Judge feedback

Judge feedback is anonymous.

• Pros: + Good concept development process, although I would have liked to see more asymmetry in the design to create some focal points. Also more silhouette experimentation could have been done. + Bonus points for scheduling, regardless if you managed to respect the schedule fully or not. + Good use of Marvelous Designer, looking into cloth patterning, although do not rely so much on it for cloth simulation, learning how to sculpt cloth folds is an essential skill for any character artist. It can be noticed in the final model how the cape folds have a “wobbly” appearance due to not being resculpted or being resculpted poorly after the base was created in Marvelous. + Very detailed documentation + Very good set of tutorials/guides for haircards creation. I also recommend this short course as a more in depth guide https://www.artstation.com/marketplace/p/p835o/real-time-hair-tutorial?utm_source=artstation&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=homepage&utm_term=marketplace This also covers how to use the different maps you get from baking the hair strands by using a premade shader in Unreal. If you want to delve even deeper and make your own hair shader I recommend this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vQcZNIFdzbo&list=PLWVY6T1hda_gnr8ZpkM-YWOLrL6ItHhjH&index=8&t=6883s&ab_channel=TriGon Cons: - Facial anatomy can be improved, especially since you were going for a realistic look. Mainly, she looks quite androgynous which I’m not sure if it was intentional or not. Personally, I think you should have accentuated the female features a bit to have a good base, then push her towards a gaunt/malnourished direction with more defined bony landmarks to accentuate her grim reaper role. A good book I recommend on this is https://anatomy4sculptors.com/product/form-of-the-head-and-neck-pdf-ebook/ - To save time (and your PC), I recommend adding very fine details in the texturing phase, especially if they are tileable noise maps. Those can be much more easily added and adjusted in Painter than ZBrush. Try to only make the unique and most apparent sculptural details in Zbrush and the rest in Painter as wanting to make a change further down the line will mean rebaking the whole character and it’s just very inefficient. - Topology can be further improved by carrying out the same number of loops from one mesh to the other. You would ideally want evenly spaced rows that flow from one piece of geometry to another for the best deformation results. For example, the leg and legplates may be two different meshes but you want the same number of vertical rows to flow from one to another as if they were one mesh. If you need more resolution add extra rows only where needed and use reduction patterns to get to the same number as the rest of the mesh. - Tip for baking, you can export your entire high or low poly as one fbx, it will retain the geometry groups without having to export each of them one by one. Naming conventions still apply. - Textures can be much improved, mainly the cloth elements are very dark, pretty much pure black, combined with the darkness of the scene in engine it makes the cloth and the fold details you worked on completely unreadable. I recommend iterating more during concept stage and moving back and forward when texturing between Painter and Unreal to make sure what you have in mind is clearly presented in the final scene texture-wise. (Don’t be afraid to overwrite older texture iterations and save directly in the unreal folder, this speeds up the iterative process and avoids clutter, just make sure you refresh the asset in engine after overwriting the file) - Lighting can be improved as the scene is very dark and hard to read. Try using area lights instead of point lights as they offer you more control and give softer shadows. Feel free to reach me at: verisof08 on Discord or via LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/mihaiandrusandu/