Crafting God Of War-Style Kvasir In ZBrush & Substance 3D

Introduction

Hello! My name is Vinayak Sreekumar, and I'm a Senior Character Artist with over nine years of experience in the gaming industry. My journey into 3D art started with a passion for creating immersive characters, which led me to pursue a career in game art.

Throughout my career, I've been lucky enough to be part of the production for different game titles. I have had the privilege of working as a Senior Character Artist at some of the industry's most renowned studios, including Starbreeze Studios and Rockstar Games.

I started my journey with Dhruva Interactive. My portfolio includes significant contributions to projects such as Payday 3 (2023), Red Dead Redemption 2 DLC (2018), Marvel's Avengers (2020), Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy (2021), and many more. Each project has allowed me to refine my skills and push the boundaries of character art in the gaming world.

The Kvasir Project

The Kvasir project began as a passion fan art project based on God of War (2018). I was really fascinated with the rich and complex stories found in Norse mythology. Kvasir stood out to me because he is a symbol of wisdom.

When the game came out, I was eager to work on fanart, and I stumbled upon one of Yong Yi Lee's concepts for Kvasir. For the Kvasir project, I gathered a wide array of references. This included historical artifacts, like Viking art and runes, as well as modern interpretations of Norse mythology found in films, games, and literature. I was highly inspired by the in-game characters from God of War, especially the amount of details, realistic surfaces, and great anatomy.

So, this time, I wanted to push myself as much as possible to improve my anatomy, especially the facial details, and try to get my artwork to closely resemble the art style from The God of War game. Apart from the concept, I've taken inspiration from the book The Art of God of War for the details.

Modeling & Topology

For the Kvasir project, I utilized a combination of industry-standard software. The modeling process primarily took place in ZBrush to sculpt the high-resolution details, while Maya was used to create the base meshes and perform retopology. Substance 3D Painter was my go-to for texturing, as it allowed for intricate material work and detailed texturing passes. I used Marvelous Designer for the cloth simulation to create realistic folds and drapery for the clothing. Finally, the rendering and final presentation were done in Marmoset Toolbag, where I could experiment with lighting and shaders to bring out the best in the model.

The head is often the most crucial part of any character: I started sculpting the head based on Kratos from God of War. For skin details, I used a few skin pore brushes and some Texturing XYZ data. I used XGen for hair texture and converted them to spline, refined the curves, converted them to Tubes, and baked them into textures.

The body was sculpted in ZBrush with careful attention to musculature and anatomical structure, ensuring that the underlying form would support the clothing and armor. For the clothes, I used Marvelous Designer to simulate realistic fabric behavior. The small details and engravings are what truly bring a character to life. I used alphas and custom brushes in ZBrush to quickly apply complex patterns and engravings to the armor and accessories.

For the topology and UV unwrapping, I primarily used Maya and TopoGun. After sculpting the high-resolution details in ZBrush, I retopologized the model in TopoGun and Maya to create a clean, animation-friendly mesh with optimized edge flow. For unwrapping, I utilized Maya's UV tools to ensure an efficient UV layout, minimizing distortion and maximizing texture space. This careful approach to topology and UVs was crucial for achieving high-quality textures and smooth deformations during animation.

Texturing

For texturing, I used Substance 3D Painter, which provided the flexibility and power needed to create detailed, realistic materials. I started by setting up the main materials. such as skin, fabric, metal, and leather, by building a base layer for each. This base layer typically consisted of flat colours and basic roughness values to establish the foundation.

For leather, the base layer was solid colour with a basic leather bump, followed by procedural masks. I added the surface break and damages, whereas for skin, I manually painted the colour variation, and with the help of some procedural masks, I achieved the variations.

Each material was built up through these layers, with additional passes to fine-tune details like roughness variations and subtle colour shifts. This approach allowed me to create rich, detailed textures that brought the Kvasir model to life.

Rendering & Lighting

I used Marmoset Toolbag as my primary rendering source, I've used an HDRI and built up the lights based on that. I also created a small background to create an immersive effect. I quickly blocked out the background and auto-unwrapped it to apply basic materials.

The main challenging factor was the time frame and quality benchmark. I've learned about effective planning and prioritizing bigger visual goals. Staying updated with the latest techniques and tutorials can help you overcome the blocker or hurdles. Always define clear objectives and plan thoroughly.

Vinayak Sreekumar, Senior Character Artist

Interview conducted by Gloria Levine