Practice 1: Developing Skills @practice1-amirgarusian - Tumblr Blog

Development_Project 01

Showcase video:

Maps:

UVs:

Wireframes:

High_Poly Model:

Different Layers:

2D Concept:

Development_Project 02

Rigging+Animating+Make it Playable

GamePlay test:

The map being used in this project is a free map from Fab:

Week12-Development_Project 02

Animating settings in Unreal Engine:

To replace the default character in UE with our character, this tutorial can be super helpful.

#Youtube

Week12-Development_Project 02

This week I had put all my attention to animate my character and find an easy way to do it.

My final decision was to use Mixamo. It is a website that animates the character.

I animated the Lilith in six poses:

1-Standing Idle

2-Walking

3-Running

4-Jumping Up

5-Jumping Down

6-Falling Idle

Week11-Development_Project 02

Okay, let's bring the Lilith into Unreal Engine and add the textures to it:

Material setting:

I used the Virtual Photography kit:

VIDEO OverviewVIDEO Getting StartedVIDEO Virtual Photography Kit PlaylistDOCUMENTATION LinkIf you're not yet using Unreal for your product s

Result:

Another Rigging test with texture:

Week11-Development_Project 02

Final result of the rigging:

Every part worked properly :D

Week11-Development_Project 02

Best Maya setting for baking the skeleton on the character:

Having a root bone is essential for a game character:

Following the initial skin weight bake, it was necessary to address deformation artifacts that arise when joints exceed a 45-degree range of motion. I corrected these weight distribution issues by utilizing the Paint Skin Weights tool to manually refine the influence in affected regions.

Week11-Development_Project 02

After building the rig, it's time to bake the skeleton on our character's skin.

First, let's have a look at the rig names:

To reference the tutorials that I used for learning rigging, I must mention:

#Youtube

Week10-Development_Project 02

Rigging my character and animating it to be ready for Unreal Engine and make a playable character.

Some rigging screenshots:

This is the final skeleton of my character. I also added many controllers and FK/IK to the joints.

video of testing rig movement:

.

Week10-Development_Project 01

Baking:

some texturing test:

Second test:

I just decided to go with white!

Skin texture:

Finally, I decided to use red armor for my character with a blue shield and sword (RED vs. BLUE) :

Final Look:

Week10-Development_Project 01

Baking:

over the baking, I faced an issue in some parts, so I been forced to came back to maya and fixed those problems.

1- First, I forgot to add Soften Edge to my mash

2. Furthermore, I encountered visual artifacts in the form of purple lines, which I identified as overlapping geometry—a common issue in Maya. This error typically occurs when an extrude command (Ctrl+E) is initialized but not transformed; Maya generates the new faces regardless, leading to coincident geometry. To avoid these topological errors, one must utilize the undo command (Ctrl+Z) rather than simply deselecting the faces.

By asking Gemini, I realized how I can fix the problem. This is the step-by-step process:

First, this kind of black surface is showing a problem in Maya.

For example, I press Ctrl+E in one plane, and as you can see, the artefact is obvious.

To fix this issue, we must first merge the two duplicated vertices and then get rid of the two faces that have the same edges.

Go to: EditMesh_Merge

Threshold: .00

Go to: CleanUp

Lamina faces ( faces sharing all edges)

These steps fixed the issue.

Week10-Development_Project 01

Baking:

Efficient masking within Substance Painter necessitates the use of an ID map. This map is generated by assigning distinct materials (or vertex colors) to the high-poly source, which are subsequently processed during the baking phase to provide clean, color-coded selection areas.

OpenGL or DirectX ?

Does the intended deployment in either Unreal Engine or Unity necessitate specific adjustments during the texturing process in Substance Painter? Understanding the target render engine is vital for ensuring that the exported PBR maps are correctly calibrated for the final environment.

Why it Matters: Technical Breakdown

You must decide this early because the Project Configuration and Export Templates change based on the engine:

Normal Map Format: Unreal Engine uses DirectX ($+Y$ is down), while Unity (and Maya/Blender) typically uses OpenGL ($+Y$ is up).

Channel Packing: * Unreal usually packs Ambient Occlusion (R), Roughness (G), and Metallic (B) into a single "ORM" texture to save memory.1

Week9-Development_Project 01

Does a hard-surface character need edge loops to preserve edges on the low-poly version?

During the process of creating the low-poly character, some parts were simply subdivided, so I deleted the higher subdivisions to reduce the polygon count. However, other pieces were decimated and required retopology. I also attempted to minimize geometry in specific areas, such as edge loops. This raised a question: for a game character, should I keep the edge loops or rely solely on baking normals in Substance Painter? This became a significant concern because adding those loops increases the polycount. After some research and testing, I realized that edge loops are not necessary for a low-poly hard-surface character. To confirm this, I compared one piece with edge loops and one without in both Substance Painter and Unreal Engine; the results were identical.

Another quick test of the high-poly and low-poly character in Unreal Engine.

Week9-Development_Project 01

Once I dropped the polycount below 150,000, I ran a quick render in Maya from my highpoly, just to see how it looked. Here is the result of that test:

Week9-Development_Project 01

My high-poly model reached 128 million polygons. :D

Now, I need to use decimation to drop that number below 12 million so I can start baking. Once that is done, I will move on to making the low-poly version of the character.

Week9-Development_Project 01

This is my final high_poly character.

Week9-Development_Project 01

I made the jetpack by sculpting it in ZBrush first. After that, I moved the model into Maya to redo the surface mesh through retopology.

A portion of the armor was developed through this retopology workflow, whereas other components were conceptualized and modeled directly within ZBrush.

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Practice 1: Developing Skills