Videogame Character Development - Painting

After finishing up with the high poly modelling within mudbox, I began painting each piece of geometry, ready to be baked down into a specular map along with the normal maps which would come from the baking of the geometrical values from the high poly meshes themselves.

I began the painting process with the part of my character I was most eager to paint, the boot.

I started with a base layer of brown, a brown that would be commonly found on a boot and built on top of it with multiple layers including Black and an alternate brown for the sole, cream/beige for the upper of the boot itself and another layer or the initial brown, the beige and a blue, each used for respective sections of trim on the boot.

I used a mix of the airbrush, standard brush and pencil tools for painting the boot, ranging in use from the base coats to the finer details.
Below are screen captures or each layer following their respective pain processes.

Possibly one of the more simple to paint, yet intricate pieces of my character was the bionic arm, whilst the mesh itself was more intricate in comparison to the other arm. As a result this mesh only needed two layers of pain, one for the skin tone base layer and a layer of black for the gaps in between bionic plates.

To represent the skin tone I sourced a high resolution image of skin online, modified the file type in order to use it in Mudbox as a projection stencil, then used the projection tool to paint the skin tone onto the arm.

To follow the base coat I applied a coat of a fully opaque black to the grooves in the arm, this was done to make the 'plates' pop more substantially and to give it an overall more bionic look.

Possibly the most complex part of the model to paint is the head, and due to the issues I had encountered through my own doing earlier in the production process, I encountered another stumbling block here.

I could not simply paint onto the head as I had lost the UV values upon cutting the high poly head in half, to mirror the sculpted ear early in the high poly process, I therefore could not transport this model back into Mudbox as I would have liked and had to find another method to paint the head.

Taking this issue into account, I baked the Higher polygonal head onto the low mesh and exported the low poly head from Maya to Mudbox, keeping the normal maps assigned to the head, this gave me a platform to paint on which had a reasonable level of detail in the surface, enough to paint on top of with more ease.

Upon importing the low poly head with the normal map applied into mudbox, I increased the subdivision level as I did previously to begin the high poly creation, but this time to provide myself with a smoother surface to paint onto. 

I started on the face with a simple skin tone projection, much like the arm. I then concentrated on the facial features, the projection tool allowed me to paint on eyebrows and lips specifically with relative ease, as I felt it hard to attain a realistic looking eyebrow with simply brushes and pencil tools.

I also applied a layer of hair around the head, though not all the way over the head as my character has a hat, this will be staying on and his head will not be exposed.

After I had finished the painting of the face on the low poly head, I removed the normal map layer so to avoid any clashing issues that a potential double normal bake may cause and sent it back to Maya.

Whilst the projection tool has helped with various painting elements in my character, I will be looking to improve my anatomical study in time to come, improving not only my modelling but also my texturing in the process.

My finished low poly painted head can be seen below.