Gabriella Grace Christyanti / 0371915
Game Art / Creative Media / School
of Design
Final Project Environment Concept Built From Assets
1. Instructions
2. Lectures
3. Process Work
4. Final Outcome
5. Feedback
6. Reflection
1. INSTRUCTIONS
RETOPO
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ZREMESHER & KEEP GROUPS
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shortcut to make groups: Control + w (Mac)
MASKING
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BLOOD AREAS + SHADING
After finishing the body mesh and the painted version of my mesh, Sir Kannan pointed out that my character's face still looked far too stale with only very little color variations on the skin. He told me to add more red hues on the skin to show the "blood areas." He also mentioned that I need more color for my shading, specifically blue. He drew on top my weekly progress to show the changes I needed to make which made the process go much faster and easier. He had highlighted most of the nose area along with the ears with red hues while the split at the back of the neck was colored in dark blue.
An important note to point out when looking at the reference image below of the before and after the feedback edits is that the display of my original color changed quite drastically when seen in different devices. As in this case, it was edited in sir Kannan's device.
Here is my new mesh after I had already edited the blood areas more to be more colored. The red hues definitely made my character feel more alive, especially when put around the nose area and the areas below and under his eyelids. The lines for his cavities are also more pronounced as I used Sir Kannan's technique of masking that involves experimenting with the "mask by cavity" tool.
WEAR AND TEAR
Sir Kannan also pointed out my arm guard and helmet. Pointing out that these two items need to show some wear and tear. Especially the arm guard as it should have scratches to show that it has been used in battle before. So, using alphas that I got from the internet, I started to paste some minor chips of the metal. Nothing big, but something faint but prominent enough to make sure people are able to still see it.
I needed to also make a wear and tear affect to my golden mesh mask
which proved to be much harder compared to doing alphas on the
shield. I needed to adjust the focal shift a lot in order to get a
shape im happy with.
Also, for the pattern on the mask, i needed to change a bit because Sir Kannan reminded me a bit about fundamentals, meaning that because the hood of my mask has a pattern that goes all the way to the edge, it'll make the tattoo on the body look too cluttered. So in order to balance it, I should make a border that isn't too close to the edge, along with creating a visual point where one center pattern is able to take over the player's attention. A hierarchy if you will.
I also change some of the color of the patterns, just a tad. Which proved to be a good idea as it definitely look more interesting visually now with some variation.
Once I finished every extra adjustment on the full 3D block out, I was told I needed to export it to Substance painter as some materials for my hero costume was better in that application. That meant I needed to make a low poly version of my hero's body and outfit.
Sir Kannan also already gave us references on how to retopo during a teams meeting. I attempted to do the retopo at first but I found that it was very time consuming and very difficult to do in ZBrush.
So, with the limited time I have, I decided that it would be best to use the Half-ZRemesher as that is a tool I have been more accustomed to. Other than the retopo method, sir Kannan also taught us how to create groups in Zbrush in order to do a ZRemesher while still keeping groups. The purpose of this is to keep details from getting lost when we make the mesh's quality lower. I did enjoy doing this activity more compared to my attempt at retopology. But I am aware that in order to produce a game, i would need to do further research on that in the foreseeable future so that I would be able to create lighter game heroes that doesn't have 95K total points and only lay around the 25K mark.
PROJECTING
When the low poly of everything is already finished, we needed to do a simple projecting. This was supposed to be straight forward but a few times in my attempt, there was a glitch that caused deformation in my mesh. Sir Kannan mentioned that maybe I needed to redo and make the mesh count lower, or maybe that my eye layer was open during the mesh. Thankfully, a quick redo of the ZRemesh somehow fixed it, Im still unsure what the cause is though.
SUBSTANCE PAINTER
This was my first time trying out Substance Painter and the new UI did take me on a whiplash at first. I needed time to relearn how to move and rotate the character and how to project back my high poly onto the low poly on the material's layer. Checking out tutorials in youtube didn't help all that much as it was all far too advanced for beginner level stuff. So I decided to enlist the help of Gemini. Somehow it worked and I could quickly just project the textures I want onto the items I needed it to project to.
Im not entirely satisfied with the texure of the skin though. But I'll
look deeper into it in the future so I'd be able to create a skin
texture im happy with.
Unlike Zbrush, I have no clue how to export a screen shot of a high quality render in this app. Thankfully Canva's edit tool was able to help me to get a high quality looking image for the turn around.
UNITY
Lastly, putting it all in Unity. I was very confused how to do this at first and even attempted doing some animations with little to no results. The way to project the textures didn't seem to work automatically and i needed to create the materials all manually. I'll be looking deeper into it and how to fix that to make the process faster in the future.
POSTER
The poster was inspired by an overwatch poster artwork I found it was pretty simple so I thought I could make a style that's somewhat similar easily. My first attempt came out too plain so I added texture in the back an incorporated the snake logo that I used in my Environment art along with adding a little bit more lines in my poster.
5. FEEDBACK
CHARACTER TEXTURING & DETAILS
Much of Sir Kannan's feedback focused on improving the realism of my character through color variation and surface details. He pointed out that my skin looked too flat and instructed me to introduce more "blood areas" by adding red hues around the nose, ears, and eyelids, while also incorporating cooler blue tones into the shadows. He demonstrated the changes by painting directly over my progress, making it much easier for me to understand where these color variations should be placed. He also reminded me to add wear and tear to the helmet and arm guard so they would better reflect a warrior who had seen battle, while encouraging me to simplify the mask pattern by creating a stronger visual hierarchy instead of allowing the design to become too cluttered.
OPTIMIZATION & GAME WORKFLOW
As the project progressed, Sir Kannan shifted his feedback towards preparing the model for a game pipeline. He introduced the class to retopology techniques, maintaining poly groups during ZRemesher, and projecting high-poly details onto low-poly meshes. Although I eventually relied on Half-ZRemesher because of time constraints, the feedback helped me understand the importance of optimization when creating game-ready characters. During the Unity stage, I also learned that materials often require manual adjustments instead of importing automatically, highlighting another area that I need to improve for future projects.
EXPERIENCE
This project introduced me to a complete character creation pipeline, from sculpting and texturing to optimization and implementation in a game engine. Along the way, I learned how subtle color variations could significantly improve the realism of skin, experimented with creating convincing battle damage on armor, and explored new software such as Substance Painter and Unity for the first time. Although I encountered technical issues during projection, struggled with retopology, and had to adapt to unfamiliar interfaces, each challenge expanded my understanding of the professional workflow used in game character production.
OBSERVATION
Throughout the project, I observed that realism is often achieved through subtle details rather than dramatic changes. Small adjustments such as introducing blood flow into the skin, adding scratches to armor, improving pattern hierarchy, and varying material textures made the character appear much more believable. I also realized that creating a high-quality game asset involves much more than sculpting, as optimization, UV management, texturing, and engine implementation are equally important stages that influence the final result.
FINDINGS
This project taught me that character creation requires balancing artistic creativity with technical efficiency. While I was able to complete the project using tools such as Half-ZRemesher and projection workflows, I recognized that improving my retopology, UV mapping, Substance Painter, and Unity skills will allow me to create cleaner and more optimized game-ready assets in the future. Overall, this experience strengthened both my artistic decision-making and my understanding of the complete production pipeline, giving me a much clearer direction for future character design projects.
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