Character
Character art for games.
What is a Character?
Characters are models in a game which represent humans, animals, monsters, spirits, etc.
The game player controls a "playable character" (PC) while the game controls "non-playable characters" (NPCs). Hero characters typically have extra detail, while the rest use lower resolution models and textures, to save production time and increase in-game performance.
Characters are designed as concepts, sculpted to create form and details, re-topology modeled for in-game use, textured and shaded to create color and surface materials, rigged to a skeleton, and animated to move and act.
Character Process
Characters for games are usually created as a group effort, involving an Art Director, Concept Artist, and at least one Character Artist. Concept art is almost always used as the starting point because it's a more loose, fast, and efficient way to iterate and find the best character design than 3D.
For most modern game characters, a high poly model is first created using a combination of modeling and digital sculpting software. These high resolution models are later modeled over, or retopologized, into the game resolution, or low poly model.
The surface details from the high poly model are transferred to the in-game model using textures and Shaders though a process called baking. This baking process can generate a variety of texture maps that help fool the eye into believing the in-game model has more modeled detail than it actually has. The most common of these texture maps are Normal map, and AmbientOcclusionMap.
Character Examples
- Argonaut (Game Asset) by Gavin 'Gav' Goulden, "Originally created for my presentation with Marmoset at GDC2015. Covering PBR materials and real time rendering for portfolios with the Toolbag 2. In this download, you get my Marmoset scene (lighting setup, material setup), textures (created in ddo and tweaked later), and low poly model. Free / by donation - looking for feedback for future tutorials and assets." More models from Gavin on Gumroad
- Testing the new DX11 features of ma2013.5, Youtube timelapse - Paul Tosca has released the source files for his Nyra character "to help others that might be on the road to becoming game character artists and want to check out the model/textures/psd layout".
- SkankerzeroModularCharacterSystem - By Jesse 'skankerzero' Sosa, how to create a modular character system.
- Roguedevelopmentdiary - By Lee 'almighty_gir' Devonald, sharing his female superhero creation process, step by step.
- BaseMesh - Low-resolution models that can be used as the starting point for CharacterSculpting.
- Category:Topology - Wireframe screencaptures of meshes used in games.
More Information
- Anatomy Reference
- Character Modeling
- Character Reference
- CharacterSculpting
- CharacterTexturing
- ReTopologyModeling
- Subdivision Surface Modeling
