Rough Week | Method Found

     To start the past week had been a rough one as I didn't have much time for much of any project. However I did manage to fix some of the issues in my ECGA submission and found a method for adding in details unlike an initial attempt.

    So to start I went in a direction keeping in mind that this is a sculpt it's supposed to be pretty and not necessarily game ready. I went through the base and top and smoothed the geometry to set the three key smooth preview in stone. This way it maintains the fine curves and creases. Per the advice of my peers I opted against doing the wings but I did do it to the center.

    I realized that when I had heavily altered this originally I did a terrible UV in ZBrush. So this time around I went in Maya and gave each part a 4K UV sheet to themselves. I really, really want to use the power of my CPU/GPU to produce the best result possible. 

    What I realized this time around was that I really only need to bring the base and top into ZBrush to apply some indents that I will use for a high poly bake. I didn't want to use alphas in painter just as a matter of preference.

    This is a fairly crude attempt at what I wanted to get at. I heavily abused the method of z-remeshing, projecting, subdividing, and projecting again to get a higher poly to take on more detail. The issue that I have been having is getting straight lines like the reference. I did utilize the radial symmetry tool to achieve the same etching on both the sides and corners of the top. I used masks to get the indents as they are. I may have better luck hand painting it using an adjustment to the stroke setting.

    I plan to research further how to get a relatively straight line so its crisp. Otherwise it's a matter of going into painter baking the high poly onto the low and rendering out in Marmoset. Despite the topology in especially the center being bad it looks quite good without the wireframe on. I'm glad I pivoted to a sculpt rather than with the game side methodology.