“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!

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!

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!

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