XDefiant Artist Showcased Substance 3D Designer Material Used For Skin Variations

Despite the unfortunate events of Ubisoft's XDefiant, we still have the opportunity to look behind the scenes and appreciate the art created by everyone involved. As Lead Character Artist Joel Blakely shared, during development, the team encountered the challenge of limited resources while needing to produce a large volume of high-quality content in a short time.

To address this, Joel came up with the idea of creating multiple skin variants derived from a single, high-quality base asset. He developed a versatile tiling material in Substance 3D Designer that provided artists with a high degree of control and allowed for swift changes, enabling the generation of a wide variety of skins, all built around the same theme.

"My inspiration was my memory of Star Wars droids. I didn't want to copy Star Wars but rather wanted it to 'feel' a bit like Star Wars, so I left it to the images in my head rather than trying to copy any particular droid", commented the artist.

Unfortunately, Joel Blakely was affected by the layoffs following Ubisoft's closure of XDefiant and the shutdown of its studios in San Francisco and Japan and is now seeking a new role. You can check out some of his previous works below and reach out to him on LinkedIn:

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