MRRGMDDN: High Poly Character V2

My final character is a Rock Back Turtle! A turtle that has grown in size and composition. With defenseless herbivorous perishing in great numbers due to rising waters and reduced land space the lowly turtle had to adapt to survive. Through evolution the Rock Back Turtle's shell lumped rocks and dirt over its shell to the point of creating a small ecosystem atop its back with nourishing mushrooms to fed on. The grassy mound doubles as an ingenious disguise to hide itself from viscous predators. The Rock Back Turtle spends much of its time slowly trudging through the low under crops of enormous forests, searching for rays of light to grow its shells foliage to keep him well fed.

One of the major issues I had to face when developing my low poly character was how essential it was to find a way to create a grass effect on the characters body. Its a major design aesthetic of the character and it needed to be created in a way that would not compromise on computer performance, render time and overall logistics of high poly character modelling.

I decided to create a transformed plane poly with a png transparency texture. This way a basic two dimensional grass was created. With a few duplication's and tweaking a low poly grass clump was created. With this low poly replacement for something like the fur tool or paint tool (incredibly high poly) a really nice effect was created.

The re-texturing of the model brought the character to life in a really organic and natural way. The level of detail in the arrangement of the grass was something I spent many hours playing around with and I think it really paid off in this case, especially when comparing it to the prior model.

Building grass over the model, I thought a little grass beard could look cool but decided against it as it covered too much of the characters face and drew attention away from it.

Initial rock and mushroom coverage

Animating the character was impossible with such a high poly count, by using reduced poly grass it lowered the amount of polys compared to if I tried to populate the character with the grass or fur paintbrush effects. But this characters animations were always going to be very simple and clunky considering what he is, his body is a shell that is supposed to stay static that would simply sway from left to right as his legs moved him along, this is seen in the low poly animations.

Here is a basic playblast of how the character would move, his limbs are reasonably restricted and hidden anyway so the animation is meant to be basic.

For the final turn table and hi-res renders I went for a slick lighting scheme to try and put the character in a sunny environment, as this suits his character perfectly. Using mental ray and messing around with the shaders and illumination details the grass clumps look reaaallly impressive. The rocks also have a really nice shiny tinge to them just like as if he was walking around a sunny forest or meadow.

I think I accomplished my goal of re-texturing my character and bringing him to life in a creative and imaginative way.