This is a breakdown for my Cavalry Officer personal project which will showcase my thought process and workflow throughout the project.
Objective
The objective for this project was to create a believable CG character based on a historical period. I chose a military officer from the Vietnam era to demonstrate my ability to layer textures, props, and to challenge myself in giving a character a grounded reality.
The skills I wished to push for this project was skin texturing, clothing creation, prop creation (medals, ribbons...etc), and creating an overall historical aesthetic.
Inspiration and Reference
The inspiration for this project came from a series of images I came across documenting the uniform of a Vietnam era soldier. These images gave me a great basis for creating my character. These images combined with other outside sources helped realize the cavalry officer I created.
Patch and Medal Creation
A large amount of my medal and patch creation was possible with the use of Zbrush's alpha to mesh function. I used a collection of hi-res photos taken from the internet and photos shot from my relatives own possessions to use for this process.
The first step to this process was delighting each photo's shadows and specular to give a good basis for a height map (and texture map). The photos would then be converted and altered to black and white gradations to use for alpha mesh creation. These mesh's would commonly need minor cleanup but would act as a great basis additional sculpting.
Clothing and Prop Creation
The cloth creation process first began by researching clothing patterns and proportions for the outfit. I used the references gathered and the closest patterns available for the outfit. If I could not obtain or find a certain pattern I would combine elements of different pieces. The hardest part of the outfit was creating the tie, shirt collar, and overcoat collar. The overcoat collar was not realistically big enough but would act as good basis for continual brush sculpting.
Cloth Cleanup and Detail Addition
Texture Creation
