This tutorial will describe briefly how I created my orc character from scratch.
Design
First of all, I designed my character and figure out the proportion and such from the drawing. Then I moved to sculpture, it took me about a week to finish this orc, but I found that the sculpture really helped me a lot during the process of creating the 3D version of the orc.
Modelling the Orc
ProxyI used picture of my sculpture as a rotoscope to start with. I built a simple proxy out of it. After finishing the proxy, I took the rotoscope out and look at the real life sculpture as my main reference
Model
I started modeling the actual orc from his head. I spent quite some time trying to get the eye to look right because I think eyes are the most important part to describe a character. I used a cube to start with, and cut it in half, then I use duplicate Instantiate to model.
For the body, I did the same process for the head. After I finish making the body from a cube, I merged it with the head together then fix the stitched area.
Modelling the Armour
After I finish the body, I started building the armor. I used the same process again, building it from cubes.
For the knee pad, I build a generic skull first ( which I can always reuse later) then I cut it in half then dulplicate the edges to shape the edge of the armor.
Unwrapping
I made a cluster for the head polygon so that I can make a separate UV map for it. I used a 2500 pixel for the head and 2500 for the body
Texturing
For the texture, I always like green orc; therefore, I decided to go with green. I just randomly put on different color to get the color break up then I played with the opacity. I made sure that I did not have extreme light and dark area in my color map because I want the actual light to play with the highlight and shadow I spent some time to texture the scar on the body to make it look like a wet, fresh scar. I had to combine the spec, bump and color map to get the look that I want
Blend shape
This is the most fun part of making my orc! I spent about a day to make around 15 to 20 face shapes. I use blend shape library when modeling it because I like to see the default shape and the shape that I changed all together.
Rigging
For the rigging part, I only made a simple rig for him for posing purposes. I did not spend much time properly weighting him. But I made a rig for his chains instead of using dynamics ( for a much better control in posing him).
Shader
I used diffusion to fake SSS. I really like the result.
Final Lighting
Finally, for my final shot, I used only 2 spotlights. One really bright back light to bring the silhouette, and one key light. My T.A. actually did this render for me in XSI 4.2 since it has the new glow feature.
