Game Modelling

Game Character

Making a game ready character was our first big project in 3DSense Media School in term 2. During this 4 month journey, I have learnt a lot of new skill sets from both technical and artistic sides. Technical being softwares, rigging, retopology; on how to create an optimised character that can be used for games. Artistic side being sculpting, texturing, lighting.

This character model is based on a concept “Black Dragon Crown” by Ruan Jia in Artstation: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/5BD5qA.

Beauty Renders

Character Showcase

Turntable

Process:

Below, is the breakdown of my process in creating this character, starting from reference gathering all the way to lighting and rendering.

References Gathering

Gathering references is the very first step in the process of this project. This is the time where I find references on parts that are not very straightforward or understanding of the structure of that specific part is needed. The references that were gathered are mostly 3D references with a mix of real life references; 3D to analyse on how the sculpting and texturing was done, real life references are mostly for forms and overall understanding of some structures like armors. Some sketches and breakdowns are done in parts that are not visible in order to make the following parts clearer.  

The pictures above are the sketches that are done in order to get a better idea of how her outfit looks as well as the back view that is not visible as well as the structure of the wings, along with the accessory that she has on it. 

This references is a follow up to the one above where, I learn the structure and anatomy of wings as well as how feathers looks 

The pictures above are examples on how I incorporate both real life and 3D references in order to show a clearer direction of what I’d like to achieve in my character. 

This is an overall view of my pure ref and some closeups: 

High Res

After collecting and compiling all the needed references, I can start sculpting my character. I would say this process is one of the processes I enjoyed the most as I can slowly see how my character develops into the finished high res version. I first started with the overall proportions of the character, as well as the overall form of the wings as such:

After finalising the overall form (with touch ups along the way too) I started building my character from this base by adding her outfit such as her dress, headpiece as well as her overall armour. This process is mostly done with the extract tool from Zbrush as well as creating main forms in Maya.

After creating the main forms of her outfit and hair, I kept doing touch ups, and acquired feedback from both peers and lecturers in order to improve on what I have. The pictures below are my progress.

And in the meantime, I also started on my wings on another file in order to prevent severe lagging on this on the main file.

Creating the wings for my character takes a bit of trial and error as making it look natural and not look like scales, serves up as a bit of challenge for me. After creating the overall base for my character the next step of high res sculpting starts; which is detailing. In this process I touch up on what I have, as well as creating details in order to make the look of my character natural and convincing, as well as it fits my character and what she does.

The first thing that I did was to make the engravings for my character. Following the concept, I decided to create an engraving that’s inclined or on the floral side, which is shown all over her body, with bigger parts of the flowers in order to highlight the pieces.

The pictures below are the closeups of the armour details on the high res sculpt:

And also some storytelling is done on the character, in order to show that this character is a warrior that has fought countless battles, hence the scratches and damages on her armour and gloves. And with all that is complete here is the final result of the high res version of my character:

Haircards, Retopo, UV

After the High Res sculpt is complete, the process of transferring it into low res starts. At this stage, I am starting with creating hair cards by creating a map for the haircards. 

After this stage, I started building up my hair from the base up in Maya while checking it in Marmoset Toolbag in order to check how it looks in the final product and make sure that there are no gaps visible on the final hair when rendering. 

The pictures above are my progress in creating hair, and how it looks in Marmoset Toolbag. I find the process of making hair rather enjoyable, as I take a liking in tying other people’s hair therefore doing it in my character and learning how to make hair for a character is rather an interesting experience; as the process follows the same principle as tying a human’s hair and I have to make it look convincing as how a hair would look and behave in a real life person’s head. 

After creating the base of the hair, I started to add some flyaways in order to make the hair look realistic and convincing. In this process, I gave more divisions onto my haircards in order for the hair to look more realistic and not look low poly.

After the process of this stage, I proceed onto making the facial hair (Brows and Eyelash)

And proceed onto making low res wings, as shown below: 

Making feather cards of the wings follows the same process as creating hair cards and the arrangement of the wings itself follows the same process as how the high res version of the wings is done. At this point, I still need to do a bit of trial and error with the wings, however as it is something that I have done before, the process takes so much faster. 

Retopology and UV

As I was doing hair cards, I was also doing retopology; out of all the processes in making my character, I would deem retopology the most challenging process of it all as understanding the concept of it takes a bit of time as some parts are parts where I need to take extra attention such as hands, head, elbow and knees where it needs specific topology or requires more division in order for it to bend nicely and naturally during rigging and posing process. I started this process with head topology.

And afterwards to the body, armour, dress as well as head piece. The dress also takes a bit of time as folds of the dress need to take shape according to high res while keeping it optimised at the same time. 

As for armour retopology, I retopo the bigger shapes of the engravings while leaving the smaller parts as normal map’s job to cover.

And here is the overall result of the retopology:

The end result of my retopology totals into 276k Tris.

After Retopology is complete, the process that comes after is UV arrangement; my character takes up 4 2k maps, with it being, head, top, bottom + weapon and hair as shown below. This process is rather straightforward, but takes a bit of time as consideration on where to cut the mesh is needed as a seam line should not be visible and the UV itself should not be stretched when texturing. After cutting the UV, arranging the UV comes next. In this process, I need to make sure that the UV map is filled as much as possible without it touching each other as well as keeping a consistent texel density in order to make sure that the textures do not look low res. 

Baking

This process is rather straightforward and leaning more on the technical side. What I need to do is to decimate the high res mesh, rename it as mesh_High and the low res mesh as mesh_Low, in which all the placements of the capital letter and lowercase letters should be exact on the high and lows. After completing that task, all we need to do is to go to Marmoset Toolbag and group the mesh accordingly.

Afterwards, all I need to do is to press bake and adjust the cage if needed. The pictures below are my baking work in progress.

Texturing

After baking is completed, texturing comes next in line. This is one of the processes that I enjoy doing the most; the feeling of seeing my character slowly come to life with colours feels surreal to me, as at this point of time, around 3 months have passed since this project started.

The process of texturing is done in substance painter. At this stage I learnt about the importance of the choice of colours used, as I need to have colour variation in order for the texture not look flat, cooler tones for valleys and warmer tones for peaks, I also need to introduce damage and edgewear for the armour as well as the dress, make sure to create an interesting yet balance contrast to prevent it from looking flat, as well as introducing roughness so that the particular area has some texture difference. 3

Below are my texturing work in progress:

Here’s my map breakdown for the character:

Lighting and Rendering

The final part of this project is lighting and rendering. In this process, I need to integrate all my meshes into marmoset and adjust the textures accordingly. After that is completed I proceed to light my characters in a way where it highlights my character using 4 point lighting with 1 being the main light, 1 being secondary and 2 rim lights.

The picture below is my lighting work in progress:

Softwares Used:

● Zbrush

● Autodesk Maya

● Photoshop

● Materialise

● Substance Painter

● Hairstrand Designer

● Marmoset Toolbag 

Game Environment

Creating a 3D game environment is our last project in 3DSense Media school. During this term, I have learnt even more new skill sets and workflow. Starting from blocking in Maya into integrating it into Unreal Engine 5, I have learnt new techniques such as creating trim sheets and tileables, lighting, material nodes as well as shaders in Unreal also optimising the environment so that it holds up a stable FPS.

This Environment is based on “Fox’s Den” by Justine Chalieux: https://www.instagram.com/p/CGCCeBeDMcb/?igsh=NTc4MTIwNjQ2YQ%3D%3D

Artstation Link: https://www.artstation.com/gevoel

Final Render: 

Planning

Before starting to find references, I first divided the concept art in areas for easier counting as such: 

After dividing within the areas, I proceeded to count the amount of unique assets I have, which equates into a total of 151 assets. After which I separate them into unique, modular, trims or tileables, organic or non organic, so on and so forth, according to the excel sheet above.

Reference

After planning is complete, I proceeded to find references for each assets, at this stage, I divided references searching into 3 categories which are: reference, geometry and look dev in which reference is according to the concept, geometry the main form of the asset and look dev which is the finished look of the asset. 

Blocking

After finding the references needed, blocking is the next step in the process.Before starting in making the assets, I set the camera first and perspective with the help of fspy, and then blocking officially starts. During the stage, I will use mainly primary shapes first before getting into a more detailed one as at this stage, I am mainly determining the proportions as well as the size of the assets.

After rough blocking is done, detailing is done. This is where I touch up each and every one of my assets, so that it matches the concept.

Below is my progress at blocking stage:

Final Blocking:

Unreal Integration

Learning Unreal is something very fascinating yet, filled with challenges; When I first get into unreal it takes quite a bit of time to get used to unreal; from learning material nodes to shaders as well as learning lighting settings to post processing.

Unreal Material Nodes:

 This step of the process is done side by side with blocking as I need to check the lighting, setting the camera and perspective as well as placing meshes in unreal itself. The picture below is the process of Unreal integration. 

This process is done repeatedly due to the fact that light bounces off differently from different colours and textures as well as the updated version of the mesh.

Tileables and Trim Sheets

In this environment, tileables and trim sheets aren’t the main part of my environment however, it covers up my environment such as walls, floors, barrels, logs as well as shelves.

These are my examples of my tileables and trim sheets:

Tatami floor:

4 main assets

These 4 main assets are the assets that I chose to show which are: the fox, jar of eyeballs, desk on the side and the jars on top of the shelf, here’s my breakdown of my render passes:

The 4 main assets above are mainly unique that share the same map. These maps are shared based on materials (e.g. glass, non-glass, etc.) As they share the same maps, sometimes colours might not be accurate when brought into unreal from substance painter therefore the use of material instance is needed due to the difference of luts used in unreal vs substance painter in order to match the colours, roughness as well as metalness of the assets.

Lighting

Lighting in Unreal is one of the stages that keeps going ever since the start of my environment. Constant changes are made whether big or small, as well as tweaking post processing as well as fog in order to match the feeling of the concept as well as where light casts. Here are my progress during lighting stage:

Final Lighting

Render Passes

Thankyou for reading through all my breakdown! I would like to thank my lecturers and peers for the guidance and feedback given. Questions and feedback are always open, feel free to message me in these links:

Artstation: https://www.artstation.com/emilygohan9

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/emily-gohan

Software Used:

● Autodesk Maya

● Zbrush

● Materialise

● Quixel Mixer

● Substance Painter

● Marmoset Toolbag

● Photoshop

● Unreal Engine 5