Game Characters, and how to present them

goekbenjamin

Hi there!

I have a rather dumb question but somehow it also seems pretty important.

When i will create a game character model this would be my steps:

1. sculpt highmesh
2. retopo for lowmesh
3. bake & texturing
4. pose

Now the "4." is where i was wondering about....

I think a good way to present a gamecharacter is to display it in Marmoset Toolbag because the you can inspect the model (rotate & switch between normals, albedo, retopology etc...)

BUT to present the model i do have to pose the character....
Does this mean i have also have to rigg the character?

Is it really necessary also to add "rigging" onto my learning-list just to pose it?
Or should i just load my lowmesh into zbrush, and pose it with transposetool and export it out for toollbag?

What would you do? How do you accomplish this as a non-rigging artist?

NikhilR

The zbrush method is sufficient for what a character artist needs.

A good set of references would have a number of poses for a character you've chosen, so you could reproduce that without making a rig.
Of course if you learn to rig, it can prove useful, but if a studio finds your better at modeling and have a team of riggers, you're likely not going to be doing any rigging.
However it is important to retopo your low correctly for rigging and animation.

In a AAA company I doubt you'd be posing and presenting characters when it comes to submitting an assignment.
You'd likely work on a part of the character in a team among others.

goekbenjamin

NikhilR said:

The zbrush method is sufficient for what a character artist needs.

A good set of references would have a number of poses for a character you've chosen, so you could reproduce that without making a rig.
Of course if you learn to rig, it can prove useful, but if a studio finds your better at modeling and have a team of riggers, you're likely not going to be doing any rigging.
However it is important to retopo your low correctly for rigging and animation.

In a AAA company I doubt you'd be posing and presenting characters when it comes to submitting an assignment.
You'd likely work on a part of the character in a team among others.

Sorry i did not mention it, i mean posing in toolbag because i would show it in my portfolio.
The pose is just a bonus i think, it maybe visualize the character better.
So you think the Zbrush-method is sufficient? This is good to hear

NikhilR

Oh I meant pose in zbrush and then render posed model in tool bag/unreal 4/other real time render engine.
Most cases you don't need to build a rig in maya/max.

Biomag

ZBrush should be enough, as nobody cares about your rigging skills when applying for a real character artist position. If you are applying in a smaller studio with blurred lines between disciplines rigging might be required.

There is also an advantage to rigging - A basic rig (without facial setup) is done in 1-2 days. Skinning can be kept to the basics as well. With that you can then try a couple of poses or make adjustments later on. In my experience that is a lot cleaner then doing it all in ZBrush and therefore also faster. But at the end of the day it really depends on what you are most comfortable with.


Just to get back to rigging. In small teams you might be doing it as 3D/character artist, but in that case it won't be complicated. I think people are usually 'scared' by the technical side and try to avoid it, while in truth it is quite simple to learn and gives you some proper understanding of what you are exporting, how animations will affect your mesh, how to separate your mesh to make it modular... As I said a basic rig that an animator will have fun using can be done in 1-2 days and doesn't require any complex skills in Maya. In my personal opinion it is something that people should learn to also be able to work better in a team and understand what others are talking about. You can also learn all of this from a character artist perspective, but it might make sense to try it out make experiences from other disciplines as well.

Brian "Panda" Choi

But think about how useful you'd be to a studio if you knew how to auto-rig a biped.

I'd look into learning how to do basic rigging and skinning.

slosh

Even if it's uber basic rigging, I prefer it over zbrush posing for several reasons.  Having a fundamental understanding of rigging and skinning is a great added bonus to being a character artist.  It also gives you a better idea of how to model your low poly to get optimal deformation.  Plus it gives you a very easy way to iterate on your posing.  Unless you are really good at posing a character the first time, you will tweak stuff quite a bit to get a pose to look natural.  Doing that in zbrush would be an INSANE pain in the ass.  Having a decent rig makes this SO MUCH EASIER.  I would always recommend setting up a basic skeleton for posing.  You could actually make it ONCE and then use it over and over for any character you make...just simply move the joints to fit the proportions of whichever character you need to rig.

goekbenjamin

Cool, thanks so much for your inputs, thats really helpful! i guess i will now dive into basic rigging and have to search for some tutorials..

Alex_J

I did all of the pluralsight rigging tutorials for maya (there's only a few -- I had to work through the more intensive one twice), and this was enough to give me a basic level of competence that I've used to rig humanoid characters for hobby game projects, and as mentioned it comes in handy for testing topology for animation purposes and posing characters for portfolio purposes.

Fernando Tejada

What about creating a basic rig for the main pose (in Maya or whichever) and then export to zbrush to tweak the small details? I've been doing that for my personal projects and has worked great so far. Not the most elegant solution, but I can easily change the pose in the rig if I need dramatic changes or just go to zbrush for little changes, like giving some expression to the face.

Biomag

Nandx said:

What about creating a basic rig for the main pose (in Maya or whichever) and then export to zbrush to tweak the small details? I've been doing that for my personal projects and has worked great so far. Not the most elegant solution, but I can easily change the pose in the rig if I need dramatic changes or just go to zbrush for little changes, like giving some expression to the face.

Sure, if this is what yields the best results for you, why not? On my last full character I went with ZBrush because the pose was simple and I knew that I would stick to the one from the concept. Other times I do it with rigs + corrections in Maya/ZBrush depending on what's the fastest path to get where I want. Nobody cares how you make it look as awesome as possible. The other question is rather do you have any rigging knowledge to offer your potential employer if the question comes up? But those 2 things are separate issues.