Recreating Maken X's Hakke Malukala With ZBrush & Substance 3D Painter

Introduction

I’m Kamala Atakishiyeva from Azerbaijan. Right now I am working for a digital fashion company, Special Items, as an AR specialist. I make avatars and AR filters of 3D fashion items. I’m also creating AR filters on my personal Instagram profile. All my filters are 3D fashion accessories.

I did my bachelor’s degree in my country as a computer engineer, worked in the public sector for a couple of years, and then left for China to do my master’s degree in Public Administration. After graduation, I stayed in China and co-founded a beauty tech startup in Beijing called OnPoint. I was doing web and product design primarily. But after Covid-19 emerged in China I started to become interested in games and 3D.

Becoming a Character Artist

During that time with the uncertainty Covid brought into our lives, I had to close the company in China. And I didn’t know what to do next. I felt lost because I just closed a startup that I invested in both emotionally and financially. That tough moment made me reflect on my interests. I looked back to things I liked doing but never took time for.

One thing I started to learn was drawing on Udemy. This was mid-2020, and I thought this skill might also be useful for my Web design work, and I could make money with that until I was more clear about my career path. My fiance was working as a product manager in a gaming company and noticed my ability to quickly pick up drawing. He told me about job opportunities in the industry where I could use my drawing skill as a game artist. I was fascinated by the creativity and development of the gaming industry. Games have become a new way to express art. But I realized that 3D knowledge in addition to my drawing skill could increase my chance of landing a job.

Joining Vertex School

I became eager to get into this space but didn’t have any clue how. So I started watching tutorials and reading books that could help me to find an efficient way to get into gaming. I remember vividly the time I was reading the book called How to Become a Video Game Artist by Sam R. Kennedy in the airport when I was coming from China to my country.

Because of my interest in fashion and beauty, I knew I was more interested in specifically Character Art. I found Ryan Kingslen’s Character Creation Course in the recommendation list for Character Artists. When I clicked on the link, it took me to Vertex School’s website, where I saw a clear plan, affordable price compared to offline programs, and quick timeline for people who want to become game artists. It looked great, so I applied to become a student there.

The Hakke Malukala Project

Hakke Malukala is a villain from the Japanese game Maken X (1999). He (or it) was conceptualized by artist Kazuma Kaneko. I was looking for character concepts on Pinterest to do for my Term3 project at Vertex School, and his work stood out to me the most.

This character perfectly combines my interests in fashion, creatures, and horror. When I started, I had just one front image as a reference. But it was clear enough and I didn’t have the challenge to recognize materials and define shapes. The original 3D character from the game was in a very low resolution because of technological barriers of that time, so I skipped it and focused on the concept by the artist for reference.

Designing the Suit

First I sculpted the body of the character, using Nick Zuccarello’s base mesh in ZBrush. After I finished sculpting the body I brought it to Marvelous Designer to make the suit and hat and took it back to ZBrush to adjust the suit’s volume to the concept. 

Following it, I sculpted the shoes, the mask, and the jacket decoration in ZBrush. I modeled the axe and mini mannequins in the pocket in Maya, where I prefer to do all my hard surface models. After I finished my high poly model in ZBrush, I decimated it and brought it into Maya to create the low poly.

The Rose

I made the rose in ZBrush by using the Array Mesh tool. For this, this YouTube tutorial by Maxime Forveille:

And these were the steps:

• Make a petal: Sculpt a petal from a basic sphere. Then use the Array Mesh tool to create 15-25 copies, select Rotation, and arrange the Y amount in it. Next, turn the array mesh tool off temporarily to create an offset point for the whole rose.
• Create an Offset point for petals: Extract a face from the bottom of the petal by using the QMesh tool + Cntrl (creates a face copy) to create an offset. Mask the petal with the Lasso Mask brush but not the extracted face.
• Move petals: Activate ArrayMesh and use the Gizmo tool to move the extracted face. When you move the face, other petals are moving with it in the same direction.
• Open petals: Invert the mask, bring the Gizmo tool to the center of the rose and rotate the petals to open them.
• Arrange the height of petals: In the Array Mesh tool, activate Offset and arrange Y amount to make inner petals slightly higher than outside petals.

You can do more modifications on the rose by activating the rotation or scale option, then arrange the axis amount. When you are happy with the result, click on the Make Mesh button in the Array Mesh tool. And your rose is ready!

Texturing the Character

I created ID colors for the high poly model in ZBrush using the Color > Fill Object technique.

This helped me to assign different textures to every ID map in Substance 3D Painter using the Add mask with the color selection tool. When you use the id map from ZBrush during the baking process you should choose the Vertex Paint option for all pieces instead of the ID map option.

I used simple base materials for every piece and added subtle effects with every new layer like roughness variation, color variation, color position, curvature, scratch, dirt, and dust. For the suit and accessories, I used procedural techniques but for the face, I used a lot of hand painting for natural color and roughness variations. Finally using the scattering channel for the face and teeth made a big difference and gave a very natural look to it.

Lighting

I used Marmoset Toolbag for lighting my character. I used a traditional lighting setup using key light, fill light, and rim light. I took a couple of close shots to show details and orthographic views to show the whole model. In some key shots, I lowered the camera so I could take a shot where the character was looking down at the camera to create a powerful feeling for the character.

Conclusion

When I joined Vertex, I didn’t have any 3D education (except a few hours of  Blender course on Udemy I took before joining) or experience. What I was able to create in 9 months was thanks to Vertex’s video tutorials and my mentors’ guidance throughout the game art program.

And I learned a lot! I learned sculpting human anatomy in ZBrush depending on age, weight, and gender, making realistic skin textures, eyeballs, and hair, creating optimized low poly topology for character animation, and much more. I appreciated my mentors’ feedback, especially during character creation, where they showed me the most efficient and best ways to get specific results.

Kamala Atakishiyeva, 3D Artist

Interview conducted by Arti Burton