Left 4 Dead Character

will2power

I had started this a while back, but this is turning into one of my favorite projects. My daughter and I loved Left 4 Dead and Left 4 Dead 2. She's told me that she wants to do a Left 4 Dead video to post on Youtube, so I went looking for the characters. One thing I did learn, however was that the game character themselves are really low poly, which isn't surprising for a game character. I saw a lot of people using the Game models and it always comes out looking dated. So always being one to take it a step beyond, I told her to let me work on setting up the models.  At first I was hoping that I could find and apply the game maps to a Genesis character, but I learned really quickly that that was not going to work out. There's just not enough resolution to make for a good character transfer. 

But not one to give up easily, I decided that I would try a different approach. I made a template of Zoey's face and apply it to the Genesis 3 Female. I didn't use this for anything other than selecting a good base texture that closely matched Zoey's character. So I worked with Facegen artist pro and came up with this initial template. 

 

will2power

Then I went looking for a skin template which I thought matched up with the look I was going for. So I found one that was accetable, but I didn't want to just throw a skin on there and not actually make it look like Zoey physically. So for that, I used Facegen Artist pro and Blacksmith 3d's Transmorph tools to get the shape of the head as close to the original as possible. The hair I've selected is just for testing, but I have gotten really close to the shape as well.

I'll be doing some more work on this in Zbrush tonight, but I'm pleased with the initial results. I'm going to be going through the skin and adding the grime and scratches. I probably won't be 100% accurate, but I know that once the whole thing is together, people will look and see Zoey without having to look at a caption to figure out who she is.

IceDragonArt

Wow I would say your are very close indeed!

Saphirewild

+1

I agree with Sonja you major close to the original!!

will2power

The key thing was Facegen Artist. It's sometimes difficult to take a flat image and then try to put it on a model and get close to the look that you want. I took the original figure and imported into DAZ Studio. I applied all the maps and used Iray to get the best render that I could get out of it. Once I did that, I took several of the images that I created and got it into the Facegen. The image here is source model subdivided a few times to give me a very high resolution model. I had to substitute the eyes but I got a very good working image from it. You can see the pixelation from the original image map, but it was pretty muchy what I needed to get an image that facegen could use. I did a side view image as well and from there I was able to get her face mapped onto a Genesis 3 Figure. It does not look good, but it was useful in selecting a base texture that was very similar. You can basically take this into photoshop or some other drawing program and use it as a template to re-produce the grime and scratches and other surface detail. I set up three cameras for front, left and right side views of her head, and set the image ratio to 1:1 so that from each angle I get a matching image in size, position and resolution. With the renders from the 3 cameras, you can get a good result from Facegen Artist but it' s very important to place the cameras at the same height and distance from the head so that everything lines up. 

will2power

Once you've got good reference images, everything else is just down to your own personal tastes when it comes to replicating. I did actually sculpt the head so that it is pretty much dead on shape matched to Zoey's game head. I think I like this skin selection as the final choice for her. So now I'm taking her into Substance painter in order to give it the grime and dirt treatment. 

will2power

I'm still working on her final image maps, but I'm quite pleased with my first test render.