Well, I had made my friend's character Speaks-With-Blade not too long ago, and I decided to give another try to make a human character in 3D. I had this little project of making my own character for ages, but I always ended up really sad of horrible results. But this happens on everything, one isn't born knowing all, and practise makes you become better. So here I went two-three months ago to start making my character, Hjalmar, again. I've decided to start a thread here as I work on this character and finish him. So I'll start by explaining how it started. For reference, this is Hjalmar in game:



I started the mesh in ZBrush, with a base head, which I sculpted on to the point I was happy with how it looked. I didn't bother with the ears much, because Hjalmar is supposed to have long hair that in the final render would cover the ears. Here's the ZBrush final sculpt:




I had done the UVs already, as I needed the Texturing.XYZ displacement as base too. Which I made when the head shape was as I wanted. I made the UVs in Maya, then in Mari projected the displacement map, and returned to ZBrush, to add my own detail, such as wrinkles, more pores, scars... The scars were quite a hard thing to sculpt by the way... Fun detail, mostly, the scars were gained through RP sessions with friends.

After making the head and the arms, I began doing the armor. In game it is Bloodforge style, in combination with Fire Drakes Sabatons, and as shoulders Breton Light Tier 1, to simulate a fur cloak. The armor took lots. But I eventually had it, and I tested the displacement map, making the first render with VRay:



I'm not a fan of displacement, because it makes the renders take soooo long, but it was okay. I loved the result. And then I began painting the diffuse and specular maps using Mari aswell. Then... I added SubSurface Scattering and here is the result I got.




Next step was making the eyes. Not easy, at all, because I wanted them to look as real as possible, eventually I got it right:



Yes, it even has that eye "wetness" between the eyeball and the lower eyelid. It does give it a more realistic look. Next step was making the armor displacements, applying them, and then texture it. In the end I got these three renders as result.







Note that there's no cloak there, nor any furs the armor has. That was actually the next step. And the one I was most afraid of. As every single time I've tried to do hair and fur I've failed horribly. Worst part... was that Hjalmar as I said, has long hair, and not just long hair, but also a braid on his beard... My own character complicating my work hehe. In the past I joked with a friend that we should just cut off his hair and beard in RP. Ironically enough, right after I had done the beard braid in my 3D model, Hjalmar, in RP, lost his beard to goats. Well, here's some weeks of work on the hair, beard, eyebrows, moustache and eyelashes. Don't be scared of floating head haha.



I easily made the furs and the cloak too. But I ran into a problem. My laptop wasn't powerful enough to render all that fur and displacement. Not even my desktop. Thankfully a 32 GB RAM computer allowed me to do so, and while I don't call this character finished just yet, as I want to rig him and pose him (with his weapon, which I made some time ago), and a few more plans I've for him, I'm getting rather good renders, so here go the last pictures of this post. I also added "peach fuzz", which are these little white hairs on the body that are better seen against the light. The last render here shows it, but... I believe I added waaaay too much, so I might remove some.










I'll update this thread as I get better renders and... hopefully soon rig him and pose him, and add him somewhere in a cool background
Hope you liked it!