Benchmark 3D game artists
J Hill -
Jason Hill, also known as J Hill is a Los Angeles based 3D character artist working for Turtle Rock studios. Some of the title he has created work for include Back 4 Blood (Turtle Rock Studios, 2024), Apex Legends (Respawn Entertainment, 2019) and Titanfall 2 (Respawn Entertainment, 2016). His style is recognisable with his mix of Realism and Semi realism with highly expressive characters, bold colour schemes and high poly models. On his artstation page two pieces that show his distinct style best would first be Flex (J Hill, 2022) a render completed in Unreal engine 5 testing it’s full capabilities, this piece features a green haired woman with prosthetic arms showing off a range of textures from organic skin and hair, to material and metal. Her face is very expressive and slightly cartoony in nature, though with the high quality and realistic textures she feels almost lifelike. The second piece i feel that shows Hill’s skills off best is his render of a pink haired woman with sparkly blue eyeshadow. This model has incredibly high definition hair and skin textures with small details like skin moles and flyaway hairs that make this model feel like a photograph. This piece, as well as flex, were both rendered in Unreal engine, however Hill uses a range of software to achieve the final products. Some of the software he is proficient in include: 3DS MAX, Maya, Blender, Substance Painter, Zbrush and Unreal Engine 5. (Artstation n.d.) Hill’s role within the Games industry pipeline requires him to both make models that will be rigged and handed off to the animation department, and to create standalone renders and turntables detailing the entirety of the model and all the little details.
 |
Flex, J Hill , 2022 |
 |
Girl, J Hill, 2022 |
On his YouTube channel, J Hill creates videos outlining his process of creating 3D models and teaching others how to use these techniques, by using this reference the pipeline for J Hill’s render Flex is laid out in chronological order detailing each step of his process. To begin with, Hill creates a base mesh blockout within Z brush, in this specific example he used the base female model and adjusted some of the proportions to give a more semi realistic look. From here he knew that the model he was going to create was only going to be a bust so he wouldn’t need to put as much detail into the leg region, instead focusing all the detail into the upper body to draw the viewers eye. To make the clothing, Hill uses a combination of the Extract tool and the Z remesher to expand the silhouette of the body and alter any topology that might have changed. So far these have been very organic elements as this is what he is best at, in the video he explains how he wants to push himself to test out some hard surface modelling, and so by using Zbrushes built in modelling tools alongside dynamesh, and dynamic subdivisions Hill was able to create some more hard surfaces, curves and segmented areas to resemble bionic arms. He states here that he works very conceptually, nothing throughout the process is very finalized its all very organic and can change a lot from where he first started. Once he had done that, he moved over to Autodesk Maya to create some hair textures, combining them with preexisting textures he had taken from Unreal Engine’s Metahuman software. He states not only does this save time and provide him with some great assets, but he can then tweak them to his liking to get a really polished looking textureset. He did have to alter some UVs within Maya too, but for the most part all his UV work was made in Zbrush using the Unwrap function. As Hill wanted to use this model solely for the purposes of rendering a scene, he only had to bake the model into a medium poly model, retaining quite a bit of his original polycount. He notes he would have baked to a smaller more optimized size if this were for a videogame character, however as this is just for rendering purposes he doesn’t have to sacrifice too much quality. Now with this lower poly model. He uses Substance painter to apply his textures and alphas, before using Unreal to light and render his scene, He also notes that he uses RTX or raytracing throughout the process to get live renders, this way he can better judge what his final outcome will look like. In the end, Hill is left with a model that, combined with point lights, shaders and camera angles, is overall very realistic looking and pops off of the screen quite vividly. (How I made my own Character for UNREAL ENGINE 5, 2022.)
Pedro Garcia -
In comparison to J Hill, Pedro Garcia is also a character designer for videogames, responsible for characters seen in the 2022 Creative Assembly game, Total War : Warhammer 3. Garcia has a few more industry names under his belt with ties to creative assembly and Onemanstudio. (Linkedin n.d.) With a similarly highly detailed style, Garcia works in a much lower poly scale optimized for use mainly in engines such as Unreal. His style is semi realistic with Stylized characters and recognisable silhouettes. He has a strong focus mainly with Fantasy characters and often uses bold and exaggerated shapes especially like those seen in the render, The Doomseekers - Total War: Warhammer III - Thrones of Decay, (Pedro Garcia, n.d.). This piece depicts a bearded barbarian type character with a very prominent mohawk, large axe, and many golden accessories across his body. With blocky shapes and clumpy hair this style is certainly more expressive and stylized, almost cartoonish, in comparision to his more realistically proportioned works such as The Spirit of Battle - Real Time (Pedro Garcia, n.d.). This piece is much more of a stark comparison, it depicting a semi realistic figure with white hair and white skin, with a prominent cracked appearance almost alike that of stone or marble. Both of these pieces were created using a smaller handful of softwares than J Hill, though many of the same techniques and platforms were used. Pedro Garcia is mainly proficient in Zbrush, Substance 3D Painter, 3DS Max, and Unreal Engine, though also uses software like photoshop and Marmoset to help with UV mapping and altering textures. Pedro Garcia creates models based on references provided to him by concept artists on his team, providing a more structured base for him to recreate in comparison to Hill’s more freeform workflow. (Artstation n.d.)
 | |
| The Doomseekers - Total War: Warhammer III - Thrones of Decay, Pedro Garcia, n.d. |
 |
The Spirit of Battle - Real Time, Pedro Garcia, n.d. |
On the Games Artist website (Garcia n.d.), Pefro Garcia outlines his modelling process for his 3D model, Dark Elf. Starting out in much the same way as Hill, Garcia first sculpts his model in Zbrush, using the reference provided to him by the concept artist as a guide. To add in textures to his sculpt he uses Alphas and Nanomeshes to add consistent areas of detail onto the model in the most time efficient way. As well as this he has a wide selection of custom Zbrush brushes to mimic more finer details like rust on metal.To create the elaborate clothing his models wear, Garcia uses a mixture of the extract feature along with the Dam standard and pinch tools to creat harsh edges or folds in the material to mimic a wide range of textures. From here he will then manually retopologize his model, UV map within Marmoset and zbrush, then bake his high poly textures onto an optimized low poly model. To make the hair on his models, Garcia will use a combination of Zbrush’s fibre mesh, Hair cards, and careful positioning within 3DS Max to get the most realistic outcome. Adding in his textures in Substance painter, Garcia then uses 3ds max and a simple unreal setup to render his scenes, and if his models requite posing he will use the Gizmo and transpose tools within zbrush to achieve this. In the end Garcia creates a similarly highly rendered model with a wide range of textures, and whilst not as expressive in the facial region, his designs have a stronger sense of clear shape language and exaggerated proportions.
Comments
Post a Comment