Judge feedback

Judge feedback is anonymous and shown in a random order.

• Great job finishing this project despite the issues you had and time constraints! Your workflow using a turnaround in the background to block out the 3d base mesh was good. I like the method you used to create hair. It's good to see some anatomy studies before going into the development stage. Some feedback: ∘ I know it can be tricky getting the software at college level but this is a typical games workflow you will want to learn. ZBrush (High Poly) > Maya / Blender (Retopology and UV unwrapping) > Substance Painter (Baking and texturing) > UE5 (Rendering) ∘ Nice job starting to create a rig for your character, this can be hard so keep it simple to begin, there are too many bones in the face ∘ If you bake a high poly in substance painter you will be able to use generators such as AO and curvature to give your character more depth. You can generate ID maps which allows you to fill separate meshes quickly. you could also use the polygon fill tool as you were but set it to mesh instead of face (top left cube icon) export the textures at a higher resolution, 2k or 4k ∘ sometimes parts of the mesh can break in UE5 if it is too small in blender, scale it up in blender then import it, instead of scaling it up in UE5. this might fix the artifacts around the mouth and nose ∘ the project documentation would be better suited as annotated screenshots in a PDF document rather than recorded videos. Overall great job on completing this character! You achieved a lot in this project, keep up the hard work! Feel free to reach out with any questions ~ Sasha Gallie, Character Artist at Double Eleven https://www.artstation.com/sashagallie
• First of all, I want to thank you for the work you've done; you've done well with the task. I found it very interesting to evaluate your character. Thank you for your effort and diligence. I want to wish you good luck in the challenge and creative success! Denis Beletskii. 3D Concept Character Artist. Wargaming. Also, I would like to add some useful materials on working with characters and more. I hope they will be helpful to you when working on new excellent characters. Good breakdowns in my opinion: • Sin Nombre—Valerious by Kristina Perinska https://www.artstation.com/artwork/YBQrOX • Frostpunk Explorer: Character Design for Cinematics by Claudiu Tanasie https://80.lv/articles/001agt-frostpunk-explorer-character-design-for-cinematics/ • Game Res character by William Paré-Jobin https://www.artstation.com/artwork/oAonE4 • Yokai Breakdown by Anastasia Fomina https://www.artstation.com/artwork/OGOn06 • Creating a Strong Male Character by Annina Weber https://80.lv/articles/creating-a-strong-male-character-in-maya-zbrush-substance/ • Marilyn Monroe by Alexander Lyan https://gamesartist.co.uk/marilyn-monroe/ Useful literature: • Excellent anatomy books for sculptors. https://anatomy4sculptors.com/ • A book explaining the use of lighting for artists. https://www.laurenceking.com/products/light-for-visual-artists-second-edition • Anatomy for 3D artists. https://www.brownsbfs.co.uk/Product/Legaspi-Chris/Anatomy-for-3D-artists---the-essential-guide-for-CG-professionals/9781909414242 • Character design. https://store.3dtotal.com/products/fundamentals-of-character-design • Another book on lighting, but this time for portraits. https://www.ammonitepress.com/mastering-lighting-flash-photography/
• - Very helpful to have a written summary of the brief in your documentation. While documenting your challenges is good to have screenshots which serve as visual representations of the problem/fix. - It’s good to see you are aware about having to improve your anatomy knowledge and it’s always good to practise both on paper and 3D. Also, it’s good to try drawing without reference from time to time, but you need a vast visual library beforehand which is built using reference first. One book I highly recommend is Anatomy for Sculptors (https://anatomy4sculptors.com/understanding-the-human-figure/). Also, don’t forget to practise anatomy through drawing since a lot of the observations you make in 2D can easily be transferred to 3D. For this I highly recommend drawing quick poses (1-2 min) which force you to find the main lines of action and learn how dynamic the human body is. - Recording your process, although not part of the brief, can be helpful if you want to see how you work and what you can improve in your workflow. Personally, I don’t think it’s a very time efficient method though. What I would have liked to see is a step by step, written analysis of your process in your documentation. You have some introspective points there, but I feel focusing on having a more extensive documentation can help you in the long run more than videos. For reference, take a look at the winners from previous years and how their documentation looks like. - To get a good idea of the game ready character pipeline I recommend watching the following free course: Character Production by Daniel Rodrigues - https://www.artstation.com/learning/courses/xvl/research-and-blockout/chapters/GMDe/introduction - Before delving into another big project, I highly recommend to practise more anatomy and cloth, first in 2D, because you won’t have the additional difficulty in learning the software, then move to 3D, since the skills are transferable. - In terms of polycount, 300+ k tris is way too high, a realistic hero character for a AAA game shouldn’t go over 200k tris, for stylised characters the limit would be considerably lower. - I can see from your documentation you’ve learned a lot in the process and even though the project is not finished as per the brief requirements, I have to say that your motivation shines through. Keep learning and you will be in the finals next year, or who knows, maybe the winner!