Heather Courage - Game Artist

Lunestra - The Warrior

For this piece, I wanted to add diversity to my portfolio. After being given the base blacksmith concept from CG Spectrum, I combined that with strong influences from Sojourn (Overwatch) and Danai Gurira (Michonne - The Walking Dead) to create a strong African woman who had warrior like attitude.

During this project, I spent a lot of time researching ethnic hair and in particular, ethnic hair in stylised games. It was great to see more representation in current games, and it was really interesting to see how much study has been put into the topic. This is something that I hope to work with more in the future to try get a more realistic and genuine look in my next pieces.

Lunestra was originally sculpted in Zbrush in a basic T-Pose to allow for symmetrical retopology that would be suitable for rigging and animation. She was then retopologised in Maya before baking in Substance Painter. 

In the images below, Lunestra's facial and body mesh is visible. Her total poly count is under 200k, including all accessories and props. It should be noted that her poly count for the render is higher than originally planned in order to smooth the silhouette further for the beauty shots. Her game mesh is under 100k Poly. 

Lunestra was textured in Substance Painter. Careful use of height  maps were used for the creation of her tunic's leather pattern and her skin imperfections and pores. 
I wanted to pay attention to her hair, as I felt that decent representation of ethnic hair was a priority in this piece. Her hair pieces were sculpted in Zbrush and then I added in a heigh and roughness correction to allow for the slightly more puffy look. A layer of subsurface scattering also increased the translucency of the hair to get it looking less solid. In future iterations, I would like to come back and use hair cards to add in some fly away hairs and "fuzz" around the base of the dreadlocks in order to boost the realism of the hair. 

The render below was done in Iray, under natural light settings to test the overall look before moving to Marmoset. 

In the process video below, you can see how Lunestra has gone from a sculpture, to baked low poly, through to texturing and finally lit and rendered for her final shots. 

Lunestra's UVs were broken into only 5 tiles to keep it as light as possible for game use. Her eyes share UVs, allowing for more detail to be added to them in the texturing phase. 

Below, you can see how the UVs were laid out showing their materials, followed by a look into the albedo, height, metalness, normals and metalic maps for each. 

As part of my process, I gathered references which were useful for inspiration and comparison. I also made use of this in storing daily updates for myself so that I could track my progress and compare changes to the anatomy in the sculpt, or in the lighting of the renders. Below is a small sample of the overall reference sheet used for Lunestra. 

The Wildcat

This piece was based off of the Artstation award winning piece by Wu Shenyu. I chose this as a challenge for myself in the realm of Zbrush and sculpting. This was my first project created in Zbrush using the full sculpting pipeline, and I wanted something that would allow me to tackle a diverse variety of techniques, from basic sculpting, learning dynamesh, curves and IMM brushes, and live boolean work. 
My main focus of this project was to create a true to concept, in pose sculpt that could be used for renders, printing or as a prop in a game. 

I loved working on the tiny cat faces, and getting to experiment with emission and fog in the renders to give the Cat his creepy, fantasy feeling. 

The Wild Cat was rendered in Marmoset, with a basic 3 point lighting system.

In the process view below, it is shown that the cat was originally created as a sculpt in Zbrush before being taken to Maya for retopology. Retopology on the tongue piece was very challenging and took several iterations before I was happy with how the seams would lie. Fortunatley, this character was not intended for rigging, other than his face and tail. 
After retopology, he was baked in marmoset Toolbag before being taken to Substance painter for texturing. 

I am very proud of the sculpting outcome. As my first real sculpture, I was hit with a lot of learning curves which I was able to overcome with the help of some great people at CG Spectrum, through research, and through trial and error. 
Below, the sculpture in highpoly form can be seen with two different base materials. 

After retopology, The cat's UVs were split into 4 tiles to keep it light for game engines. Below, you can see the maps for albedo, height, metalness, normals, roughness, and on the body, emission. 

The iterations of texturing the Cat can be seen below, including all the terrible mistakes I made along the way. It was a great learning exercise for myself to do this part, and I tried to keep him as true to the concept as possible. 

Below is the beautiful concept work by Wu Shenyou that was used for this work. 

The past 12 months has been a year of firsts for me. 
My first art school, first time creating a full project, first time using ZBrush, First time baking, texturing, learning about normal maps, booleans, lighting, rendering and so much more. 

A special thanks goes out to my wonderful mentors, Anna Beganskaya, and Hong Chan Lim. Thanks also to Bryan Bentley, the CG Spectrum TAs, and the art community as a whole for being welcoming,  supportive and helpful. 

Thank you for taking the time to view my submission, and here's to another 12 months of progress!