Magic the Gathering: Liliana Vess

I am working on a personal project. I have been reading the magic the gathering series for a while now. I love the planeswalker series and have been wanting to do something like this for awhile.

http://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/columns/magic-story

I finished reading the ELDRITCH MOON and was inspired to model and create the battle scene and was also inspired by the trailer they made (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NCbhisqd_co&t=5s).

I want to create a Cutscene and potentially a little VR game. I am working on with Unreal and working on learning how to use the Matinee and Cinematics plus the cascade and effects tools.

I am modeling with the goal of using Unreal Matinee as my "render engine" and the potential for a game as 2nd priority.

So far I have Liliana modeled out. I modeled the clothes and had the UV's set before going into Zbrush.

I used Zbrush to get the diffuse textures and base colors out and I used Substance painter to bake out the normal and Xnormal for a detailed height and Ao.  With the Awesome marmoset Toolbag 3 I setup all of the materials and prep the main model to send to Unreal. I setup the Emission/Glow map and will setup a material blueprint to turn on and off when she uses an ability.

As for the Rigging and Animaitons I started using Rapid Rig (https://www.highend3d.com/maya/script/rapid-rig-modular-procedural-auto-rig-for-maya) but if I can get Unreal's rigging tools to work then I will use that one instead. (https://docs.unrealengine.com/latest/INT/Engine/Content/Tools/MayaRiggingTool/) The Dress skirts and cape will be Physx Cloth

The Environment is at semi setup. For the battle cutscene I plan on having her do a waltz around the graveyard pulling up the zombie to act as body guards or shredder fauder as she fights off the werewolves and eldritch monsters.

I have also started the creature modeling as well. I am going to have 3 different versions of a Basic Zombie, I want to use these as the crowd/horde that act.

3 Different Elite Zombie, these ones will have weapon, a Swords, Spears and I am not sure about the 3rd weapon would be, I am thinking about crossbow but not sure.

I have 3 Different Enemy Werewolves, From left to right its Fast Mid Heavy. For coloring I plan to have a Fast Gray, Medium Brown and Heavy Black.  I want the variety and not have a simple cookie cutter model and just place the same model with different textures.

I still want to model some Eldritch monsters and Emrakul

Madame Mirage

I am working on Madame Mirage from Paul Dini (Author), Kenneth Rocafort (Illustrator). Awsome story, I read it last year and was hoping to see a Mirage Game after Darkness.

 A turnaround of the model, a simple and clean sculpt. I am going to be using her for simple animations and so I can improve my particle and hand animation skills again
Nothing to extravagant. This is stills has the Sculpt hair I used as my reference; I use an insert multiple mesh tool the make the strips for the low game hair. I don't want to use Fibers for this one; I plan of using NCloth and am not sure if my little computer can handle rendering the fibers and the NCloth.

An early Marmoset scene. I am still working on the extra people in the scene and laying out the environment and lighting to get the best views. Planned on this for valentines but life and time took precedence.




And I have been getting re-acquainted with the Animators Survival Kit and have made a simple sexy walk in Maya. I have half the dress as Ncloth; still have to go through and fix the last frames so they blend a little more seamlessly and her legs snaps a little too much for my liking.

Ming Hua Beauty Shots

 Beauty Renders of Ming Hua. I used a pose from 
Book 3 episode 8 of Legend of Korra as reference.

The Soothsayer

So I have joined polycount forums and am doing some of the contests and monthly challenges. This is the Soothsayer, Concept by BALDI KONIJN (http://www.baldi-konijn.com/)

 Here is my attempt at the October challenge. I aimed for a cinematic version of the Soothsayer: custscene stylized hyper-realism (think that's an oxymoron) I was inspired by the League of Legends trailer and wanted to aim for the level of quality. 32k Triangles give or take and 4096 Maps

 This is where model was after 6 days of actually working.
I spent most of my time working on his rib cage and neck to get those to really match the concept. I looked at a cat rib cage for reference on stomach and lower rib cage area. I like to model and sculpt some basic hair to help see the characters features as I sculpt. The sculpted hair depending on how I use the character I will pose with the model and use it as a guide for when I create a fibermesh.

Facial Evolution

I thought about having fingernails on his hand but when I looked at the concept he didn't really have anything of the kind to speak of so I left them out of the final model.

Here is the final sculpt of the Soothsayer sans the hair and post posing. I used a combo of Surface masking and alpha maps I made to work on various areas of the body and clothing.

 The staff is surface mapped and sculpted cracks to define areas to match the concept. I made a simple insert mesh brush for the feather and made about 5 different sculpted versions of the same feather and placed around the kilt and arm. The white eyes are the shine and will be transparent when I do a beauty render

I have the Body as one UV map with the toe nails and eyes. The Clothing, Belts, Wraps etc are on another. I have the Staff as its own map, I did not want to lose any detail in the wood.


I posed the model and all parts in Zbrush. Once posed I do fibermesh last. I brush the hairs to match my sculpted version for a rough base and them start moving individual strands for more odd hair hanging out and spike areas to the match the concept. I made a simple plan for a base and threw some grass on there.


I exported the model to Marmoset and here is where the model is so far. Still lots to do and fix. The sash and stones are funky for some reason. I still need to UV the ground and rocks. I am also still working on the soul/ghost goo.