Legacy of Kain Models

[The_Hylden]

Hello,

I’ve been here many months, but this is my first post. It’s taken a while to learn modeling. Had some issues along the way (and every day’s something new), but I set out to recreate models and more from the Legacy of Kain series (Soul Reaver and Blood Omen games) and to build a portfolio, so that’s what I’ve been doing. I never modeled before, but last year I took up texturing, trying to retexture one of the games in the series. I decided to jump right in. The first model I went for was Kain, his evolved vampire form. The prerendered cutscenes in the Soul Reaver games, by GlyphX, were amazing and I wanted to recreate Kain’s model as faithfully as I could, while upgrading to current stuff we have, namely higher poly counts, normal and displacement maps.

So here’s the final render:

Rendered in Marmoset Toolbag 2.

Here’s two comparison shots with the original model (I think I didn’t have the displacement map with these, but it’s not much difference in Marmoset):

… Ok, one shot here. Have to make a new post.

Attachments

[The_Hylden]

Xtreme Closeup:

I also have his Soul Reaver modeled. I haven’t textured it yet, though:

The render from the game it’s based on:

[The_Hylden]

From this, I am also working on human Kain, attempting unlike the earlier games showed to make him look like the human that would have evolved eventually into the elder vampire form above.

This is the progress so far:

His face isn’t as far along, but this is where his armor is right now:

Took a break from that to finish the vampire Kain above’s pose in Zbrush, then also to devise a scene to place him in. I’m still working on that, but I’m attempting to recreate the entire layout of the Pillars. Basically, 9 huge pillars set on a large dais, in a large open area of the woods, with a bastile-like gate and stone steps. To spruce up the steps, which were a little bland in Soul Reaver 2, I’m adding classic angelic statues. Just finished the preliminary work on the poses, rendered in Zbrush:

[The_Hylden]

Second pose:

Her robes are adorned with rune symbols seen throughout the games.

And this is early human Kain, before I toned him down a little:

[The_Hylden]

Working on his Iron Sword (named that in Blood Omen, after he becomes a fledgling vampire) and the one he had as a human:

The Pillars:

The steps:

Steps ang gate, before I changed some architecture:

[The_Hylden]

Closer on the steps:

I’m hoping to get the scene done in the next week, or more likely couple of weeks. I’m looking into trying to use Cryengine 3 to render it. Maybe use some trees, so my machine doesn’t explode from millions of polygons on pine trees in Zbrush. We’ll see.

The 15th aniversary of Soul Reaver is coming up, so eventually I’d like to get around to modeling Raziel, also.

Thanks for looking.

[vlad74]

Nice progress. Keep it up.

[The_Hylden]

Thanks a lot

[Clintus_Maximus]

Hey great work! I love the LOK series and it seems like you’ve done a great job so far! Hope they keep coming.

[The_Hylden]

Thank you. I’m definitely going to keep at it. The 15th anniversary of Soul Reaver is about a month and a half away. In addition to this, I have to get to Raziel definitely at some point

[The_Hylden]

Less gaudy of a background for Kain’s render, in the meantime:

[The_Hylden]

Progress on human Kain. Just the polypainted diffuse with a trishader material rendered in Zbrush, but no lights, sss, or anything yet. The only think left to add on the skin are moles, imperfections like red splotches, scars – that type of thing. I’ll get the shader working after that in Marmoset to see what tweaks need to be done. The last thing I’ll then add are pimples and dirt. The other stuff will carry over into his vampire form, but the pimples and dirt will separate further the transformation from human to vampire. It’ll probably be subtle, but I’ll know the difference, at least.

Trying him with and without a little stubble. In the open of Blood Omen 1, when he’s still human, he’s been on the road for however long, so he probably won’t be clean shaven. This look needs tweaking, though.

[The_Hylden]

I find Fibermesh a bit hard to get the exact look I’m after. My plan with it, though, is to export it as Maya curves and then convert the curves to polygon strips/cards. Can anyone tell me if this is the best approach, if I want to get his hair rendered eventually in a game engine like Cryengine? I have to admit, some things are still a bit wonky for me as I go. It’s hard to get hair right, hard to get capes to render right, and I find the rigging thing to still be a bit convoluted. I kind of wish it was as free, all of that, as it is to sculpt.

Without the polypaint and hair:

I’m putting human Kain on hold for a bit. The 15th anniversary of Soul Reaver 1 is coming up this month, so I’ve gotten started on Lieutenant Raziel for it. I hope to be far enough along on it in the next couple of weeks to make a showing for the anniversary.

Thanks for watching.

[The_Hylden]

It’s been quite a while. I’ve had a lot of things crop up, including health problems due to my sleep apnea. I’ve been also trying to learn rigging and animation, but I don’t know how I’d be able to do that and work on the models. Might as well stick to making them for right now.

First, back in August I was making progress doing Lieutenant Raziel for the 15th anniversary of Soul Reaver. I showed this stage of it in September:

Little more progress on this:

I’ll be moving onto finishing his sculpt next. With human Kain’s skin and hair now finished, I’ll be working to finalize Razie, so I can make his human form and his ruined wraith form. A fan project remaking Soul Reaver, titled Soul Revenant, is going to use these assets.

Here is the finished human Kain, skin and hair done, fixes to sculpted details. All hair is made from layered polygon strips. Some polygon card/strips accenting chest hair, side burns, some facial hairs, arms, eyebrows, and nose hairs are also used.

On the model, I used the dan standard and Bad King’s Short Hair brushes to sculpt in the hair detail. I used the hair planes brush out there for creating all added hair planes, and moved them into place in Zbrush, before some modification in Maya.

Rendered in Marmoset Toolbag 2:

[The_Hylden]

More…

I still have the arms separate. I’ll only possibly ever need them in one shot, if ever I get to that point. Every outfit he’ll wear when he becomes a vampire covers the forearms and elbow, though.

Zbrush High Poly sculpt, an early version of the hair planes framing the face:

Incidentily, I much prefer to render using the matcaps, now that I’ve gotten that to work.

[The_Hylden]

Still working on Raziel, actually all three versions of him (human, vampire, wraith forms).

In the meantime, just wanted to update with a better render of human Kain. Making him more human by reducing that chin, nose, etc. I followed a bit too closely his evolved form in that. I also redid his eyes in 3ds Max. Rendered still in Marmoset:

Incidentally, I hope this size render will work better for the site. I keep uploading larger pics, forgetting that they show up without any thumbnail. That’s probably been hard to scroll through for people.

Attachments

[The_Hylden]

Sharing some paid work I’ve done. A client wanted likenesses done of his family, including his father who passed away last year. I was very honored to do something like that. The models are being done for 3D printing, so this is also a break from doing game-type models. Originally, the concept was to do likenesses of his mother and father and the bodies would be modeled after characters from the 1984 Dune movie. I really liked the idea. I think he’s deciding to make it more intimate for his mother, so they’ll be modeled in their wedding attire instead. The heads are complete. 3 day’s to model each (very glad to do something that I could finish a lot easier, too). The bodies will be started up in February. Modeled and rendered in Zbrush.

His dad’s head (the body is temporary; a model of a stillsuit from the movie that he got from another artist):

He wanted to see the models with smiling expressions, so this is the final settled on:

His mother:

[The_Hylden]

He settled on a warm, closed mouth smile for her.

I don’t think I quite did her open mouth smile justice anyway. Her face was a little harder to get down. I didn’t have as many references from the right angles and her face is very expressive. Each picture, she looked different. But, it was good to attempt it.

[The_Hylden]

So, the client wanted some revisions of the proportions to get them just that much closer. The most drastic of alteration was a different haircut for the mother. I had to make a new hair piece, redo a little of the details on her head. I also didn’t realize before that the perspective angle in Zbrush could be changed (oops). Ah, that’s so much better. These are the final renders of the heads (which may only alter slightly when the bodies are made):

And I have his permission to show the reference pics for his mother and father.

[The_Hylden]

Revisions on the father’s model, based on some other pictures and he’s now with the right smiling expression:

And the body is complete, modeled in his wedding suit:

His left middle finger and hand suffered some accident long ago that left it looking like that.

One of the wedding reference pics:

Everything was modeled in Zbrush for blocking. To get the clean shape and edged, each part was then retopologized in 3D Coat, then brought back in and subdivided with creased edges at various parts. I also UVed the suit coat, pants, collar, and tie so that I could apply textures in surface noise for the fabric detail and have it travel along the model as if it were stitched that way. Though I have them, I didn’t use the insert brushes for laces on shoes and for buttons, but I modeled each myself, since I needed a specific look to each (except the end piece of the shoe laces, which I did use from the insert brush). Plus, it wasn’t that hard to do. Thanks to the stitches brush from BadKing on the shoes. I modified the alpha on that for a closer stitch. All of the details are still kept broad enough to hopefully register when the model is printed small. That is something I tried to keep in mind as I worked.

I’m very, very thankful for this business. Not only is it finally money coming in, but with these commissions, I was able to finally afford to give back to Zbrush. I bought Zbrush 4R7 and I’m testing out the 64 bit tonight I especially am interested to see the Zremesher and modeler parts of it. It already seems super fast.