3D Character- personal project breakdown
Hi ! I'm Lyuba, a 4th year student at Breda University of Applied sciences and this is my graduation project as a 3D character artist!
3D Character- personal project breakdown
This is a character that i created as a 4th year student at Breda University of Applied Sciences.
It's definitely been a huge learning experience and i'm really grateful for everyone who supported me and gave me feedback, especially my supervisor Vlad Cenusa!
The rig was done by Viktor Kamburov and the skinning by Mihaela Gagalova!
Planning and concept
This is the most crucial part in my opinion when creating a project. You need to have a solid and carefully thought out plan so that you don't get carried away or get overwhelmed by the project.
Before I even started with searching for a concept for the character i first made constraints for myself so that i know what to look for in terms of character design and have it be plausible in the time frame that i have. These were my three constraints: 1. No focus on anatomy, use base mesh 2. Not too complicated hairstyle 3.no extra props like weapons.
After that i began looking for inspiration on Artstation and pinterest. I found a concept i really liked and decided to change it through photobashing so that it's more original. (Main inspiration by Kim Ssaeng)
I combined the concept i liked with another one as the main parts and the rest was photobashed from random pictures and other concepts from pinterest.
I also thought about my goals and what i wanted to learn with this project. I had realism as my main goal and three subcategories that would support that goal:
1. Realism in my sculpt: More attention to detail, have a detailed and realistic high poly sculpt, clearly informed through reference- both 3D and real life.
2. Dive more into hair cards and have my first game ready character with real time hair imported into UE5
3. Get better at texturing, create realistic textures that correctly represent the physical properties of the surface I'm trying to portray and learn to use XYZ texturing method for face
After that i created a time schedule and how much i estimated each task to take, this of course didnt go exactly as planned because sometimes during the project some things take longer or shorter than expected and priorities shift constantly. You shouldn't get discouraged if you're not going according to schedule - it's a perfectly natural part of the art process!
Of course during the creation of this concept i was also updating my reference board with inspiration and parts that would go in the character. I had a seperate category for each of the different elements, as well as just general art inspiration and other 3D works.
Sculpt
After i had a plan laid out, i started with blocking out my character. I used a base mesh body from FlippedNormals.
The first level of detail is the most important one, it's the one i spent the most time on trying to get the silhouette and the big forms right.
In Marvelous Designer made a lot of iterations for the Hanfu (top clothing layer) so that i can have dynamic looking folds, using pinning and the weft/wrap option as well as just adjusting the actual pattern.
I also added folds by manually sculpting them in and all of the other elements on the body were created by first starting with dynamesh and then just trying to get things to look good at the lowest possible subdivision before moving in with Zremesher and refining.
For the sculpt it's really just a lot of back and forth and a lot of consistent work. Many times i got bored of sculpting and when that happened i felt it was good to switch up and do hair cards for example or look into materials and pipelines, anything that's helpful for the end result of the character:)
Using Texturing XYZ
I decided to use texturing XYZ for the displacement map and for the albedo information. I used a combination of the Killer Workflow + Mari for projecting the displacement map.
Topology
For the topology i tried to keep it simple and try to have good edge flow, as well as be aware of where i need to add extra edge loops and patches like on the elbows and knees.
Bake prep
I first "exploded" the mesh in Maya to not get any artifacts when baking and then i baked the high onto the low poly in substance painter. I also assigned Color IDs for easier color selection when painting.
Hair and feathers
The hair textures were done in FiberShop. I used Quixel MegaScans for the feathers and i adjusted the textures slightly in SP like the roughness, albedo, normal,etc.
For the hair cards, i had different textures: Base - thick hair samples to cover the scalp, medium and thin hair samples to break the repetitiveness, flyaways, transition hairs, as well as eyebrow and eyelash hairs.
After creating the hair textures in FiberShop, i manually placed the cards in maya. I used a very helpful plugin called Hair Grabber by sizov.
I placed the cards layer by layer, starting from the bottom. I did the same with the feathers!
Textures
I created all the textures in Substance Painter, i tried to look at references and recreate the materials definition accurately. Mostly i was looking out for the roughness maps and trying to get that right. I had a very straightforward way of building my textures: Folder 1: Base color, creating anchor points, trying to get the base roughness/metalness right. Folder 2: Color variations, roughness variations, using generators and tileable maps to create how the material would look without any wear and tear. Folder 3: Damage, wear, details.
I definitely still feel like i have a lot to improve in this area and it's something i should focus on getting better at.
Final - UE5
Comments (1)