INTRODUCTION
Hello, my title is Rajendra Patten, aka SUPROELARS. I’m a conventional, movement, and 3D artist from Mauritius. I’m principally self-taught and bought again into 3D in March 2021, selecting Blender as my primary 3D software program. I specialise in character design, surroundings, texturing, and world creation.
INSPIRATION
I really like sci-fi and alien stuff. I used to be impressed whereas taking part in the sport Star Wars – Fallen Order and watching The Mandalorian TV present. The right cocktail for inspiration. I needed it to be purely inventive, imaginary, and with a unique contact, the place I used to be a part of an exploration staff that traveled to a planet to find new life.
MODELING
I began by sketching the essential kind for the character in Blender with the sculpting instruments. I imagined these aliens small, skinny, and with reptile skins. They don’t seem to be violent except pushed to the intense or after traumatizing occasions. They’re extremely smart creatures, superior in expertise, and a few are spiritually free.
After finalizing the first kind, I additional developed the secondary types, the eyes, nostril, and lips. Then I duplicated the character and began to tweak the traits with the transfer brush to create variations. I got here up with a primary variation and spent a while exploring the characters primarily based on their personalities and tales.
That is the primary design variation.
As soon as happy with the ultimate designs, it was time for retopology. I used the Retopoflow add-on.
UV UNWRAPPING
After unwrapping, I added a shrinkwrap modifier on every of the characters, projected the excessive particulars onto the low-poly mannequin, then subdivided it 4 instances with the multires modifier and utilized the shrinkwrap modifier so that every one the data is saved within the multires.
DETAILS
The small print had been added on the 4th subdivision utilizing some alphas downloaded from the Zbrush website. I used the clay brush, added the feel, set the stroke to stencil, methodology to airbrush, and painted the pores and skin particulars. All the main points had been utilized to the opposite characters utilizing the identical methods.
CLOTHING
For the clothes, I used the masks pen to color the type of the fabric, then extracted, smoothed, and retopologized it. I used some references from Pinterest.
And for o-kirimen and i-tublis, I modeled the form of the poncho and cape, utilized a material simulation to it, after which utilized the modifier for finer sculpting with the fabric brush.
TEXTURING
I used Substance Painter for texturing, and I at all times bake from excessive to low. For export, I set the subdivision to 1 as my low-poly mannequin and 4 as high-poly, then exported it to FBX with apply modifiers checked.
Then I loaded the low-poly in Substance Painter and baked the conventional, curvature, and AO from the high-poly. With the current updates, baking is far more enjoyable and straightforward to right errors.
The textures had been primarily based on reptile skins, frogs, lizards, and iguanas. My favourite texturing workflow was for the youngest o-lemta. This one was primarily based on a colourful iguana from Pinterest.
The garments had been additionally textured in Substance Painter. I used a base cloth material and painted on prime to get the specified outcomes, specializing in filth, scratches, and dirt. Then I utilized some paint alphas from the default library of SP for the designs.
After the texturing part, I imported the textures again into Blender in 4k and cranked up extra particulars with the multires modifier. I used the Principled BSDF shader and plugged all of the maps into their corresponding parameters.
Exported colour maps from Substance Painter.
The Multires subdivision was elevated together with the textures and regular info. This enhanced the main points and made it nice to match reptile skins.
DESIGNS
These particular symbols on their brow symbolize their tasks, who they’re, and their tribes. They’re first acknowledged by this on their planet. I designed these symbols in Affinity Picture, and for those who analyze them fastidiously, the designs are primarily based on their silhouettes.
POSING
Primarily based on their character, every one wanted a pose to precise their character. For posing, I lowered the subdivision stage to 0, masked the pinnacle and neck, smoothed the masks, inverted the masks, and posed the mannequin with the rotation and transfer software in sculpting mode.
SCENES
I organized the scene in a easy method, utilizing a digital camera with DOF, a background, and two lights. One was a primary gentle, and the second acted as a rim gentle. I added a colour to the background to match the character’s texture and surroundings. The principle gentle was 500W, and the rim gentle was 400W.
I used Eevee to examine if all the pieces was tremendous earlier than rendering in cycles.
POST-PROCESSING
The post-processing and colour correction had been completed in Affinity Picture. For the backgrounds, the feel of Jupiter was used. I duplicated them, modified the mixing mode, and painted and erased till I bought the specified outcomes.
I used cycles for the ultimate rendering with 1000 samples and GPU compute.
PROJECT SIBLINGS
BACKSTORY, SYMBOLISM AND MEANING
These are the portraits of three aliens from planet OI-K45 after their interviews.
“After a visit to planet OI-K45, we encounter these aliens. Every mark represents who they’re, their duties, and tasks.”
- o-kirimen (The Eldest) – Sensible, he’s in pursuit of the non secular supreme and methods to attach with different beings within the photo voltaic system. He affords steerage to his environment and helps the neighborhood. He’s typically present in a cave learning historic books and meditating.
- i-tublis – Robust and violent. Having witnessed the loss of life of his dad and mom, i-tublis lives with anger and trauma. With a stressed thoughts and horns with symbolic significance that continue to grow because of anger, he typically goes on a killing spree within the dry land, killing creatures ruthlessly as remedy. Some even see him as a defender.
- o-lemta (The youngest) -Mental, curious, and sort. Pilot of spaceships and scientist, o-lemta additionally belongs to the society of Evoli 9-4 the place he research, invents, and contributes to the development of life on the planet. He has a robust ardour for mechanics and is usually discovered within the hangar crafting and repairing spaceships.
- Planet OI-K45 that means – “OI” as a result of the inhabitants’ names begin with “i” and “o,” for instance, I-tublis, O-lemta, O-kirimen.
- K45 – 1045 km radius of the planet.
- O-lemta belongs to the society of Evoli 9-4, the place “Evoli” comes from “evolution.”
- Quantity 9 – The quantity 9 represents compassion, kindness, and efforts towards creating the best good.
- Quantity 4 – The quantity 4 represents stability, practicality, and onerous work.
And that is it. Thanks for studying my article.
I hope you might have a pleasant day!
In regards to the Artist
Rajendra Patten – SUPROELARS, a contract movement and 3D Artist dwelling in Mauritius.
