Selena, Mercenary and Hero Classes. Fire Emblem Fanart

Selena

Mercenary and Hero Classes

Fire Emblem Fanart

This is my entry for The Rookies 2020. I took a character from a 3DS game and created a realistic, non-anime version of her. Selena is a mercenary in the game Fire Emblem Fates. I decided to create the Hero model after I completed her Mercenary model. When I decided to create her Hero, I basically treated it in the way that the game does and added armor over her initial costume. There was a color palette adjustment, and I also took liberties with her face.

I was really drawn to her armor design and colors, as well as the hairstyle. I thought the variety in the pieces of armor would be a good challenge. The hair model also came with its own set of challenges and I really wanted the hair to be something that could be added to my portfolio on its own.

High Resolution

The high res model was done in Zbrush. I learned a lot of lessons here when it came to the hard surface modeling. I was not satisfied with my initial attempt at her armor, so I decided to dive deeper and look up more tutorials. Through Game Art Institute (now Vertex School), I learned advanced hard surface techniques which improved my work greatly. Efficient use of Marvelous Designer was also critical, because it can become a bit of a vortex. When in this software, I learned to save often and work at low resolutions first before raising the density of the mesh in the simulations. For the Hero class model I revisited her gloves and boots because I was not happy with them on the Mercenary version. This meant going back to Marvelous Designer and sculpting new hard surfaces in Zbrush – more practice never hurts!

Low Resolution

The low res was done with Maya Quad Draw, which I find is the most very relaxing part of the workflow. The biggest challenge here was distributing the UV shells and keeping the texel density proportionate among all the pieces. I opted to dedicate one additional texture sheet for the new pieces of geometry, though I did have to move existing shells around so that things would fit better. This also meant that I would have to bake all new maps and couldn’t use the Mercenary model maps. I used Marmoset Toolbag 3 for my bakes; its set up makes it very easy to use and is very straight forward.

Texturing

I textured my model in Substance Painter, which I really enjoy working in. Being able to build a material and then export it to be used with other models made texturing a better experience. This process allowed me to finesse a lot of aspects of the materials that I had used previously and address things that I overlooked or that I felt unhappy with. One of the most important things that helped me with Substance Painter was to name the layers. It is very easy to create an overwhelming layer stack and then get lost within it. Naming everything made navigation much easier. Also, smart masks are your best friends in this software!

Rendering

I created my final renders and turntable with Marmoset Toolbag 3. I built an elaborate lighting setup that I would describe as a “double 3-point lighting”. Basically, I have a 3 point light setup aimed at the face and another one aimed at the body. In addition, I placed two more key lights focused on the face and another rim light to pop the model in areas that get lost.

Other things that I updated from the Mercenary model, were the eyes and hair. I received a lot of feedback on her at that stage and I wanted to implement that into this iteration. The eyes presented an interesting challenge. I looked at various tutorials which assembled the eye in different ways and created different versions, settling on the one you see here. The hair was a lot of fun, though I had to revisit her bangs and pigtails. They just didn’t show the depth that was needed. I must say that I am very proud that I was able to reduce the hair mesh down to 12K quads from 134K. I had to split her hair mesh into 3 groups (head, bangs and pigtails) and reduce them separately to keep their volumes consistent and maintain the curvature. I wanted to push my model’s presentation further and decided to pose it. I utilized Mixamo’s website to upload my model and create a quick rig for it, which I then brought back into Maya to create a compelling pose.

Conclusion

I think that the path that I took in creating both of these models helped me to learn many valuable lessons, which I hope are apparent in the progress. I have to give thanks to many artists whom I was fortunate to learn from. The courses that I took and the invaluable feedback I received from Ashley Sparling, Marcin Klicki, Mario Stabile, Arvin Villapando and Ryan Kingslien have helped me grow as an artist and I continue to implement the techniques which I’ve learned from them.