Introduction
Hi everyone, my name is Agelos Apostolopoulos, I live in Athens, Greece, and I am a freelance 3D character artist. I have been working as a freelance character artist for nearly 3 years and have participated in some indie games that are still in development ("Gura Sword", "Circuits" and "Shields") and some recent indie games under the NDA.
project
I knew I wanted to create a fanatical character for the Overwatch game world, because I fell in love with the style of the game when it was released, so I wanted to try and copy it. I browsed some of my favorite characters to see which ones can be transferred. Ciri feels like a good choice!
Adapting the fantasy art style to the science fiction theme of Overwatch is a challenge, but if you make appropriate changes to the existing elements, it can provide you with all the basic elements and make your work easier than starting from scratch.
style
"Overwatch" is clean and bright, its details do not deviate from the main form, and are a good example of the use of artistic style to bring benefits to the game, not just make the characters look better.
In my case, I tried to convert the original elements of Ciri into a similarly concise form, while giving up some parts of her armor that were too medieval to translate.
shape
At the beginning, I referenced Symmetra's body shape extensively, and I was browsing all the characters in Overwatch to see the elements that can be used with Ciri.
I looked at Mei's pouch, Tracer's eye blinking device, and Sombra's collar, and then looped a lot in the saved actor photos to select small details, bevels and design patterns. If you want to learn game modeling, you need free software tools and information packages, you can add q group 630838699 [ Poke me to enter the learning community immediately]
Since I am not very good at designing in 2d, I just used Dynamesh to roughly model things to see how they work until I am satisfied with me.
You can see here how certain initial elements did not exist in the final, some of which I am sure they did not work with other elements, so it took some time to find something that felt better.
element
I always start with Dynamesh, and at some point, I either zremesh or use 3ds Max to get a clean foundation. With Overwatch, because many larger shapes are very polished, it is very important to really clean the base mesh, otherwise you will not be able to get a consistent bevel or smooth effect in the future.
For the hair, I used the IMM brush provided by Chris Whitaker (Funky Bunnies) as the initial shape, and then used a mask to drag them near the desired shape. When the table settles, perform Z repair, and then mainly use Orb crack brush to carve some dents.
I still feel that 3ds Max or similar software packages provide better tools for certain functions, such as accurately modeling swords or belts. Therefore, I made a low-polygon sword, which can be used in the actual low-poly game model later with a few modifications, and then use turbosmooth by keeping different smoothing groups, which can produce good results. I use many elements that are hard on the surface and require precise bevels or consistent edges to accomplish this.
painting
Baking is done in Marmoset, which is an amazing tool that can provide you with many controls for offset and skew, and may be the best choice for making a clear baking map.
The actual texture is done in Substance Painter. Except for leather, most materials do not have a lot of dirt or weathering, so a lot of work can be done from a simple start with the correct single base layer.
Although for leather, I started with a smart material and then used the "paint" modifier to edit the procedural mask.
One of the more interesting things I found when looking at Blizzard’s art is that they have a lot of colors in their albedo, which means that although a shirt may be white, it usually has a lot of "hidden" colors. I think this can also be used in other art styles and can make simple textures look good.
posture
I used CAT to roughly assemble the characters in 3ds Max, so I can play some poses. I have a few more, but I think the two that I included in the last article are complementary. A good posture is a bit similar to Ciri's posture in propaganda art. The second posture is more relaxed, but still a bit agitated. This way, I can display the model in two situations, because sometimes with extreme poses, you may get some stretched textures or hidden props.
In addition to using relatively high intensity on HDRI, I also used a 3-point light source setting. The lighting in "Overwatch" is usually uniform and soft. In fact, I will work harder when using the button lights, because when her blue hair shadow covers her face, I like it better!
in conclusion
For me, this is a challenging project because I usually work more based on concept art, but it would be fun to try to match this exquisite art style. I hope some of the information here is useful, if anyone has other questions, please don’t be afraid to contact me!
