Dungeon Crawler Environment Art - Week 8: Shrine daemon spider/woman

Feb 3, 2025

6 min read

Updated: May 9, 2025

Quick 2d concept and reference

I started my idea for the cross breed spider woman in sketch form, initially copying an existing image of Lilith from diablo and then playing with the spider form merging in.

Sketch of lilith and quick sketch of how the body and drapery of the woman and how it would attach to a spiders body.

Starting in Zbrush - High poly

I wanted to use a high poly to low workflow for the shrine to get a sculpted + detailed result that I feel i'd struggle to achieve with a low to high.

Once I'd built out my main sculpt of the shrine womans body and the flame rocks that support i needed to switch out my 'stand in' base for something more diablo and thought through. I looked at this reference for inspiration and it gave me the general flame around the outside idea.

I have to priorities my time at this stage and have chosen to create a simpler shrine base in maya and then bring this into zbrush to dynamesh and merge and resize to fit the right size for my shrine.

Creating the model in zbrush

Using my character art torso and adjusting certain elements I chose to try to create a more sexualised and godlike character so this meant adjusting waist size and increasing breast proportions. I also wanted to pose the character which I originally had in an A pose so I cut out the arms and adjusted the shoulders which meant some re-sculpting of back muscles around the lattisumus dorsi and scapula to try to convey holding up her arms. I also tried to soften her cheeks whist keeping a chiselled low body fat face type and strengthened her brow.

I made the spider body by morphing a sphere and the same for the transition area where the 'mouth of the spider body meets the human'. For the legs I sculpted one leg in multiple segments and then duplicated this around. I later came back to adjust the legs after feedback for creating a more dynamic pose.

After this feedback to also improve the look of the shrine to include something to better support the structure i brought in the 'rock/flames' that sit underneath the spider womans body as this felt like a nice way to provide structure and story at the same time.

The base I built in maya and then imported to zbrush, decimated, then retypologised each part, duplicating the retypology of the small 'flamers' around the outside of the base.

Screenshots of high poly sculpt

Before the spider woman had her legs amputated.

The end result in Zbrush

Video compilation of various angles of the zbrush model.

https://video.wixstatic.com/video/5c371e_bea592d3e603426db9f287259da729aa/1080p/mp4/file.mp4

Decimating for low-poly zbrush meshes

My computer was crashing when trying to decimate the character with multiple polygroups so for the low poly I first had to dynamesh everything together and then decimate to 30k polygons. I had an issue where there was a line coming all down the center of the character breaking the geometry. This was due to the pivot being out of place when I decimated so I re-centered this and it fixed the broken geometry issues when decimating.

30k decimated low poly character section of shrine

I brought this decimated version into maya and begun the retypology process.

low poly shrine with checkerboard applied

I later discovered some UV errors to do with texel density and would've liked to re-visit the model but took the decision not to in order to get other aspects of the project finished as I had committed a lot of time already to the shrine piece. Main areas that suffered were the legs and some pieces of the horns and the mid back of the womans torso.

Inspiration for substance painter texturing

I managed to find a similar type of shrine that has a simple material and uses lighting and bloody anarchist symbols to do a lot of the work, so may work towards something like that. However I would like to add additional trim to differentiate some of the shapes that could get lost like the swirly bra covering, drapery detailing and back of the head external 'spine' shapes.

Texturing in Substance Painter

I had a very loose idea of the texturing before getting into substance so began a series of experimental texturing in painter.

Once I'd got my shrine into substance I began experimenting, altering the smart material for 'jade' and playing with dividing up the shrine into base and sculpture.

More experimentation...

playing with the idea of a metalic and iridecent base that gives a galaxy type look/feel

At this point I was seeing some areas which didn't bake fully how Id like them but was pleased with how the back of the head was looking

Here is where I could see there is artefacts that I couldn't seem to smooth over in baking. I will have to see how I am pressed for time to see if I can go back and discover what might be making this error.

I was having issues trying to export and import a smart material to re-use and adjust a type of stone I'd made for my trimsheet.

I've decided not to use the trimsheet material anyway after seeing my environment and the amount of similar materials that utilise the same rock type, as I'd like the shrine to really stand out from the rest of the environment.

Mid point reflections on UV's

Reflecting on the time I'd spent on my shrine asset I feel that the weak point of the model process has been the UVing and I feel this technical aspect of the texturing has meant I've lost some of the nice details that looked good in Zbrush but haven't carried over to the final model in substance painter.

Here I was experimenting with a bug like iridescent texture, but felt it looked too lifelike and organic not like a built shrine.

I started to settle towards a metal and stone hybrid material based sculpture and began to pull in materials, one particular material used from my trimsheet I brought in and played with the veins of the rock to create some interesting variations suggesting magic and power flowing through the sculpture.

I also decided the edges had to be metal as they could act as the structure supporting and making the flames around the shrine.

So now I was then refining how to differentiate the spiderbody shape from the human, aswell as the rock flames underneath, without creating a too disjointed piece.

I ended up having the spider body a metal material and the human body and flames a rock based material.

This is an earlier draft where I'm getting closer to the final design, I liked the flowing colours underneath and the veins in the rock popping out colour but it all felt a bit chaotic. From this design I got the idea to actually make the base covered in water which drops off down the edges, which was a bit of a happy accident to get the idea from the experimentation.

Making the watery surface

I started with a water drop material and then as I didn't just want a sheen on the top to be miss understood as just shiny or wet then created another layer to create some ripples with height. I couldn't find any maps for ripples so I painted circles with a very large brush and then reduced the brush size a bit and erased the centre. For this layer I just enabled height and a black mask with a painted layer over it.

Making the rock veins

texture layer stack before emmisive and detail paint is added

Emmisive for flames around the edge and for the eyes as well as painted red details around the drapery to help the shapes pop out the torso.

This is almost the final piece, I made a final decision to then change the eyes to pop out more to a purple colour.

Final character tweaks based on expanding the lore

I chose a light purple/blue in the end for the eyes as I felt this all red one was too clear on a enemy/vampire vibe and I wanted her eyes to be more power and have a questionable allegiance to the darkness. I imagine this character to be the sister of Lilith, perhaps cast aside and possibly an allie to the player but not so far as a trustworthy allie.