Part 1: I’m not a character artist
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I have always found people annoying as they enter the stage saying ”I am not a speaker but…”. Of course you are a speaker, you are doing it right now in front of a crowd. There is this general idea that you have to excuse yourself because in your own eyes you’ve not yet achieved a level of excellence in that particular area. This is where I am currently at. I am working on the project ”Rune Mages” as a 3D artist. 3D artist is a broad term and having a general position is common in smaller teams. On this project I will be the environment artist, the character artist, the technical artist and in some cases even the 2D artist (yikes). So these blog posts will cover a lot of different topics and hopefully I will learn a lot of new things. This is my first big game project in 3D which in itself hosts a quantity of problems to solve from the get go. But to give you, the reader, more background I will describe the game a bit, and then go further into detail about my current tasks and what I have just recently finished.
Rune Mages is a turn based strategy game where the player controls two rune mages. The Rune Mages can combine powerful runes to create even more powerful spells. They use their powers to defeat demons from the nether realm. So it is a game heavily based on systems and character/spell interaction. It is also in 3D. This is where I come in. I am not a character artist. My previous 3D work has revolved mostly hard surface objects but as I begun learning Zbrush I incorporated organic shapes more and more. As a job I would love to work as an environment artist, as it is the gameplay space and helps the player navigate but also sets the mood for the scene or scenario. Characters however, nope. My only experience with characters comes from two 3D courses from the university. However, this project is as I said very much reliant on characters. For the game we’ll have 4 different characters, all animated, textured etc. I knew as soon as the pre-production wrapped up my first 4 weeks would be characters and characters only. My workflow looks like this for the characters (almost identical to props generally);
As it is early in the project I have not begun texturing anything, to let most of the models be iteration friendly. I will now show you the characters High and Low poly models, their wireframes and explain a little about what they will do in the game.
The tank
This the tank in the game, he is a large lava golem that will slowly make his way towards the player, eliminating his foe with a devastating blow. Left : 13,950,000 triangles Right : 8,800 triangles
The sprinter
The spinter is a very fast and strong demon. She will make her way as fast as possible to the player and cut them right open. Left : 6,000,000 triangles Right : 13,300 triangles As you can see the High Polys polycount is so high that you can’t make out the individual faces.
The Rune Mage
The rune mage is the character the player controls. There will be two of these with seperate texture sets. As you can see there is no cloth on the Low poly. That is because I have experimented with cloth simulations within the game engine Unity. Left : 7,400,000 triangles Right : 5,000 triangles
The caster
This little devil will fly above you and cast demeonic spells on you. Very terrifying. She is mostly made up of cloth simulations and particle effects which are not present at this stage.
Left : 7,300,000 triangles Right : 6,000 triangles
After creating these I would say that with some practice I could probably pull of any character focused job a 3D generalist would get at a smaller indie studio. I am nowhere close to be able to pull my weight as a chracter artist, but I have gained plenty of knowledge on the area. Sculpting is fun and I learned early on and from other projects that reference is king when it comes to nailing down realistic details. Retopo was not a particularly difficult task on its own, but it became gruesome as it takes a long long time and you do the same thing for the entire duration. Some chill music helped me get through it!
See you next week, where I will talk about something new and exciting art related.  |
