3D Art Portfolio 2023-2024

Old God Elder Dragon

This big boy here is my latest project and the first time I dove deep into hand-painting a complex character. I will break down this character more in depth than the other projects featured here, as I think it might be an interesting insight.

A good sculpting base is always my start when creating characters. It's an absolute must to have a strong foundation to go off from!

From this project I learned, that progress is not always linear and the path to reach your goal can be winded and sometimes set you back. Especially, setting up the feathers correctly for retopology and UV unwrapping was a challenge, which lead to me having to place all the feathers twice. (I love to tell people this part because they always look at me like I am a maniac)

Polypainting did help me a lot in finding the right proportions. But it did not serve me as a proper base for texturing. In the end I created my own base in Substance Painter and from there, hand-painted all the details in Basecolor view.

After texturing, I really wanted to give it an animation. So I did what I dread the most:
 I rigged...

I really wanted this rig to be suitable for animation so I tried to give it my very best shot. But when I was done and gave it to my animation friend, she reported the rig falling apart when taking a step. That was less than ideal because that would mean I would have to work with the mess this rig is, myself.

(If anyone wants to try and tame this monster of a rig, you can hit me up)

This project was my first time diving into unlit rendering. This means that I had to come up with a solution for some problems I usually don't face, but would also mean that I could get a little bit creative with shader solutions. 

But first things first, let's talk particles. I wanted the eyes of the dragon to emit an eerie haze. But the dragon having an animation would make it very complex to just place Niagara systems in place. I used Unreal's Socket system, that lets you attach objects to rigs. I adjusted the positioning of the Niagara systems, that they blow ouwards and it worked perfectly!

The next issue was, that all particles looked to synchronized to feel... random. So I made a custom shader, that not only pannered the texture and cut it properly to simulate motion, but I also implemented a UV offset for the texture, that lets me adjust the offset from within the Niagara System, per object!

And lastly, I thought a fog effect would look cool and make him look more... huge! And the default Height based fog does not work on unlit models. So, I had to come up with a shader solution myself.

What I roughly did is to lerp between the pixel depth and the base color of the respective materials. This gave me the possibility of faking fog!

And this concludes the small breakdown for my dragon boii! If you want a bit more of an artistic insight (and to see him in motion) head over to his artstation page!

https://www.artstation.com/artwork/QX9qL3

Captain Crab

This massive dude is the captain crab. I made him in my spare time, similar to the dragon. But I approached him with a PBR artstyle that heavily relied on hand-painting aswell.

This project made me particularly proud, as the sculpting process looks very interesting already without the textures! All the detailing work really paid off in the end.

As mentioned before, this project might have been PBR, but heavily relied on a hand-painted base color. At that time, I was not really into testing out a different method of getting the other maps and went with classical methods used in other PBR workflows. 

What I should have done though, is to get a black and white map of the base color, adjust it and use it as a roughness. But I am glad that I learned from my previous projects, which helps me improve every time!

For more information about this dude, come over to his artstation page (or walk the plank. YARR).

https://www.artstation.com/artwork/BXLN3l

Demon Librarian

I really wanted to finish him for last year's rookies competition, but I just wasn't able to get it done. The librarian was part of my final exam for the Stylized Creation course at the DAE. Time ran out and other assignments simply ate too much time to present him.

But now, one year later, I am proud to finally show him to you!

At the time, this was the most complex project I have tackled and for my first try I'd say it was quite successful! A lot of feedback from peers and teachers helped me push it as far as you see it today. Other than the other two projects, I took the polypaint as a base for this one and went from there.

I did give the same level of attention to the props he wields, in sculpt as in texturing.

As with all my project, I really wanted to incorporate hand-painting. So I did! And again based the PBR workflow on a strong base color map.

For a better breakdown head over to artstation! https://www.artstation.com/artwork/JvZ560

The Cursed Blade

Lets take a break from characters for just a second and dive into one of the props I made during the past year. Even though the sculpting was not as important to this project as for the characters, it was still a nice finishing part to the entire workflow to really give it that stylized feel.

I also really wanted to try out some stuff with hand-painting on PBR so I tried to push it a bit! I think I could have gone further, but also this project is almost a year old and I have grown ever since!

Aaaand if you want to see more, head over to the project! https://www.artstation.com/artwork/m81yYa

Swordswoman Headhunter

This is a bit of a different project than usual, but I really wanted to include it as it was made during the same time as the Demon Librarian.

This project was also a final exam for the DAE, but for the Character creation course, which focuses on Semi-Stylized and realistic character creation.

And as always, head over to artstation for more info! https://www.artstation.com/artwork/LRrGwP

You deserve a reward for coming this far. Take this!