Update: The scene so far

After getting to a point where my armor has materials and works well between unreal and substance, I have exported the metahuman body rig to be used inside of maya.

I was initially planning on using a UDIM workflow, however opted for a material based texture workflow.

Regardless, for texile density and optimal detail I chose to use a few 4k maps for the armor alone. Then my most recent work for the katanas I use three in a UDIM Workflow.

Substance render ^^^

Textures are unfinished, but I want a modular workflow to be able to update and visualize in unreal engine.

So my file structure and naming conventions allow a simple re-import to update when I make changes.

Building out the Unreal Scene

I Began working with some quixel assets to make a believable base structure to compliment my armor.

One of my collegues mentioned using rocks sparringly around paths and more intensive around other larger stones or slopes.

As you can somewhat see the density increasing around the edges on the structure and the slope.

^^^ Regrettably my screenshot habits have not improved as much as id like wish I had more in-between photos ^^

I utilize an unreal marketplace Jungle pack alongside megascans and other fab assets to build out my scene.

NOW FOR THE METAHUMAN RIG

While I have been building out this armor on my free time and have come to the conclusion that, in order to produce a more presentable piece for display. Utilizing metahuman for a pose-able and more appealing scene will (in the most timely fashion) expedite the process.

A simple import of the body skeleton from unreal works well, however importing the head rig often produces crashes due to all of the controllers and nurbs being linked to it. Since I am not using the head rig this is also extremely important. ONLY export the body rig to ensure it doesn't include extra bones from the face rig. Otherwise it will produce some import errors when trying to select the metahuman skeleton as yours. Since it doesnt contain any face bones.

The A-pose metahuman uses was slightly different than mine so I simply use three points on the animation timeline.

1. key the base rig pose (second photo)

2. match the rig to my a-pose (first photo)

3. extent pose for painting and ensure minimal skinning issues

4. Return the rig to the base pose with skinning (also the second photo)

After Importing into unreal and adding metahumans skeleton as the skeleton, your content folder should look similar.

Now inside our metahumans character folder we edit the blueprint class. Then we add a component, a new skeletal mesh. 

Simply add our skeleton for the armor we imported and then it should appear on any instance of our character.

Now inside our animation window add your character to the timeline and the controls will appear and your golden!

(ALSO any animations you import using the rig should work, and you could decide to use metahuaman's folder to store poses or animations. Then you can access them through the animation menu)

The facial animations use a separate channel so they can be applied separately of the bodys animation.

Note: If you would like to use the face rig for any of your clothing be sure to work on that separately not cause any rig conflicts. Then follow the same steps for the head rig in unreal engine.

For removable sections you could utilize sockets and static meshes rather than skin weights, which Is what I may do for the jaw plate on the samurai to make it removable.

At a point in my most recent project I have been spending some of my free time working on that I feel it is time to share.

I initially created this piece about a year ago with the hopes that It would be a short project, however with the last two posts I managed to get distracted 3 different occasions and it fell into my backlog of unfinished personal projects. I decided to fully remake my gambeson from the ground up as the initial design was created based on a sketch concept that I made on my iPad.

Along with this I recently made a free gambeson stitch brush that I used to help create the design. https://artstn.co/m/K33wv

You'll notice one my stitching lines were put in place it made it a lot easier to go and add my desired padding later using inflation and masking.

The original gambeson design was almost 1:1 with my concept in terms of overall boldness and stitching patterns. This however translated into an unrealistic and exaggerated piece that did not match the style of the rest of the costume. Lastly the lack of any belt retention or functionality left it as feeling overly simple which would have worked for a 2d design or a stylized version. However, with my choice of art direction this needed to be completely redesigned. 

I really enjoy how the stitching sometimes causes the surface folds from the padding underneath to change direction or even stop completely. I generally try to to be too overt with my smaller fabric texturing as some of this will also be done inside of substance painter. However, folds on the other hand (for the most part)  must be done before hand. 

Much of my design after my concept was heavily inspired by real world props and functional pieces so here is my pure-ref.

Lastly here is a turnaround of the most recent progress. I posed all the accessories for this just to make it look better the positions of many of them are not final.

Some of the major next steps are going through and adding detail to all of the smaller belts and buckles. Along with the armor itself which I have already begun adding some detail in zbrush. 

This is a work in progress update for my ballistic high cut helmet project.

What initially began as a hard-surface speed model practice, I decided to turn it into a small project.

The Helmet is inspired by a ops core fast helmet. The night vision mount is inspired by a Wilcox mount.

I will share a few stages of the model progress, from maya to zbrush.

This is all in maya before I brought the model into ZBrush

After ZBrush I brought the model back into maya for retopo and cleanup.

Polycount is about 29k, which I brought down from 40k originally.

I use two texture maps (one for the accessories, and one for the base helmet).

After substance painter I returned the low poly to UE5 now as I work on further texture detail I am able to quickly replace the texture files for new turnarounds.

Current progress

Current Status of the Armor: BRINGING INTO ZBRUSH

Happy to announce that I will be moving forward with the armor process, after a long hiatus (life happens). I wish I had more work in progress shots to share unfortunately I forgot to take as many as what I had previously done.

After undergoing the tedious procedure of repeatedly placing knots and rope that binds the armor shingles together, I have finished the helmet designs and quite enjoy the silhouette. The next step I underwent was sculpting a few mask concepts till I wound up with a design I liked most. That being a mix of a traditional Oni themed mask design and an aquatic theme, hence the gills and the mouth shape being slightly tapered down towards the corners somewhat resembling a fish. I attempted to match some ancient Japanese depictions of fish I was able to find. 

Helmet

Mask (zbrush stage)

Mask (retopo)

Thanks!

Armor Wip part 4: Chest, Legs, Shoulder and Rope Detail

So I started off where I left off last week with my blockout of the shoulder plates, pretty simple stuff just trying to match multiple references. 

I had another chance to play around with splines as rope and matching knots to my references, while not as difficult as I was able to skip the underside of the holes since it would never be seen, it was still quite fun attempting to match the rope used in a reference.

I will still have to later replace the rope with an unwrapped rope model so I must make sure to match the rope splines or use zbrush to reduce the polycount then touch up the results. 

Next, I went and matched the rope used to bind the armor plating. It will also need to be replaced and unwrapped later on.

Here is a partial progress example. 

The recolor matched the natural shades more, helped for visualization.

Here is the progress I have made on the Samurai Armor now focusing in on the modeling portion of the arm guards and early stages of the shoulder plates.

For the Hand I used shapes and symbols I see on many samurai armor. I will have to research their meaning however this is how I saw them oriented on my reference doc.

This is the point where I need to make sure the orientation of my chain-link matches the plates it attaches to.

For example: The elbow guard as you see above need to transition from a square to a round shape.

Here is how I planned to orient the chainmail as It was fairly easy to work in chunks rather than bringing it in zbrush and using the polygons to auto orient it. I wanted maximum control over how it linked to my segments.

I then refined the positions of the metal plates and linkes so they sit nicer and follow my guide shapes.

You can almost see the circular patterns in the elbow chainmail. How it becomes tighter as it bunches with an overly straightened arm.

Here is another early example of my chainmail connection to armor segments, youll probably notice little discrepancies that I have to move individually. (I.e., top right link and bottom left.)

Here is the current stage of the arm-armor.

Thanks for following the process, I will be working on chest and plate segments next!!

Here is a sneak peek at my early block out of the shoulder plates.

Much of this next stage has been a fairly repetitive process. Which makes sense with the way the armor in made.

I made some more adjustments to the size of the chainmail to match real life, and moved on to the shin and calf armor. 

The sune ate, tateage, ieji and the kakozuri are all at stages I like before zbrush.

I added shingles to the haidate (thigh  armor)

I have also blocked out the chest armor.

The arm guards fabric and shingle designs are in place. It is only a matter of filling in the chainmail and orienting the rings properly.

Pre Zbrush blockout and early model progress

Had some time to practice creating knots inside of maya by using splines.

The actual sole of the tabi wrap is a series of loops that I used to imitate the knot work without having to make a continuous knot, especially since I plan on doing a retopo or replacing the splines with an unwrappable tube to texture in the future. The colors are only for visualization purposes.

Here I blocked out using primitives and the simple sculpt I am working on top of.

I worked in chunks creating knots for the most important regions first, then moved to replacing repeating knot areas 

This was a fun knot to learn about on the heel, It goes slightly behind the heel to prevent slipping and allows for the foot to roll into its steps.

Lace knot refining and spline tests. Added in the tabi armor for the top

Threw in a few more ankle loops hid the connections behind the knots

Added a lace for the armor on the back and began seperating the fabric for chainmail.

Chainmail consists of 3 parts, One double reinforced loop, on thicker middle loop and slimmer loops where it will connect to the armor.

clay render

Ugly scene view got ahead of myself just wanted to see how colors might look, Going to refine the model in zbrush still once the rest of the armor reaches this stage.

baseplate for my republic commando project