Prisca, Lord of the Mist / Western Style Chinese Restaurant

Game Character Description

Here is my first 3D character that I made during my second term in my 1 year course in 3dsense Media School under the guidance of Program Director Julian Khor. I learned a lot about the process and workflow on how to make a game-ready, optimized character.

This was made based on the concept art by the amazing Tooth Wu on Artstation: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/8we4dw

The softwares used in this project are:

● ZBrush

● Maya

● Marvelous Designer

● Hairstrand Designer

● Substance Painter

● Marmoset Toolbag 4

● Photoshop/Procreate

Beauty Shots

Process

Here is the full breakdown of the process that I did for this character.

Gathering references

I gathered mostly 3D references, but also real life references as some things were too niche to find a 3D version of. Since the concept art didn’t have a back view, I did a rough sketch to aid me during the modeling process. Here is my full reference sheet with some closeups:

High res sculpt

This was my favorite part of the process.I used a base mesh and then modified it to reach the body shape and proportion that matches the concept. And then I blocked out the inorganic props in Maya, the organic props in ZBrush, and the cloth in Marvelous Designer. Prisca proved to be a challenging character for me because of the amount of cloth and fabric I had to tackle. In the end I detailed everything in ZBrush by giving wear and tear, personality, and storytelling. It made the whole character look more lived in and made her make more sense. For the face pores, I used ZWrap to achieve the look.

Full blockout in ZBrush

Blocking out fabric in Marvelous Designer

Final High Res Sculpt

Haircards, Retopo, and UV

After the high res model is finished, we move on to Maya. I did the hair using the haircards method. I found this part of the process to be the hardest. In the future, I’m sure I’ll be able to do better from the experience I got from this character. After that, I optimized the model by retopologizing using the quad draw tool in Maya. It was tedious but also relaxing. The last step that I did in Maya was unwrapping the UV and arranging it into 4 different UV sets: head, top, bottom, and accessories. The amount of tris count totals to 153k tris.   

Baking

Baking was pretty straightforward, name all of the props with (propname)_low or (propname)_high, differentiating the high poly and low poly. And after that, export it out to Marmoset Toolbag 4 and bake on the high res to low res. Marmoset generated pretty clean results, I only had to touch up some parts by adjusting the cage and editing in Photoshop.

Texturing

This was another part of the process that I enjoyed a lot. It felt very fulfilling seeing my character have colors and textures. The texturing was done in Substance Painter. For texturing, my formula was having darker and cooler tones for the valleys, brighter and warmer tones for the peaks, and hand painted color variation to make sure the textures don't seem flat. I also made sure the roughness is interesting and not just one flat value for each material. 

Game Environment Description

This is the first 3D environment that I made during my final term in my 1 year course in 3dsense Media School under the guidance of Senior Lecturer Venny Lie. It was interesting to see the differences in workflow from character to environment, I also learned about Unreal Engine 5 while doing this project.

This was made based on the concept art by the incredible Guanyu Cheng on Artstation: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/v2gAkv

The softwares used in this project are:

● Maya

● ZBrush

● Quixel Mixer

● Quixel Bridge

● Substance Painter

● Marmoset Toolbag 4

● Unreal Engine 5

● Photoshop/Procreate

Flythrough Show Reel

Concept Angle Beauty Show Reel

Beauty Shots

Process

Planning

Before starting anything, I had to plan everything out. To make it easier, I divided it into 4 sections. In total, I counted 104 unique assets. I counted each one and decided whether they were modular or unique, and if I had to texture them in Substance Painter or using trim sheets, tileables, atlas, or decals. And since the interior in the concept wasn’t very clear, I had to roughly sketch it out to get an idea on what to model. 

Assets Planning

Interior Planning

Trim sheet planning

Gathering references

For this project, I gathered 3D model references as a geo reference since some assets are partly hidden and they all have one view only. I also gathered lookdev or real life references for the texturing process. Here is my full reference sheet with some closeups:

Camera, blocking, and detailing

Before modeling, I used Fspy to get a camera setup as close to the concept art as possible. After that, I blocked out the entire environment, focusing on the silhouette. And then I move on to the detailing process by beveling, softening edges, adding smaller details that do not affect the silhouette, and making things make sense, such as putting hinges on the doors. I also had to go to ZBrush to do the high res baked into the low res workflow for the chinese rooftop.

Final Maya Render

5 assets

I chose 5 main assets that I thought were the most interesting to focus on. I made sure that the aesthetic, topology, and textures of these assets are up to quality. Most of the main parts are unique textures done in Substance Painter but some parts are tileables, trim sheets, atlas, and also decals to make it look more interesting.

Tileables, trim sheets, and atlas

Most of my assets consisted of tileables, trim sheets, and atlas since the environment is outdoors, therefore the scale is big. Making tileables was pretty straightforward. I used Quixel Mixer to make sure the texture is tileable and doesn’t have repeating patterns. For both trim sheets, I had to unwrap the assets that are going to use the trim sheet, arrange them in a UV layout, and then make my trim sheet variation based on it in Quixel Mixer, which is why some trim sheet patterns are wider than others. I also had to unwrap the assets that I planned on using the atlas on before making it in Procreate and Photoshop. 

UE5 importing

Unreal Engine 5 is a fun yet frustrating software for me. It is incredibly technical which I had a hard time with but it is incredibly versatile. After importing the assets into UE5, I had to make master materials and material instances with textures that I imported in from Substance Painter and Quixel Mixer. I also learned how to set up linear interpolation (LERP) nodes which was useful to make the tileables and trim sheets I had more interesting with vertex painting. I also learned how to use the Niagara system to make my falling leaves particles.

Decals

A large amount of decals were used in this project. Without decals, my environment would look flat and too clean. The main decals that I used were for graffiti, posters, and signage. I also used decals to add dirt, rust, and color variation. I used Procreate and Photoshop to make the decals, a lot of them are custom made

Lighting and rendering

For lighting, I used a main directional light to make it as accurate as possible. Then I added some meshes out of view to block out the light strategically to cast shadows, and also smaller lights for more specific areas. I also used exponential height fog to make the background more washed out, and used a blueprint for the clouds so that I can control how it looks more flexibly. For finalizing, I turned on post process volume and used Lumen rendering. In the end I also converted the environment into an interactable VR space.

Thank you for taking the time to look at my work! If you have any questions or feedback you can find me on these platforms:

● Artstation: https://www.artstation.com/lihuaya/

● Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cayleywijaya/

● Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/_lihuaya/