Started spring 2024 – Finished Spring 2025
Project Breakdown
This 3D model was my second ever model that was sculpted in Zbrush, after my human skull as my first creation. Once I had used the first project to learn the basics of Zbrush, I decided to let myself run free with this project and go all out to challenge what I could do with the small amount of knowledge that I had. I got to experiment a lot with different sculpting tools, brushes, and features that helped me learn more about the software. I wanted to go for a dragon as it is one of my favorite mythological creatures, as they are so diverse in their designs.
Low poly model
High poly model
I started by creating a very basic shape of the model by using z-spheres, and then began to sculpt muscle groups over the top of those to keep building on to the shape. Once I was happy with the anatomy, I started making multiple different scale patterns by themselves and converting them into brushes so that I could easily use them over and over again. In order to create the webbing on the spine and chest, I first extruded the spikes from the main model, and then selected the regions to add a thin sheet of topology through. I would then use the move brush to shape it to the spikes as well as adding some wrinkles and variations.
The placement of the horns, spikes, and ears were all choices in regards to the composition because they all flow nicely in the same direction. This creates good movement in the features of the design.
After finishing the sculpt of the model, I had taken a break for some other projects that I was working on. When I had come back to this project, I had learned a lot more about good modeling techniques and topology that I had not originally applied to this model, so it was difficult to work with the topology that I had. I ended up creating a new low poly model decimated from the high poly one, which ended up working pretty well. Since this would not be a game asset, I was okay with it still being decently high poly in order to preserve the detail. In the future, I will know what methods to use in order to have better geometry throughout my workflow to optimize my models.
While my low poly model was not perfectly optimized, I was still able to get a fairly decent bake out of it in substance painter. I then decided that I wanted to go for a sea dragon type of look, and stuck to a lot of shades of blue and some shinier elements in order to portray that it lives in the water. The webbing also helped with this idea because many fish have that type of webbing to aid with swimming.
Aimed to make the eyes look like pearls as another addition to the sea dragon look.
Webbing details were originally blue but I chose to use an analogous color that worked well with the blues and added some more visual interest.
While creating these textures, I also played around with some other ideas including a lava dragon and a corroded copper statue of a dragon. In the lava dragon version, I had a lot of fun using emissive maps in order to portray the effect of hot lava seeping out of the mouth and underneath the scales. The corroded copper dragon utilized height maps in order to show the copper underneath the corrosion that was eating away at it.
