3D Character Design 🦀

───── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ─────

As a game developer and long-time 2D artist, 3D character modeling is a skill I've wanted to have in my back pocket for a long time. I didn't get around to it, though, until my 3D Character Design class in college-- this project serves as my first foray into high-poly 3D character design! I've been working on my 3D skills in Autodesk Maya for just over a year now, so it was rewarding to devote a whole bunch of work into crafting a full character.

In this project, we will create concept art in Procreate, model our mesh in Maya, sculpt and export displacement maps from ZBrush, texture using Procreate's 3D Model Painting and Adobe Substance 3D Painter, rig with AdvancedSkeleton, animate with Mixamo, and light & render back in Maya!

1. Digital drawing app (Procreate, Photoshop, etc.)
2. Autodesk Maya
3. Autodesk Mudbox
4. ZBrush
5. Adobe Substance 3D Painter
6. AdvancedSkeleton add-on
7. Mixamo

STUDENTS: Most of these programs are free/discounted with an educational license!

Spend time brainstorming, searching reference images, and sketching! You should have a general idea of the character you want to make, but don't commit too hard to one idea too early. Create as many versions and variations of your ideas as possible so that you can work out all the kinks while you're still working in 2D.

Pinterest will be your best friend in this stage. Make a reference board and collect images that inspire clothing, general vibes, textures, colors, special features, etc., etc.

Drawing character silhouettes helps to make a memorable and clear design. Picking from those options, you can sketch in more detail. I ended up pivoting from a fish character to a crab character after the silhouette refinement stage, so I started over with a new reference board. Then, I created four variations upon the same outfit, and lastly, a final drawing.

Character turnarounds are a small step, but a vital one! A drawn turnaround will help you keep scale and proportion in mind once you get into the 3D software. 💡 You'll want to do one from the front, back, and one or both sides! You can import these to Maya as reference planes, switching between orthographic views with your x-ray-mode model on top of your turnaround.

The face is often the most detailed part of a character model, so it can be good to get it out of the way at the start! Start with a cube, subdivide it, and move the vertices around until you've got something semi-decent. Retopologize often, recognizing how eyes and lips will deform the most in a rig and thus require the cleanest topology. Maya's sculpting smooth/relax tool can help soften bothersome vertices.

Leave the eyeballs and teeth out of your face model for now-- we'll come back to them after we have the body!

Start with a cube, then subdivide a couple of times to shape the torso. From there, extrude arms and legs. You'll model the hands and feet separately, using target weld to attach them to the ends of the ligaments when you're ready. Make sure to use symmetry-- feel free to delete one side of your model and mirror the other half if symmetry stops working! Also try to think outside the box, so to speak, remembering your character should look interesting and correct from multiple angles.

To add clothes, first extrude the skin. Keep the parts you need and delete the inner shell. Continue extruding, adding geometry, and retopologizing as you go. For animation purposes, it may help to keep all your clothing parts separate, or at least grouped accordingly.

Once you've cleaned up your geometry, it's time to export (I like FBX!) and add more details in a sculpting software. A good way to double-check that you don't have any nonmanifold geo is with Autodesk Mudbox. Upon importing into Mudbox, you will receive a series of alerts explaining all the issues it found in your model-- it will even highlight them on your wireframe in red!

Now, flip your UV map vertically and sculpt small details like clothing stitches or facial wrinkles using ZBrush. Don't add anything too drastic that wouldn't translate well to a normal map. You can then export it out of ZBrush and into Maya again, adding your normal maps to your geometry's tangent-space normal nodes. We will be using Arnold to render, so make sure you use AiStandardShader for your materials.

If your normals look strange or if any textures look too dark... check to see what color space you're using--- it shouldn't be set to sRGB, rather, ACEScg.

Try to imagine the seams of clothes while you cut and sew your UVs! When you arrange them on the tile, try to minimize the empty space between UV islands in order to ensure each KB of space is used properly. I hadn't quite learned this at this stage of the project yet, but don't be afraid to group UVs together by shared texture rather than by shared geometry.

Pictured above are the lit versions from Substance Painter, so let's get into the next step where we go over texturing...

Import your model to Procreate using the USDZ format, especially if you have pre-existing textures like I did. You can use a .FBX/.OBJ file converter if you need to. Procreate's 3D Painting mode is super intuitive, especially for Procreate veterans like myself, so jump into painting! You can toggle between 3D and 2D modes to work on the raw texture image file as well.

As you're painting, think about how each texture might have been weathered by the real world. Would metal have rust? Would fabric have tears? Would shoes have mud/grass stains? All of these considerations will add an element of realism and storytelling to your character.

After I finished up textures in Procreate, I exported them to Substance Painter to add final detail work, such as fabric normal maps.

To make rigging a little easier on myself, I downloaded the AdvancedSkeleton extension to Maya. Unfortunately, AdvancedSkeleton only works with T-posed models, so you'll have to rotate the arms and shoulders out. Follow the steps provided by the program and make sure to save several backup versions in case it crashes your computer, too. Once I had the rig adjusted to my liking, I posed my character to sit at a table for their inclusion in another project.

Alternatively... if your model is symmetrical, you can attach a rig very quickly by uploading your character to Mixamo. Mixamo also hosts a whole library of animations that will spice up your turntable! While my character is asymmetrical, if I removed the sword and reattached it to the skeleton after re-importing to Maya, Mixamo accepted my character.

To set up my final scene, I created a flat plane with a bend deformer, then set up three-point lighting using Arnold's area lights and a rim light from behind. I also attached a Mixamo idle animation to my character. From there, I set my character to rotate 360 degrees so that the light could illuminate the 3D topology.

After the final render finished, I created a wireframe render with Arnold's AiWireframe shader.

And now... give yourself a pat on the back! All done! I went on to use this character in a video game, as well as a separate diorama scene turnable.

Special shoutout to Liz Hejny, my professor, who guided me along this project.