09/12/2015
Charlotte Bethany Henderson
100359031
zBrush Alien Head
We were given another model, this time of an Alien Head that had been modeled as a low poly object in Maya and a high poly in zBrush and were tasked with using zBrush to texture it. I also created a normal map for the object, as well as cavity and AO maps.
I started out by applying simple colour schemes to the model, different colours for the teeth, skin and eyes to see what I thought would work well together. Once I had settled on a pale green for the basic skin tone, a 'rotten' yellow colour for the teeth and an acidic yellow for the eyes, I started putting more detail in with the colours.
I had decided that I wanted the creature to look amphibian in nature, so i kept the colours dark to emulate the colours you'd find on deep sea creatures and those who live in murky rivers, to blend into the dark colours near the water bed.
I kept the lighter green in the main skin colour for areas that would be more sensitive, either underbelly skin, or skin that had been damaged in fights etc, hence the skin around the upper lip is a paler green, as this is naturally where scarring would fall on creatures like this.
I chose to work some dirt and blood stains into the cracks on the teeth, to make them look more used, as he isn't exactly going to be brushing his teeth after every meal. The acid green on the inside of the mouth is to create a bile-esque look, to insinuate that the creature produces venom.
I chose to make the metal inserts on his spin look pretty mismatch with the creatures colouring, as I had the idea that maybe they were actually being controlled by an outside force, as the metal and the panelling does not create cohesion within the style of the model in my opinion.
I took the diffuse map into Photoshop once I had baked it out using xNormals and applied several textures that I had found of scales over the base colours of the head, as well as using images of cats eyes for the creatures eyes.
Finally I kept the spec and gloss maps fairly shiny so as the creature looked like it had been submerged in water recently, as in my opinion that is the setting it would most likely be found in.
These are the final renders from Marmoset.
