Calrath Guardsman

Overview

This project was done as part of my Mentorship, in which I was given a concept art to recreate as a game ready character.  The concept being a Calrath Guardsman by Alexandre Chaudret.

Special thanks to my mentor Daniel Hill.

Software used include: ZBrush, Maya, Marvelous Designer, XGen, Substance Painter and Unreal Engine.

High Poly

The high poly was developed using a variety of methods and software, primarily ZBrush and Maya.

For the armor and belts, a blockout mesh was made inside of Maya using the sub-div workflow. It was then brought into ZBrush where I applied a majority of the surface and material detail as doing so in the high poly gives better baked maps, allowing for much more freedom when texturing. 

Similarly with the cloth aspects, a base mesh was made inside of Marvelous Designer for me to bring into ZBrush to edit and add all the necessary material details.

Low Poly

Once the high poly was done, I decimated it and brought it into Maya to retopologize using quad draw. I brought the polycount down to around 40k tris.

Whilst UVing, I made the decision to split the character into 3 separate texture sets as to maximize the quality and resolution of the textures. Even though I was aiming for game ready, I didn't want to compromise quality of the model as it was still mainly a portfolio piece that I wanted to show off as best as possible. 

Feathers

In accordance to the concept, I created a set of essentially hair cards using XGen but for the feathers. I used ostrich feathers as my main reference as  they typically were the ones used during that period. I then clustered them in the feather holder on the back of the helmet using the same workfow as hair.

Texturing and Rendering

The model was baked and textured using Substance Painter then brought into Unreal Engine to render.

Original Concept by Alexandre Chaudret