbrush to give it some texture, realised it was entirely terrible, and I redid it w/ Maya curve alphas. They were easier to manage, and I could create better shapes w/ them. I also used inflate to give it some globbular texture.

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UVED the wormies. (ADD IN THE HALVING OF THEM)

Wires

Next project, adding in little wires to trail around the dome. Originally, was going to do it w/ Mayas curves, but I’ve gradually come to hate them immensely as they don’t behave like I want. Thus, I went back to my safe little Zbrush.

I used curve alpha again, but made my own alpha of a rectangle. Went much better than Maya! I was srsly considering just not doing it and adding it in the paint over.

..

It’s at this point that we have broken up for the winter break. As such, my poor little pc at home is chugging it to even OPEN the scene. This is somehow one of the quicker file reads, but goddamn. First I thought it had just quietly crashed- NO. IT’S JUST IN PAIN! Poor thing

Wall Columns

And finally, the scene is all together!

Promised Videos From The PDF

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