Reincarnation - A Journey Into Real Time

Concept by: Pierre Raveneau

The Acolyte is my 3D interpretation of Pierre Raveneau's concept 'Temple Acolyte'. Being a history enthusiast, I naturally gravitated toward Pierre Raveneau's concept work! 

This project had a number of challenges that were subtle and required a good amount of problem-solving when translating the 2D concept into 3D. Instead of the traditional film pipeline, I decided the games route would be best as I aspire to be a character artist for games. Unreal Engine 5 was my primary source for rendering and I learned an incredible amount about the power of Unreal Engine. I hope you enjoy!

Modeling & Sculpting

I used a combination of ZBrush, R3DS Wrap3, and xNormal for the skin detail. The hard surface work was a combination of Maya & ZModeler in Zbrush. I used Marvelous Designer for the cloth and retopologized in Maya.

Texturing

Once I was happy with the model I started on the texturing. I used the games workflow of baking high poly detail onto lowpoly geo. Assigning vertex color id on the highpoly in ZBrush and assigning texture sets on the lowpoly in Maya I baked down high-resolution textures using Substance Painter. Once I had the desired result I used a combination of material functions within Unreal Engine to display the textures properly.

Substance Painter Viewport

Texture Maps

I used the basecolor, normal and the standard RMA pack method (Roughness, Metalness, AO) for all the clothing, accessories and the sword. The anatomical parts of the model I added a SES pack for the Specular, Emissive and Scatter maps. 

Hair

One of the challenges of this project was how to approach the hair. I asked a lot of questions and with guidance from my instructor Damon Woods, I decided to approach it using hair cards. The braids, dreadlocks, and haircap were all created in ZBrush. When it was time to texture I used Fibershop.

Haircap

The haircap was done by dynameshing and re-meshing a duplicate head. I created and baked down fibermesh onto the haircap geometry to give me the flexibility of a mask in Substance Painter.

Braids & Dreadlocks

The braids were done using a braids brush and then brought into Maya and uv-ed using the unitize method. The dreadlocks were created with a curves brush in ZBrush and sculpted on to get the desired shape then brought into Maya and uv-ed with the unitize method.

Eyebrows & Eyelashes

I used a Yeti groom for each and then created curves from the groom guides. For the eyelashes I converted the curves to tubes and merged the verts to create tips. The eyebrows I did the same but was able to convert curves to ribbons and copied uv's so that they would read.

Flyaways

Last I needed to create coverage for the dreadlocks. I created a base layer and a mid-layer using quad-draw to get the coverage needed. In order to avoid hand-placing flyaways, I extracted a curve from an edge of each dreadlock and centered it within the geo.  I then used MASH to instance a modified cylinder to get the desired location.

Concept by: Pierre Raveneau

Another concept from Pierre Raveneau.  Siobhan was affectionately titled 'The Temple Priest' as I had plans to place him in an environment I had made for the environment for games class at Gnomon. He was my first introduction to the character for games pipeline so he has gone through a few iterations before arriving here.

Modeling & Sculpting

I used the same combination of ZBrush, R3DS Wrap3 for the skin detail. The hard surface work was a combination of Maya & ZModeler in Zbrush. I used Marvelous Designer for the cloth and retopologized in Maya.

Belt & Medallions

To achieve the detail on the belt & medallions I used alphas to mask and inflated the geo. After the desired look was achieved on the medallion, I separated the detailed center parts from the rest of the medallion and exported separately to Maya for retopology using quad-draw. I was then able to re-project detail onto the lower-res mesh which allowed for a much cleaner baking result.

Texturing

I used the same workflow as The Acolyte. Baking high poly detail onto lowpoly geo, assigning vertex color id on the highpoly in ZBrush, assigning texture sets on the lowpoly in Maya, and baking down high-resolution detail using Substance Painter. Once I had the desired result I used a combination of material functions within Unreal Engine.

Texture Maps

I used the same setup as The Acolyte:  basecolor, normal and the standard RMA pack method (Roughness, Metalness, AO) for all the clothing, accessories and scepter. The anatomical parts of the model I added a SES pack for the Specular, Emissive and Scatter maps. 

Aracnaeus is a project that started in Jared Krichevsky's Creature Sculpting class at Gnomon. With some help from Paul Gaboury in Advanced Digital Sculpting class I was able to give the concept some extra life and take it into Unreal Engine. All the texturing was done the same as the previous characters. 

The environment was kitbashed with megascans and I was able to create some simple niagara systems to give the ambiance.

Special Thanks

BIG shout-out to Gnomon, and all my instructors with special thanks to my Demo Reel instructors: Damon Woods, Anton Napierala and Miguel Ortega for all the guidance and support. Without the help I received from Gnomon instructors and all my friends at school none of this would have happened. So much gratitude. Thank you all!