Sculpting Demon Hunter Character In Full Armor With Massive Sword In Hand

Introduction

Hello everyone, my name is Long Feixiang. I was born in 2005 and am currently an intern 3D Modeler at Tencent. I am a freshman and will soon be a sophomore. When I was still in junior high school, I began trying to learn how to make physical figurines on my own. This was the beginning of my interest in hobbies, and like most children, I enjoyed creating things. In high school, I started to study 3D modeling on my own seriously. My undergraduate major was not in art, and I had never had any systematic exposure to art.

My undergraduate major was economics, and my studies were actually very difficult. But even so, I continued to delve into the 3D field. I once studied 3D model making at Root, and later exchanged techniques with teachers from M3DS Academy. However, in the initial learning process, self-study was mainly relied on. I always believe that teachers mainly play a guiding role in students' career development. Regarding my work experience, I once interned at Shanda and currently intern at Tencent. My internship experience during my freshman year was quite rich (but due to concerns about confidential information, I will not mention the projects I worked on here, as I am relatively cautious).

The Blood Oath Adjudicator Project

I started creating this character last year. Actually, it's not just about creating this character. It's about the many, many exercises I did during this year, big and small. The works you can see are all created by me this year. The work selected from Tooth Wu (I specifically asked him for ideas) is actually my first complete character work. I try to break through the technical limits of what I can create. I mean, as a novice, my priority is to learn how to add details first, and then learn how to subtract. Actually, I know that my work is a bit overdone in terms of details, but it was a very unique experience. In future works, I will combine simplicity and exquisite perfection to create even more amazing works.

Inspiration

The style of the character itself draws from many sources, such as fantasy, gothic, punk, and more, reflecting various styles. If you observe carefully, you'll notice that this character has an 11-head proportion. This is actually a deliberate choice. The original artwork has a tall and slender style. Although the head-to-body ratio is different from typical characters (consider it a special treatment for vampires), this body proportion perfectly captures the tall and slender feeling of the original artwork (indeed, the artist's artistic skills are impressive). This is also a distinguishing feature that sets it apart from other characters.

Workflow

Regarding my armor, I actually put a lot of effort into sculpting. The main difficulty of this character lies in sculpting. There are no other techniques involved in sculpting; it just requires practice. During the creation of this character, my sculpting skills have greatly improved (we all use the same software, such as ZBrush, Maya, 3ds Max, etc.). Regarding my character's Hellhound, it was actually a significant challenge. This is also my first attempt at creating such a terrifying type of monster. I am a gentle person in real life, and even I was scared of myself when creating this Hellhound at night. To achieve the so-called terrifying effect, I browsed through most of the monster 3D model works on ArtStation. I tried to find some terrifying feeling here, of course, while also looking for a lot of references for dog muscles. As for time-saving tips, there's actually nothing else but to make every stroke of sculpting effective. If you sculpt a hundred times, but ninety-nine of them are just random sculpting, then the rework will take a lot of unnecessary time. It's best to think about the effect you want to achieve before starting to create.

Regarding my texture creation, in fact, realistic texture creation only requires thinking about one core point, which is rationality. Usually, some small details can make your model very realistic. Some small details are often the key to determining the level of your material quality. For example, rust on steel, dust in crevices, these are all very important. Realistic textures are very intuitive. Theoretically, you only need to completely replicate your reference image to achieve a very realistic effect. The most crucial point is that during the process of creating shaders, try rotating your lights frequently. Based on the varying reflectivity of light shining on the model, you can more clearly discern whether the model's roughness and metallicness are achieved to your satisfaction. Actually, the most challenging part is not the material creation itself, but rather the material creation process itself. You just need to organize the hierarchical relationships: base layer, color variation layer, texture layer, AOV layer, and additional layers. By clarifying these relationships and streamlining your thinking, you can create good material.

The character probably used around a dozen lighting sources (Arnold rendering), but the props were most likely the most natural HDR, coupled with some minor lighting adjustments. Because in reality, when rendering props to achieve realistic lighting effects, a natural HDR can already produce excellent results (Octane rendering). In the end, simple color adjustments using Photoshop were sufficient.

Conclusion

The main challenge this year was encountering numerous technical bottlenecks, which can be frustrating due to the lack of technological progress. However, being able to correctly recognize one's own technical shortcomings is the greatest gain. New learners must reflect and think more about where they can improve, and communicate with skilled individuals about technology, which can accelerate their progress.

Feixiang Long, 3D Artist

Interview conducted by Gloria Levine