The Crabler 3D
“Look! He’s just a little guy!”
No he’s not! And he’ll stomp your face in if you think otherwise!
The Crabler is in 3D, guys!
I’ve spent the past few days sculpting and texturing this badboy up. It’s been a fast and fun process. Actually probably one of the most efficient characters I’ve done in a while. It’s not a complicated character though, so that definitely has something to do with it.
I’m pretty happy with how the 3D turned out compared to the 2D art. It’s pretty much dead on with some minor adjustments that my art director really liked! Hopefully he’s going to look really cool animated in our new desert environment scene.
The process is basically the same as every other character i’ve done. You can check out the latestIvory post or jump on to The Miner for more on my workflow. Or check out some sculpting videos ofThunder!
Thanks for viewing. I hope you like it!
Ivory – 3D Character
Hi all!
I’ve been working on Ivory for the past few weeks. She’s the female protagonist and is a contrast to Amon both in looks and background. She’s a ranger class and uses a crossbow with magic abilities. She’s arrogant, stubborn and independent. Here’s some of the progress making the In-Game 3D model:
Production Sheet
As you can see she’s a very beautiful character. Now to make this look good in 3D we need 3 things: A well sculpted high poly model. A low poly model with nice topology flow. And great Texture maps. This is especially true when it comes to her face.
The sculpture:
With characters like this I usually start with the head. It’s just a personal preference, but I think it’s easier to adjust the body to the head later when I have that done. So with the head I really need to get some likeness from the concept as fast as possible. This becomes a tweaking job very fast, because small adjustments can alter the look of a face drastically.
Progress:
The texture and hair will help this alot.
I usually block in the underlying body after the head is complete. I use zspheres in Zbrush and try to focus on silhouette and shape. Just trying to get it as near to the concept as possible. After that I go into Maya and block in the basemeshes for the equipment and clothes. Then back into Zbrush for repositioning small tweaks and detailing.
When the sculpture is done, it’s time to do the low poly. I do this in Topogun. It esentially lets you paint polys on top of a high polygon model reference. This takes about a day on a character like this. And it’s important to think about animation when it comes to poly flow. The mesh needs to have enough polys where there is deformation. Like the face, knees, elbows etc.
When the UVs are ready, baking the sculpture details over to the low poly model is the next step. I use Xnormal for that. For more info on UVs and baking, see my 3D Miner post.
The texturing process was done using a combination of Photoshop and 3D Coat. I painted the main flat colors in photoshop giving me a base to work on and a mask. Then I hop into 3D coat and can paint onto the 3D model in realtime using a photoshop-like toolset. It’s pretty neat. I recommend trying it out for any texturing needs.
The final model was rendered in Marmoset Toolbag for presentation. This is not the ingame engine.
Turntable Video
I hope you guys like it!
Thunder in 3D!
This is Thunder, the big cat/dog like creature. He’s a follower, like Gnart, and will be used to buff and support Amon and other characters as well (who will be revealed at a later time).
Concept art by the amazing Fridtjof.
I’ve been busy lately with converting the lovely 2D artwork here at Snowcastle games into 3D characters. I most recently finished Thunder.
I’ve recorded most of the sculpting process from zbrush. It was a little harder to get the right look than I imagined, but I think I got it down.
Timelapse Part 1
Timelapse part 2
The final Sculpture looked like this.
After the sculpture was done, I did the lowpoly in Topogun, and the texture in 3D coat.
This is rendered in Marmoset for presentation purposes.
I hope you guys like it!
Fan art!
Hey guys!
Hans Kristian spotted some fan art over on the polycount forums!
I was super stoked to see that Tim Lewis was inspired enough by my concept art for Millies Spudshop to go ahead and made this super cool 3D model of it!
First up is the concept art followed by two renders of the model that Tim has made from it!
He has wireframes and textures and all that goodness up over on his website if you want to see more from him! You can also check out his thread over at polycount to see the process!
Thanks again from the team, Tim! Made our day when we saw it!
Another screenshot!
Hey guys!
In the last post I showed the production art for the second part of the room, and now we have a screenshot showing some of that room as well! Yay!
Have a look!
Thanks for looking!
Visual update with concept art, 3D environment and light tests!
Hey guys!
We wanted to share some visual progress with you guys. We’re hard at work on our vertical slice, and as Mattis showcased in the last post, we’re greyboxing the levels to prototype functionality early on. Parallell to that we’re working on assets, textures and all that good stuff to replace the grey boxes as we get them done.
I have a couple of steps along the way to show you.
After game design have made their decisions we paint up an environment to inform how we want the 3D assets to be made, as well as guide lighting and textures down the line. Here’s a concept I did for the very first room the player gets to see:
This is a typical environment concept art sheet we give to the environment artist. Separate elements, whether they’re tileable, units width and height and so on so there is as little guesswork as possible down the pipeline.
Below is the scene after we’ve gotten it back from our awesome 3D environment guy, Thomas Pasieka, with textures and wireframe and a uniform light .
This is after we’ve gotten all the 3D bits and pieces back and have reassembled them in Unity. For me, this is an awesome step to see my concept art come back as building blocks and then assemble it into something dimensional where the player can move!
And finally I have a screenshot from one of our designers playing around with lights and post processing effects. This is work in progress of course. We’re hoping to have some gameplay videos up before long as well, where we’ll have gotten further on the lighting too.
I’ll end this post with the concept art for the next part of the first environment, which is almost complete as well.
Thanks for looking! Hope you guys enjoy the updates!
Miner
Just posting up our complete miner dude. He’s now rigged and skinned and ready for animation. Here’s some shots of him posed!
And a turn around video from Marmoset renderer:
Creating The Miner
Concept
The character was designed with a design follows function mind set. He works in the Crystal Excavation Site where his only function is to mine crystals and unearth the statue hidden in the huge stalactite discovered during the work.
We figured he’d have to have a bulky upper body, tree trunk arms and small legs, seeing as how he doesn’t use them a whole lot.
This guy is also the first NPC designed and made in 3D for Project FoM! We’re pretty happy with him!
3D
When doing characters like this, I always start in Zbrush. (High poly 3D sculpting package) I take a good look at the concept art, and try to visualize the model in my head. I go forth and block out the big shapes, concentrating on the silhouette first and foremost. After I got the basic shapes down, I start going into detail. I get to do all the little wrinkles and folds in the cloth, and the cool bulky anatomy. This isn’t a hyper detailed character though, so I tend to spend a lot of my time just scaling, repositioning and tweaking proportions. Cause it’s the silhouette and the proportions that make out the character.
High Poly Sculpt
After the sculpture is done, it’s time to make this bad boy into game res. I use Topogun for the retopology. Basically what retopology means is that I use the High poly as reference, and “draw” on top of it to create the new, lower res geometry. When the low res is finnished, I go into Maya to lay out the UVs. The UVs are esentially a 2D plane of the 3D geometry that is used for texture painting. When the low res model has uvs – It’s time to bake. Not cakes, but high res geometry and light! That’s right. I use a program called xnormal. What it basically does is it projects the high res detail onto the low res model. Using the Uvs as a canvas. That’s how the normal map and the ambient occlusion map is created. I use these maps when painting color onto the charater. So the character has light baked into the texture map, and a normal map that simulates lightning and detail information as another map. Making the model looking more detailed than it really is.
Texture map
Final Model
You’ll be seeing more of this guy when he gets his tools and is ready to move!
3D Armor Sculpt
Hey guys!
Thought I’d share the latest sculpture I’ve been working on for the last few days. You’ll find the concept for this one further down the page. He’s going to get textured and animated later of course! This is just the raw high poly model from our sculpting program, Zbrush!
Stay tuned for more!
-Hans Kristian
3D WIP
Hello world!
I’m the 3D Artist at SnowCastle games. I’m responsible for all the 3D Characters and props for our games.
Right now I’m working on a new version of the cute little companion, Gnart! He’ll be helping our main character in battle!
This is just the block-in stage – But we figured it might be interesting for some of you to see the process behind doing a character like this.
At this point it’s just a digital sculpture, hence the clay like material! He’s gonna get all furry and cute in the end.
I’ll be posting more images later on. Peace out!
-Hans Kristian