My 2 day project is ready and I'm really happy of how it all turned out. Mainly I work with more or less cartoony style, so you can imagine that this was quite a challenge for me. I could've kept working on this- clean up the geometry, add more detail, optimize shaders, render in higher quality, but I really don't need another work-in-progress project in my account, besides I actually think that it looks quite cool as it is.
The sculpting was a really rough process, but what I learned is that you don't have to create the perfect edges and faces, instead focus on "control points". Of course it is much easier when the sculpted mesh looks like the final result, but if you aren't a pro, then it is ok just to set up the basic shape and then during retopo stage fix all those bumps. If I would've tried to create a perfect sculpt, then it would've taken me a week or a month, so it is really essential to know when and how to cheat.
Materials were also challenging, because this is the part where most artists screw things up or make you fall in love. The geometry itself can be quite primitive, but if shaders are made with a deep understanding then amazing things can be achieved- this was the fact that bothered me and also pushed forward. Basically I started with creating an individual shaders for each material- painted metal, chrome, plastic, fabric and so on. All nodes were grouped and attached to the "master shader" where I combined everything with textures which worked as masks. To give a bit more randomness I overlayed a dirt and galvanized metal texture.
Overall as I said- the project was real fun and even though it didn't end up as a some kind of robot-pilot as I thought it would, still ninjas are probably even cooler!
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