Matteo Boccardi - Character Artist

It's Not Over Yet - Mentorship Term Project @ TTC

I've worked on this project during my Mentorship Term at Think Tank Centre Online under the supervision of Lucas Silva, 3D project manager at Envar Studio.

At first the scope of the project were just Sophie and the King but it quickly turned into a full-on battle scene in UE5 with mobs and VFX as soon as I became more familiar with the software and improved my workflow.

Software used: Maya, ZBrush, Marvelous Designer, Substance Painter, Substance Designer, Unreal Engine 5.2.1, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Premiere Pro

Concept Art: Cai Lei, Baldi Konijn

Sophie

My main reference for Sophie were Riot and Blizzard's models. The main challenge was balancing the complexity of the hair with the readability of the shape.

I started with a sphere in ZBrush. At first I tried to sculpt a haircap and attach some strands to break the silhouette, but I've quickly moved on from that idea and sculpted every strand from scratch. Once I was done with the first pass, I simplified the shapes by merging some strands together to have a nice silhouette without being it too crowded.

I've mixed PBR and handpainted workflow for the textures. For example, I've painted the skin as if it were realistic, whereas for the hair I tried applying a more anime-ish style. Roughness and metallic values were also kind of arbitrary in order to get the right look.

All the armor pieces were quickly blocked out in ZBrush and exported to Maya, where I polymodelled both the low and high poly. Once I was satisfied with it, I brought them back in ZBrush and sculpted cracks, wear and hammered surfaces.

Since Sophie is the most complex character in the scene, I wanted to fully rig her. Her body rig includes reverse foot setup and an IK/FK switch for the arm system.
The head is also fully rigged. I wanted to create a system that I could easily use to make expression with ease. To achieve this, I paid extra attention to the eyebrows - which have five single control and a master one each - and the mouth. The eye system use aim vectors to easily control her gaze. 

Her body was sculpted in ZBrush. I've started building her body with spheres and cylinders to get the right proportions, then proceeded to polish everything until I was satisfied. Even if her whole body is covered by the armor, I wanted to get it as detailed as possible to ensure that the clothes would sit realistically on her.

For the face, I started with a really rough sphere and kept adding separated meshes which basically mimicked the main muscles and fat deposits in the face. This way I could easily change her proportions as I sculpted without disrupting everything else. Once I was satisfied with the main shapes, I dynameshed everything and polished her face.

King

Since the King is a ghost, the focus on him was more on the material setup than the textures themselves. In order to make him glow I setup some materials in Unreal Engine by mixing Albedo, AO and Emissive maps. Moreover, the material's base color had a fading fresnel in a lighter color to make the edges pop up more. The final look was achieved by adding another fresnel with an overlay material. 

The King's rig was fairly simpler than Sophie's. My main focus on him was the face - I wanted to skin the head in a way that I could use to pose him shouting in anger. 
To speed things up I didn't do an IK/FK setup for his arms, as I felt that I didn't need it to pose him.

As for the King, the workflow was basically the same I applied to Sophie. Even if you can only see the upper body, I blocked out his whole body to get a feel of his proportions. Once I started polishing the model I ditched the hidden parts and focused on what was visible.

Since I had already prepared the low and high poly armor for Sophie in Maya I could use some parts for the King as well, such as the armor on the arms.  

Creature

The Creature was the last character I've worked on for this project. Since I wanted to make a swarm of enemies, I modelled it with some possible variations in mind. Both the handcuffs and the collar have two different texture set (shiny / rusty) and can be removed and matched at will. Moreover, the material I've created in UE allowed me to change the hue of the skin tone for each one of them, adding more color variation in the scene. 

To make them even more different I made two versions of the head - one has an emissive sign, the other has a painted one (mimicking the "real" one). 

The Creature's rigging is fairly simple since it has no eyes. Even in this case I didn't bother with an IK system for the arm system since I didn't need it for my poses, but I did one for the legs since I wanted to make the different minions jump around the scene. 

Sculpting was entirely done in ZBrush. Once I had the main form down I imported a decimated mesh in Maya to sculpt the handcuffs and the collar and prepare the low and high poly. 

At first I wanted to sculpt the sign on the head in ZBrush but later opted to do it with normal maps in Substance Painter so that I could make the painted variation as well.

Environment

I quickly assembled an environment from scratch by sculpting some rocks in ZBrush and creating a seamless dirt material as the cave floor in Substance Designer.

VFX were made with Niagara in Unreal 5.2. Since I wanted to create a shot frozen in time, the real challenge was having full control on the particles and having them stand still exactly where I wanted them as I moved the camera across the scene. 

To do so, I took advantage of the "Sim cache" beta feature in UE5. By storing the particle simulation I could work on its playback speed and control exactly how many particles I wanted on screen at a time.

And that's it for this project! I hope you've enjoyed it.

Nerissa the Alchemist - Advanced Term Project @ TTC

I've worked on this project during my Advanced Term at Think Tank Centre Online under the supervision of Lucas Silva.

For this project I wanted to explore new stuff and get out of my comfort zone with something more realistic. One of my main focus was tackling haircards workflow.
The whole model is around 140k tris.

Software used: Maya, ZBrush, Marvelous Designer, Substance Painter, Substance Designer, Marmoset 4.

Concept Art: Eleonora Lisi

I've also enjoyed hard surfacing and sculpting props - even if the belt is not completely visible in the concept art, I've worked with the concept artist to create a full belt. 

Project breakdown

For her clothes, I started with a rough blockout on ZBrush to get the proportions; after that, I made the garments in Marvelous Designer and imported them back in ZBrush where I remeshed the meshes and sculpted more folds by myself to get the final result. 

The grooming was definitely one of the parts I was looking forward to. 

I started with a blockout on ZBrush that I imported in Maya. I needed it to be as good as possible because I wanted to use it both as a "haircap" to make the braid fuller and a guide for the haircard curves.

Both the dagger and the belt where almost entirely made in Maya.

I divided the meshes in different UVs according to their material.

Nerissa's rig was the first complete rig I did. Since I was still learning, I tried to make it as complete as possible so that I could explore as many solutions as possible at once. At the time I didn't need a rig for the face since I had already sculpted the expression I wanted.

And that's all. Thank you!