How to Design a Game-Ready Medieval Character in 3D

Introduction

Hey everyone, I'm Sausthav, a 3D Character Artist who fell in love with 3D through pure obsession with how game characters are made. I didn't come from a traditional art school background, most of my early learning came from YouTube, trial and error, and a lot of mistakes.

The real turning point for me was joining Zombie Art School under the mentorship of Ankit Garg. His feedback completely changed the way I look at character art, prompting me to notice problems I had previously overlooked and to raise my overall quality standards.

At the moment, I primarily work on personal projects, and Edrin is the one I'm most proud of. It was the first time I felt confident that a character I made could realistically belong in a modern AAA game.

Edrin Project

The Edrin project began with a clear goal: to create a grounded medieval character that could naturally exist in a world like The Witcher or Elden Ring. The focus was on realistic construction and material logic, layered garments, functional armor, and surfaces that show believable wear from use rather than exaggerated damage.

I also wanted to build something genuinely challenging for my portfolio, so I chose a character with multiple elements. This allowed me to work across different materials like cloth, leather, and metal, while pushing realism and material balance within a single asset.

Beyond simply finishing a character, I wanted to challenge myself on a technical level, particularly with clean cloth simulation and sharper, more controlled forms. The aim was to push past my comfort zone and see how close I could get to true AAA-quality work.

Before touching any software, I spent time collecting strong references for anatomy, medieval clothing, armor construction, and material aging. I paid special attention to how real garments layer, how weight affects folds, and how materials like leather and metal behave differently under stress. Having solid references early helped me make better decisions later, especially when it came to cloth thickness, seam placement, and wear distribution.

Establishing Silhouette & Proportions

The Blockout stage for this character followed a structured workflow beginning with a clean blockout, then moving through Marvelous Designer, ZBrush, and Maya. This helped me maintain strong proportions early on and avoid unnecessary redesigns later in the pipeline.

I started the character with a simple blockout in ZBrush, focusing only on the main shapes, proportions, and overall silhouette. At this stage, I avoided details completely. The goal was to make sure the character read well from a distance and that the major form felt balanced. For the outfit specifically, I blocked out:

• The main cloth layers
• Belt placement
• Leather panel distribution
• Volume and spacing between pieces

This pass acted as my blueprint for the following steps ahead, and it helped me identify early issues before moving into simulation or detailing.

Marvelous Designer & ZBrush

After the blockout was locked, I took the cloth elements into Marvelous Designer. I used clean, minimal patterns to get a natural fold flow without making the simulation overly complex. MD gave me a solid foundation for the cloth shape, which meant less guesswork later in sculpting.

The focus in this stage was on: Tension direction, Layering of garments, and Keeping the patterns simple, which ensured the mesh behaved predictably during simulation.

Although Marvelous Designer provided a solid starting point for the garments, I wasn't fully satisfied with some of the shapes, especially in the back of the outfit, where the folds didn't behave the way I wanted. A large portion of the cloth was reworked manually in ZBrush, where I focused on refining controlled micro folds, proper seam tension, hand-sculpted fold transitions, and subtle, material-specific breakup.

This stage reinforced the idea that while MD is great for establishing base cloth behavior, ZBrush is where the garment truly comes to life. A lot of character came from fixing imperfect simulations, and I was careful to keep the detailing intentional, as excessive noise can easily break realism.

The remaining components were sculpted in ZBrush, starting with clean, well-defined primary shapes to ensure structural believability. Subtle wear was added throughout the metal using softened edges, light dents, and small surface irregularities to suggest use without heavy damage.

For the belts, I built a single clean belt and buckle as a base and reused it with small variations to avoid repetition, focusing on edge wear, believable thickness, and subtle surface variation. For patterned belts, I UV-unwrapped them and added the patterns in Photoshop before bringing them back into the sculpt.

With limited reference for the back view, I designed and tested additional props, ultimately adding elements such as a pouch and potion bottles to support the overall design. Bringing all materials together at the high-poly stage helped resolve most artistic decisions early, allowing the rest of the pipeline to move forward in a more focused and technical way.

Low-Poly, UVs & Bake

Once the high-poly was locked, I moved on to retopology in TopoGun, focusing on clean edge flow, maintaining the silhouette, and keeping the geometry efficient. I paid extra attention to deformation areas and kept density lower where it wouldn't add value.

UVs were done in RizomUV, after which all maps were baked in Substance 3D Painter and Marmoset Toolbag. The bakes were checked from multiple angles to catch issues early, and any small artifacts were fixed by hand to keep the maps clean and consistent across the character.

Texturing

Texturing was one of the most challenging stages of the project, as this was my first time handling a full character at this level. While learning Substance 3D Painter, I focused on building materials in layers and prioritizing Roughness and value Control over Color.

Cloth materials relied on subtle hue Variation and Roughness shifts to avoid flat surfaces, leather went through multiple iterations with careful Roughness breakup in high-contact areas, and metals were kept restrained using light edge wear and surface irregularities to break reflections. This Roughness-driven approach helped all materials read consistently and feel believable.

Rendering & Lighting

The final renders were done in Unreal Engine 5. After setting up a simple key, fill, and rim light as a base, I experimented with multiple lighting setups and intensity variations while keeping a neutral HDRI to maintain natural illumination and clear material readability.

For the environment, I used Medieval Village Megascans assets, spending time refining the composition to place the character in a believable context. Post-processing was kept minimal, focusing on subtle sharpening and color balance to unify the final image without overpowering the materials.

Conclusion

One of the harder parts of this project was staying consistent during long sculpting days, especially when progress felt slow. Leather and metal took the most time to get right. Small changes in roughness or wear made a big difference, and it often took a few iterations to find the right balance.

Keeping everything visually consistent across the character was also something I had to constantly watch out for. This project reminded me how important good references are. Whenever something wasn't working, it usually came back to that. I also learned not to rush details, slowing down and being intentional always paid off.

Getting regular feedback helped me catch issues early and understand what needed to change. Most importantly, I got comfortable reworking things multiple times, which is what ultimately pushed the quality further.

If I had to give one piece of advice, it would be this: Finish your projects. You level up the most when you take something from start to finish. And don't be scared of redoing things, the earlier you accept iteration, the faster you grow.

Edrin was the most challenging project I've worked on so far, but also the most rewarding one. It pushed me out of my comfort zone and forced me to slow down, iterate, and trust the process.

With the guidance of Ankit Garg and the structure provided by Zombie Art School, I was able to approach character creation more intentionally. I hope this breakdown can be genuinely helpful to other artists, just as similar articles were invaluable to me when I was starting.

Sausthav, 3D Character Artist

Interview conducted by Gloria Levine