Himalayan Treasures: Exorcist Box - Vitalii Kiforenko

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Name : Vitalii Kiforenko
Country : Canada
I have read the terms and conditions and am eligible for prizes

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Since it is a challenge I thought it would be only right to challenge myself at all stages of the pipeline, so here is what I am up to

Am I overreaching? Potentially
Am I able to finish this along few other props in time? Conceivably
Am I about to sacrifice sleep? That's for certain

My current reference board looks like this :

It also contains some references for other relics that could potentially be useful or even be added to the final scene IF the main one happens to be finished sooner than I expect it to be

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Here is a tiny bit of information about this box from the museum page :
The precise function of the box within a ritual context is unknown, but it may have served as a storage container for other esoteric objects used within a tantric ritual, such as inscribed prayers, images of deities, incense, crystals, herbs, soil, and pills made of ingredients chosen by a lama (religious teacher). The inclusion of skulls as border motifs and the manacled creatures at either end are suggestive of both the protection of the contents and the use of the box in purifying rites or exorcisms.

The inscriptions include spells using Sanskrit words and Tibetan curses, such as, "May its voice sink in darkness and dissolve." Part of the ritual seems to have involved capturing the spirit, and part, subduing it.

Source : The Walters Art Museum

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It is not as bad as it could have been tho, that I admit. I got blockout in order and am slowly moving to sculpting, so far I only have a few unpolished variants of skulls for the border ornament and some details like lock/rings

The main part gonna be a pain it seems

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It's not like I have much of an update, HOWEVER, I promised my cat that I would post updates at least once every 2 days, and he is not the one you want to break promises to. So here is a tiny bit :

I've been adding some more details to secondary elements of the chest and its decor.
I finished the "frame" part of the ornaments on the body of the chest, it might need some polishing, but I'll first bake it as it is and see what I will have got.

These skulls I honestly love, there is something to them.

I made 7 of them and 3 variants per left and right smoke plume, I used those to have repetition as unnoticeable as I could. Then I used the Move brush and Trim Dynamic + Morph brushes on every single instance to add even more variation.

That way it looks like this now (more work on breaking the repetition has been done after a screenshot had been taken) :

For the detailing of secondary elements, like the line that separates the main ornament area (currently unpopulated) and the skulls area, I was doing the following :

Trim Dynamic, Dam Standart, and Morph(squared alpha + negative 100 focal shift) brushes to get stronger, sharp damage on the edges
Flaten and Trim Dynamic to add different, softer damage
Metal damage alphas + Morph, and hPolish brushes to add more variation
The Move brush to add flaws to the shape and silhouette, should make it look more handmade, aged, and less cared for

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2 days, 1 update, as promised, no matter how embarrassing the update is. So, let it be known that I have sculpted a horse. This is the big main ornament on the front face of the chest.

Other than that I have also made some blockouts for other ornaments and I guess I will share more tomorrow, but for now, this is it.
Lack of experience in sculpting slows me down a lot, but so far I still feel like I totally can do everything planned until July, 10

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No one expects it, this time I won't wait 2 days for an update, striking from the darkness of 2 a.m. I am posting progress on the ornaments of the main area.

Step 1. After some feedback I had to admit that crevices on the horse would not be damaged the way they were, so I smoothed and flattened them.

Step 2. Moving from the horse I started with a symbolic image of the deity, beads were repetitive as hell, but I don't regret doing it the way I did.

Step 3. After that was done I switched to making many minor symbols to the left top corner, having simple shapes after the horse and beads is refreshing honestly, they take a little time and make things look closer to the original.

Note for myself : details on bent guys (symbolize souls perhaps?) probably won't bake well, should strengthen them.

There is still a lot to do, but I guess I am getting a grasp on it at last. The fact that someone made this chest with a set of hammers is both inspiring and terrifying.

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I spent most of the weekend playing Phasmophobia and Deep Rock Galactic with friends but somehow managed also to get quite a bit of progress here. It is almost 4 am, however, so I will keep it short.
I decided to switch my attention for a bit to the lid of the chest for it has many similar elements, so I expected it to be filled relatively fast because I could often rely on copypasting with light editing of shape/damage.
So I started with the right half of the frontal face.

I like a lot the skull with a damaged nose, it is a lucky incident to be honest, but it quickly became my favorite, didn't expect it to be the case, but I find it actually to be creepy
And then it was indeed all about instancing and editing, so it did not take too much time

At this point, I am going back to the ornaments of the front. Looking at it with different matcaps makes me realize that a lot will depend on texturing, either I will push myself to the next level of my texturing skills, or the simplicity of ornaments will quickly turn against me

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I will also share it here because it's quite pretty if you ask me. First time doing something like this. And I guess from now on this is how I will be posting all of my updates.

If anyone is looking for how to make something like this (for social media or something) - there is a tutorial on rendering in ZBrush by Michael Vicente (Orb), I was pretty much just following it. This is no promotion so no links.

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It's been a while, I honestly wanted to delay an update for a bit, because I don't have significant progress and I am a bit too tired to make another pretty WIP image, BUT, the promise was made to post an update every 2 days, and so be it.

As you can see I am still focused on populating the main area, the number of pieces is insane, but so far I am going on the edge of my estimates and not falling behind the schedule.

I also apologize for posting a blank viewport screenshot, I'll make it a pretty picture next time, I promise.

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HEAR ME, HEAR ME (or read rather)
I am done with ornaments on the front face, I don't feel my arm, but I say it is worth it.
Long story short in recent days I was sculpting ornaments, more ornaments, and ornaments again. An here is what I got :

As you can see the depth between the regular ornament and the central one has a big difference, that I don't want and will fix, also I will probably reduce the inset of this entire area, but those are the tasks for the polishing stage, for now I am moving to ornaments on sides and lid

Here is another picture of what it looks like from some distance :

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Hello again, people.
Got a bit sick, so productivity dropped even more, but I am back on track now.

To the point of progress - I've been focused on the main areas of the left and right sides of the chest and the top area of the lid. There is not much to tell about them however, it is still the same approach of making a few instances of things and repeating them all over the place and then applying an additional layer of damage to make them look a bit less repetitive, even tho textures would do that, so it might be a bit rudimentary.

Here is what I got for the sides, the right side doesn't have skulls around it because I will mirror them later from another side, I just don't want to waste polygons there right now.

And here is what I have for the top of the lid so far :

There is one last big ornament to make, after that is done it will be about aging the hull of the chest, the main metal body I mean.

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Alright, big and small one at the same time. I finished the final ornament.

Then I added some surfacing, did polishing on other ornaments, and decimated things to prepare high poly for retopology

This has already pushed me a lot with ZBrush, to be honest at the beginning I was not ready for such things by any means. But that's not the last challenge of this challenge. And I will try doing new things first and only use known ways if necessary.
The next step is retopology. I will first try to make things the proper way, going to finally try using TopoGun, heard a lot of nice things about it. If I fail and soon realize that it takes too much time then I will go back to ZBrush and, well, decimation goes brrrrr, you know the drill.

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Remember me? I am alive by some miracle and even managed to finally finish that retopo. It was a torture to be honest, because I know I am going to have close-ups and this is a portfolio project, so It needs to be quite highres. And being new to TopoGun, no matter how great the software is, did not do me a favor. Besides, I think we can all agree that retopo is the most exhausting part of the pipeline.

So what have I achieved? Well, first of all - a thought that I'd do better going for decimated as low, but whatever, at least I learned a new thing and got a grasp on another software that has proven to be rather useful.
Also, this new mesh is way more manageable for unwrapping.

This is what my low looks like :

Not really low, is it? But it will do.
Next step - UV unwrapping, I already have a temporary version of it along with some test bakes and "rough" version of materials. I expect UV to be done quite fast because it is in fact just polishing what I already have and optimizing it, to have as many mirrored things as I can without hurting quality, it can be an interesting experiment.
And, of course, main rule :

Now I'm gonna just go and play some cyberpunk until I drop asleep, God sees I deserve a few hours of rest. I'll be back in a few days with another update and possibly a meme.

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Tiny update, unwrapping has gone better than retopo, it is done, and looks okay

For now, I only created height alphas for some patterns, like this smoke :

It is used to fill some areas that were left empty on the real-life thing, I think it will look somewhat better this way. Here is what I mean :

I have also started creating materials, luckily enough there should be only 4 of them : metal for inner space, silver, gold, and gemstones. That's pretty much it, for now, quite embarrassing compared to some other people's recent posts, but it is what it is. I still have a hope that texturing will make it pretty. Also, should I add a chamfer on the edges that define the silhouette? I kinda feel like I should.

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Hello there, a small update, but an update nonetheless. I was busy with some personal matters recently, but I am slowly getting close to wrapping up texturing.
Here is what I had yesterday :

Didn't really like the gems, they were quite tricky to figure out, but today they look like this :

What I was missing in the first place was subsurface scattering, adding it made them way closer to what I wanted them to be. Now I am gonna get this thing to Unreal Engine, see how it works, and go back to Substance Painter for polishing. Another update will be soon.

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Quick test render to see how things look, lighting setup combining warm and cold lamps + shadow casters to see how metals work in different conditions.

Based on this I am going to make some surfaces a bit more rough as they are too shiny and add more handpainted dirt in some areas. Also, ignore that gemstones look white now - they are blue, it's just what a few iterations of compression did to the image.

After polishing is done I will move it to Unreal Engine for final rendering

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Path Tracer goes brrr!

My comrades say this looks like a legendary lootbox, and I mean, it kinda does indeed, does it not? Guess tomorrow I will finally reveal the final results. Just need to do a few more things to wrap it up.

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Final Submission

Well, here it is, I made a thing. Was quite a journey, I got exactly what I expected, challenge, exhaustion, destroyed sleeping schedule, pain, knowledge, skills, and friends. Worth it.
Thanks to everyone who supported and inspired me on the way and to those who shared their knowledge.
Below you can see the most detailed prop I ever made, the Exorcist's Box. And I have attached the video, to showcase the smoke that kept me busy for the last day, it is important for the story of this thing.