Hello everyone! For the Major Project of my Masters in Games Art, I am creating a game-ready character based on Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj, the Warrior King and Founder of the Maratha Empire in 17th century India. I am making this character as a modular game asset, including a complete base body, a set of attire, jewelry and accessories, as well as various weapons and armor pieces. Instead of relying on a specific reference, I am drawing inspiration from different paintings, illustrations, movies, and books to achieve a historically accurate resemblance.
The final deliverable will be a cinematic shot of him seated on his throne, using a composition inspired by a scene from the recent bollywoodmovie "Chhaava."
I have finished blocking out the composition. I have created block-out of the throne and surrounding architecture with the character scale reference in Blender.
I will primarily focus on the character for my major project. To begin, I want to establish a benchmark for quality standards throughout the project.
I chose this dagger asset because it is a relatively small asset and offers several different textures to work with.
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ArtStation:
https://www.artstation.com/bridjagtap7
Replies
I’ve completed the benchmark asset for my Final project, "Khanjar", the dagger that will act as the quality bar throughout the project. This includes final textures and renders in Unreal Engine 5, with some Blender and Marmoset shots as well.
The goal with this piece was to establish the visual language, material breakdown, and overall fidelity.
I would appreciate any feedback on the Material readability, silhouette, and overall presentation.
Tools Used:
Modelling: Blender
Texturing: Substance 3D Painter
Rendering: Marmoset Toolbag, Unreal Engine 5 & Blender (Cycles)
Viewport:
Renders -
Marmoset Toolbag:
Unreal Engine:
Blender:Always open to critique and suggestions.
This is a breakdown of the character I created during the pre-production phase. To make this a modular character, I have separated it into several different texture sets.
I have blocked out the character's proportions in ZBrush and finalised the primary forms. Currently, I am sketching the clothing and other details to use as a reference for the high-poly model. I would appreciate any feedback on the overall proportions and anatomy of the character before I move the mesh into Marvelous Designer for clothing.
Current progress on the sketch inside Blender:
I have finalized the proportions and completed the clothing design using Marvelous Designer.
For the headgear, I attempted to wrap the fabric around the base shape in Marvelous Designer, but I wasn't achieving the desired results. Therefore, I decided to use curves in Blender to create the headgear.
Current progress:
I have imported everything into ZBrush to prepare it for adding details and making touch-ups.
I have been working on the details of the face and body; here is the progress. For the face, I have used different references to understand his prominent facial features and try to achieve likeness from there.
I have also optimized the topology of the clothing for SubD in ZBrush, added thickness, and enhanced the folds.
I have completed the retopology and UV mapping for the clothing. Although this is a game asset, I want to ensure it has a high level of detail for close-up shots. Therefore, I decided to maintain slightly denser geometry and increase the texel density to about 25 px/cm.
I am currently deliberating between two options regarding texel density for my clothing pieces. The first option is to keep the texel density constant across all items, which gives almost no texture stretching and results in lower texture map coverage. approximately 60%.
The second option is optimising the UVs to achieve a texel density in the range of about 20-30 px/cm. This method allows me to assign higher texel density to important and more visible areas. For example, the pants would have a lower texel density compared to the shirt. I also plan to add embroidery on the collar, which should get the highest texel resolution among the cloths. This approach would provide better coverage with minimal stretching of the texture.
I would appreciate any feedback on this. Thank You!