Hi, I'm Etienne Vanier, the lead artist at Nine Dots and here's an article explaining how I made the first landmark 3d model in Outward. The software used are Blender, Zbrush and Photoshop.
This piece was built to demonstrate the landmark Kickstarter perk.
I wanted to make a statue that was roughly sculpted directly from a cliff, so I searched Wikipedia for more specific ideas. The inspiration came from ancient Arab mythology, specifically the god Hubal, which was represented with a gold hand.
I made a quick drawing to get a feel for the statue's pose and the amount and angle of rock that would support it. To give it a more regal feel, I added a bronze crown.
During the sculpt, I opted to forgo the crown, as I was getting feedback that it would distract from the metal gauntlet that I wanted to put forward. Instead, the Zeus-like beard I had added sufficed to make the character seem imposing.
This piece posed a variety of technical challenges. For example, because the character is small compared to the stone that supports it, I was unable to add details to it in Zbrush. It's only after separating it from the large rock that I could proceed with the sculpt.
I wanted to add beard ornaments found in Babylonian statues but earlier difficulties in this sculpt would have made it too time consuming for a simple demonstration. If I have to make another similar sculpt, I'll separate the head from the rest of the statue and then I'll be able to sculpt all the tiny details I want!
The end result is a single 3D model with 18,000 triangles that has a 4k diffuse, specular and normal texture. I've added a few vines from another model that we already had. From start to finish, it took a bit more than day and a half. After the lessons I've learned from this sculpt, I could do something similar in a day.
If we want to spend more time on this statue, we'll add more vegetation to it, like vines and small trees. We might also add elaborate magical FXes around his golden hand.
Till next time.
