How To Create A 3d Character Model

What's most important when you make 3D character models.
Step-by-step 3D character development.
1. Character concept design.
2. Modeling.
3. Rigging.
4. Animation.
Conclusion.

The role of characters in video games is difficult to overestimate. The perfectly designed environment and a well-thought game design are for sure important for any game, but the look and feel of the characters, as well as their behavior, plays a huge role in the game's reception by players. In some genres, the protagonist even defines the general direction of the plot in which the game develops and sets the pace of the game.

The creation of 3D characters is a specific area in the game art that requires so many different areas of expertise. In this article, we'd like to share our ideas on how to create really impressive game characters that players will remember long after they finish the game.

What's most important when you make 3D character models

3D character production is based on three main pillars: skilled artists with complementary expertise, communication, and tools.

Skilled artists are the most valuable asset of any studio. Expertise determines a lot — from the quality of execution, ability to synchronize with the project DNA or IP's history to the power of creating something truly outstanding. Here at Room 8 Studio, we work in different styles from the photorealistic, semi-realistic, and stylized to cartoony. We have a big team of 3D character artists with different expertise and complementary skill-sets, whose creative decisions are backed by more than 500 3D characters, skins, and outfits created in Room 8 Studio.

The process of 3D character development requires smooth communication between teams: from concept artists to 3D modelers and animators, all teams should be aligned to deliver great results. We also strongly believe that the highest standards of project management are at the core of any work, but especially for large projects.

Concerning artistic tools, we use most of them: Maya, 3ds Max, ZBrush, Substance Painter, Substance Designer, Marvelous Designer, Photoshop, Fusion 360. Also, you often have to work directly with the engines, like Unity, Unreal, Lumberyard, or others.

Step-by-step 3D character development

Character concept design

Character concept art is the design of an entire concept and style of a character from scratch. To build a character design concept, an artist needs to embody the idea that captures the essence of a character's personality, including their appearance, distinctive traits, background, behavior, habits, and many more.

Designing character concept art starts with seeking the sources for character inspiration, idea generation, research, and drafting of the character. To develop a character concept, an artist usually starts with preparing a mood board, then creates several sketches which include the silhouette and main facial and body features of a future character, for the client to choose from. Once the character has a design, the artist continues working on the colors and making all the rest of the concept.

At this stage, an artist also thinks over the groundwork for the next steps, such as different angles, movement sheets to help the animator to capture the character's theme and personality. After that, the character gets modeled in 3D, rigged, and animated.

Modeling

Blocking

At this step, we block out the basic shape of the body and face of a future 3D character model, its skeleton and muscle frame. An artist must have at least a basic knowledge of human anatomy. Understanding overall harmony and proportion is important for both photorealistic and stylized characters. Even the hypertrophied forms of stylized characters need all body parts to look good together and create the desired overall impression.

Sculpting

Sculpting is a technique when an artist creates a 3D character with digital material similar to real clay. This stage is vital in creating photorealistic, hyperrealistic and also stylized 3D characters. It's also the most exciting and fun stage in the whole process of character creation. Sculpting allows the artist to reach incredible levels of detail of the character by inserting details to meshes that would otherwise have been difficult or impossible to create using traditional 3D modeling techniques. ZBrush is our favorite software for sculpting among all known.

Retopology

The proper 3D model needs good retopology — the polygons should be organized and aligned correctly and logically to ensure the future animation performs well. Retopology also aims to convert a High Poly model into a model with an optimal count of polygons, in other words, it's a decrease of polygons in a model.

Unwrapping and baking

Once we have all the previous steps completed, we'll need to UV unwrap and bake a character model. We highly recommend using Marmoset Toolbag for baking, because it's the fastest possible way. Sometimes artists need to manage the process of baking a model that consists of 30 or even 50 different materials. Alternative tools, for example, Maya, are also great, but require much more time.

Texturing

Texturing is a very interesting and creative process. At this stage, 3D artists are applying color and surface attributes to the character model. The general objective is to make a 3D character model that matches its concept or real-world prototype in each detail, like the color of hair, some imperfections like scars on a face or body, clothes, and other unique attributes. The overall correct display of a character, as well as micro details like the model's interaction with light, is a key to believability and appeal. The wrong material of clothes or surface properties can be rejected by the player's mind as non-realistic.

To get a really impressive character that could fit a AAA project, we approach the process of texturing with the max attentiveness and consistency, using lots of different tools from ZBrush and Photoshop to Substance Painter.

Rigging

Rigging the model means creating a skeletal structure that helps with model animation, so the model follows the structure of the skeleton. There are some automatic ways of rigging presented as features in several game engines like Unity and Unreal Engine, but manual rigging is an important step in a game character modeling for proper animation.

If you want to achieve great results, rigging can never be fully automated. Some tools with their algorithms can be a great base, but the involvement of an experienced artist in this process is very important.

Animation

The animation is the final step in the character creation pipeline. Here the 3D character model comes to life — gets facial expressions and body movements. Each movement should reflect the character's personality, be natural, realistic, and also evoke certain emotions in the player, be it joy and laughter, or, for example, compassion. All this can be achieved by high-quality character animation.

As was mentioned above, the foundation for future animation is laid on the rigging stage, when the character gets a bone structure that defines the possible range of movements. To create the correct script and set the needed parameters of motion in a program, a 3D animator must be familiar with the principles of motion of humans, bipedal creatures, animals, facial expressions in different moods, and finally, be good in physics. Very often, after the motion capture data is imported, the 3D animator has to fix up the keyframes to achieve perfection in the facial expression or body mechanics of the character.

Conclusion

Game character development requires a lot of expertise and skills that have been polished with years of work in different styles. An experienced artist can make your game character not just well-designed, but memorable and captivating.

Whether you want to bring to life a new promising title or support massive AAA production — Room 8 Studio can help you with outstanding characters for your game starting with art direction and concept design to final 3D models and animation.

Some of our recent projects: Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout, Power Rangers: Legacy War, 3D Characters for Amazon Game Studios