Combat Goat

Character Breakdown

Momen Elwan

Momen Elwan

Lead Character Artist

Introduction

Hello guys.
My name is Momen Elwan, and I am a Lead 3D character artist at ShareCreators. Started as a 3D artist back in 2016 in a Tv/commercial studio here in Egypt, worked with them for almost 3 years, and after that, I decided to leave my full-time job and become a freelancer.
I worked as a Freelancer for 3 years, then I joined ShareCreators as a Full-time Character artist. I love doing personal projects because I can always learn something new from each project.

Goals

My goal from this project was to learn grooming inside Houdini and also use UE5 as my main software for lighting, shading and rendering.

Software

For this project, I used Zbrush as my main software for sculpting and modeling “ Marvelous designer for basic cloth modeling”.

Topogun for retopology “did some of retopo inside Zbrush”
RizomUV and 3ds max for Unwrapping.
Substance painter for texturing.
UE5 for lighting, shading, and rendering.
Davinci Resolve for color grading.

Project

Why did I choose this project?! Simply, I loved the vibe and the look of the character.
I have a secret folder on my PC that contains every concept or drawing I like while I am on the internet in my free time looking for inspiration and cool ideas.

But this character got me, the concept is by Su Jian.

References

So, I started looking on the internet for some ideas and references to serve my needs and also to open the door for some additional things I can add to the design, as I got only the front view and had to fill the back with something that fits the design.

Here is my reference board.

Blockout

Started the block out by making a base model for the body, just to be able to fit the cloth and everything on top of it.

For the cloth, my workflow is to do some basic garments inside Marvelous and then bring everything to Zbrush for further detailing and sculpting.

Then after using Zmodeler and the other sculpting brushes, I got this result.

For the jacket, I used a ready brush got from ArtStation, and for the other gears and hard surfaces, I use “ZModeler” first and then “Move” and “Standard” brush to adjust the shapes.

Grooming

Ok… now to the fun and hard part, I used Houdini for the first time ever, I wanted to learn how to groom with it, always hear from my friends that it’s much better than Xgen Maya.

And they are totally RIGHT! Not saying it was a straightforward thing to do, but I had to join the JesusFC Patreon community for one month to learn the software and understand it.

But in the end, I achieved a very good result as it was my first time. So, here is what I did inside Houdini.

The face itself contains 6 groups, to be able to achieve variety in length and look

Same as for the Beard, it contains 3 groups.

I tried to separate everything to be able to control the groom better.

There is no complexity in the grooming process, it’s all about some clumps, noise and curling with some masks here and there to control the overall look.

LowPoly / UV / Baking

Did retopology for most of the parts, but there were a lot, so I decided to use the weapon in midpoly state just to save time and not to lose passion.

For Baking, I used the new Substance Painter Baking mode.

And it was quite good.

Texturing

Texturing was a fun thing to do too, specially when you put so much time and effort in making tiny details in your model and want to texture it well in order to be visible while rendering.

Here are some timelapse shots for the texturing process

Lighting

I used UE5 for the lighting and shading process, it’s a simple process to be honest, because I dropped the textures and just linked them to the materials, and set a dramatic lighting setup with the help of some assets from Bridge.