[WIP] - UE4 - Female Samurai

AndresCasta

Hi!
Since the announcement of Ghost of Tsushima many months ago, I wanted to create my own samurai character.
I started working on this character a few months ago dedicating time to work on this mostly on weekends. My endgoal is to have a realistic character running in realtime (UE4) appliying what I learned by working in a studio for the last year and a half.
I'm not working with a concept so most of the design choices are try and error (offcourse using a lot of references in way)
Actual state:

Thanks for reading. 

AndresCasta

Here is a closeup of the head. It took me a while at the beginning because I wanted to get that asian features to it. By the way everything was sculpted from the scratch no base mesh involved.


After I got the head I moved into blocking the hair. I did different versions but at the end I choose this one. I liked because the different shapes and forms making it more challenging and also breaking the silhouette with the llose hair clumps.  

AndresCasta

This is the body sculpt, Even when most of it is going to be covered I wanted to take the chance to practice my anatomy

AndresCasta

Ok, so once I worked on the body I could move into the outfit. It was a lot of try an error. At some point I even try to put some armor on her but I ended up with the core design. The clothing was made in marvelous and quickly put into zbrush. I will attach some images from marvelous for those interested in the patterns I used.






At the end I didn't aim for getting everything clean and perfect in Marvelous. I worked on each piece separated and then adjusted them in Zbrush. Also, this is just for the rough version, once I'm happy with the simulation I got from marvelous and checked is working good with my design I clean the pieces in Maya to get even topology. 

AndresCasta

After a lot of work and iteration, I got to this point where the outfit it's more elaborated and clean, still working on some pieces and some ropes are just place holders. I think I got a really close idea of what I want just need to polish it. For now I'm going to work on the Katanas. So expect some updates on that soon. Also, I know this was kind of rush but sadly don't have progress shots from the very beginning so I skipped most of it. If you have any questions about any part of the process feel free to ask. I'll try to answer in depth to any of them.   


Other shots

AndresCasta

Hello again, This week I've been working on detailing the katana. I have a blockout that I used for the main model. After getting the shapes and proportions the most tricky part is the detailing especially in the Tsuba since It's a big point of interest. I decided to go for a wave thematic
with two koi fish following the flow.

Take into consideration my character has two katanas. Each one it's going to have a different design because based on my research it is really unlikely that a samurai would carry two copies of the same katana because it would be really expensive. Only samurais under a lord could afford it. This samurai is more like a ronin which would make sense she would carry two different katanas.

Blockout 



HighPoly [WIP]