Breakdown: Fierce Tattooed Viking Created in 3D

Introduction 

Hi, I’m Ali Fırat. I’m a 3D character artist living in Turkey. I have a bachelor’s degree in Graphic Design, and my journey in visual arts started with digital illustration. Over time, this passion evolved into the world of 3D, and since 2020, I’ve been working as a 3D character artist. I’ve spent the last three years of this journey working professionally.

I consider myself largely a self-taught artist. Throughout my development process, I focused on constantly improving both my technical skills and artistic perspective. I truly enjoy learning new things, challenging myself, and improving a little more with every project.

Viking

The Viking (Ingemar) project began with my admiration for their warrior nature and lifestyle. This interest created a desire to start a project that could reflect my own perspective. In general, I enjoy doing likeness studies based on references because they contribute a lot to my development. However, for this project, I thought it would be more appropriate to model the Viking character I had imagined in my mind. For this reason, I preferred to create a free composition without strictly following references.

This approach gave me the freedom to make changes and remain flexible throughout the process. The project took a bit longer because I was mostly able to work on it during the spare time I had outside of my busy work schedule. It was tiring, but at the same time, it was a very enjoyable experience. I think it was a productive process where I had the chance to apply techniques I had previously learned and to practice idea development.

I started by modeling the character’s head in ZBrush. This would be a standalone piece, and nothing else was ready until it was completed. However, I wanted the proportions to be natural and not exaggerated. Although they are warriors, at the end of the day, they also carry the roles of a farmer, a fisherman, and a father within them.

After finishing the head, I transferred the model to MetaHuman Creator using the “Mesh to MetaHuman” process in Unreal. My goal was to be able to pose the character later and make use of the blend shapes, which provided a major advantage by speeding up the process. After bringing the model back into Maya, I continued to add secondary forms and details in ZBrush. From this point on, I had a medium level of freedom to edit the head. (By this, I mean that large changes shouldn’t be made to avoid disrupting the existing blendshapes and skeletal structure.)

As the process continued, I had one normal map and one albedo that came from MetaHuman. However, since these didn’t meet the level of realism I wanted to reflect, I used number 36 from the VFace package by Texturing XYZ. Since these textures didn’t match MetaHuman’s UVs and topology, I projected the VFace base mesh onto my own base mesh in ZBrush. This step requires a moderate amount of effort.

Once the meshes were aligned, I transferred the albedo and displacement maps by baking them in Marmoset Toolbag. Of course, this isn’t the ideal method, because you can only output the 16K resolution data at a maximum of 8K, and the bit depth decreases accordingly. However, this wasn’t a problem for me, since I don’t prefer to use these textures in their raw state anyway.

After the transfer process was complete, I ended up with two albedo maps, and I can say that I blended the two at a certain point.

After that, I applied the displacement map to my model in ZBrush and began sculpting additional details. At this point, the head was quite close to the result I was aiming for, and I could move on to the armor and clothing phase.

Outfit

Some parts of the clothing were created in Marvelous Designer, while the rest were done in ZBrush. I worked meticulously during the modeling process to ensure that the topology was clean and optimized. After completing the high-poly models, I re-modeled each piece in Maya. This allowed me to obtain a clean base mesh with proper UVs. I then added subdivisions and used projection to transfer all the details. As a result, I ended up with a mesh that is ready to be edited at any time and can be used with both displacement and normal maps. The total poly count of the meshes is 285K tris.

Texturing

I believe that the sense of realism in a piece largely comes from natural elements: a genuine gaze, a dirty and greasy face, worn-out clothes... This project provided a great foundation to reflect all of these aspects. I painted the skin tone and facial details through several layers of texture work. I couldn’t imagine a Viking without tattoos, so I placed three tattoos reflecting traditional motifs on appropriate areas of the face. Achieving a natural look was a priority for me, so I applied blood and dirt effects over multiple layers.

The clothing and armor were similarly hand-painted entirely.

The most notable thing about the groom is that certain areas were hand-painted. It was done using XGen.

Rendering was done using Arnold. The setup was fairly minimal: an HDRI from the Face pack and two area lights were used.

Conclusion

The total time I spent on this project was approximately 210 hours. To be honest, the biggest challenge I faced was my computer's hardware. The second challenge was achieving a natural, believable look.

My humble advice to beginners: try to finish every project you start. You might not like it, it might not look the way you imagined, but if you keep going, you'll clearly see your progress over time.

Thank you for your interest.

Ali Fırat Doğan, 3D Character Artist

Interview conducted by Gloria Levine