#liveprofessionalbrief

[tanith-davies]

Practice 2: Creative Project Development, Live Professional Brief, Post 11

Final Renders

My final rendered images for Jane, with new and (and hopefully improved) improved lighting, and character mesh:

[tanith-davies]

Practice 2: Creative Project Development, Live Professional Brief, Post 9

Rendering

My render engine of choice is Marmoset Toolbag, so when exporting my Substance Painter textures, I used direct x normals for easy implementation into this engine. I brought Jane into Marmoset before I had completely finished her texturing, to allow for final texture tweeks, once I saw how the material maps look with my blocked out lighting.

I used a very simple 3 point lighting set up, and tried to mimic the Fortnite character renders in their promotional materials, with additional red and blue rim lights, to add more of a punk vibe - and flair to Jane’s character.

I noticed during the rendering stage, it would have been very effective to add a directional shading map for the hair, however I didn’t have time for that at the formative hand in, but will try to find time to create one for the summative, as especially on the turnaround video, the hair reflections don’t behave as ‘hair should’.

Final Reflections

Jane’s hair is currently very shiney, an anisotropic map may break this up enough, or I might have to reduce the roughness in this area.

Overall, I’m very happy with how quickly I have pulled together this character, I think she stands out well as a solid design. Most of the improvements to her design would be made in the sculpting phase, giving her move volume in areas to amplify the bulky stylized Fortnite look, with additional improvements in the topology of the top, to create more of a grid form of even topology. Improvements in the texturing can definitely be done with the rendering of her badges, and potentially more love to her fingers.

Final Renders

References

Marmoset (2026) Marmoset Toolbag 5 (5.02) [Computer program]. Available at: https://marmoset.co/#dltoolbag (Accessed: 14 March 2026) 

[tanith-davies]

Practice 2: Creative Project Development, Live Professional Brief, Post 8

Refining Texturing

Once I was nearing completion of my texturing, I combined my modular meshes together to form her final base mesh, and brought my completed Jane back into Substance Painter, to add in additional Ambient Occlusion shading, and check she worked well as a whole.

When it came to approaching how to create the skull pattern on her shirt, I hand painted it in Substance Painter - it being a quick and easily editable approach, although I don’t feel the result is quite as crisp as it could be. If I were to do it again, I would approach creating the skull in Adobe Illustrator or Photoshop, and import it later as a mask. Likewise with the buttons, creating them in Adobe Illustrator as vectors would produce a much cleaner result then hand painting them within Substance Painter, but my approach was more time efficient. Making the buttons look more professional and rounded up would be a great later refinement.

I added height details on all of the clothing pieces, to amplify the material definition, using and adjusting a fill layer from Substance Painters default fabric materials.

References

Adobe (2026) Substance 3D Painter (11.0) [Computer program]. Available at: https://www.adobe.com/uk/products/substance3d/apps/painter.html?sdid=JZBJVTGW&mv=search&mv2=paidsearch&gad_source=1&gad_campaignid=20396750522&gbraid=0AAAAADraYsKBieDlZ1I5yrKX7YUuoQC71&gclid=CjwKCAiAw9vIBhBBEiwAraSATm7IBxiVSlh1VGJVeyrAg0oUr_j1cQeHwqevkdnn2rPRnLFVjxVdkRoCCzkQAvD_BwE (Accessed: 10 March 2025). 

[tanith-davies]

Practice 2: Creative Project Development, Live Professional Brief, Post 7

Baking

The brief suggested baking our characters in Substance Painter, so I progressed with that route, but would like, if time, to bake again in Marmoset to compare results, since during my development projects I found to prefer Marmoset’s wider reaching AO maps.

I was mostly happy with the bake below, after fixing alignment issues around the shirt and hair, it seemed clean, and baking each individual hair strand separately definitely meant for clean surfaces on the fiddly sections. My cage size ended up being larger than I felt it needed to be, due to the shirt’s folds not conforming super well to my lowpoly mesh. I hope this hasn’t led to too much of a loss in detail, but it doesn’t appear to have.

I had several baking errors still in the hair which needs more attention, mostly in the AO and Normal map, some of which can be fixed in photoshop afterwards, others need to be fixed with my meshes aligning better.

Texturing

Getting started with the texturing process, I added block colours to each asset with a slightly darker, and saturated fill layer with an AO bitmap mask, and in some cases curvature, before refining each asset separately. This provided me with a solid base to work upwards from, sorting out all my material masks in one go, to not faff with them later on.

The skirt was one of the assets I tackled first, since the tartan stripes were important to get correct. I used Adobe Substance Painter’s smart tartan material as a base, striping it down to the core colour parts, and building it up from there. Unwrapping the UVs into a flat plane made adding the vertical and horizontal stripes onto the skirt really easy, and I was very happy with how well aligned they ended up.

I tried to keep the base colours relatively simple on Jane, prioritising large gradients, then subtle noise variations, and using the roughness map to build up the material feel then colour noise.

References

Adobe (2026) Substance 3D Painter (11.0) [Computer program]. Available at: https://www.adobe.com/uk/products/substance3d/apps/painter.html?sdid=JZBJVTGW&mv=search&mv2=paidsearch&gad_source=1&gad_campaignid=20396750522&gbraid=0AAAAADraYsKBieDlZ1I5yrKX7YUuoQC71&gclid=CjwKCAiAw9vIBhBBEiwAraSATm7IBxiVSlh1VGJVeyrAg0oUr_j1cQeHwqevkdnn2rPRnLFVjxVdkRoCCzkQAvD_BwE (Accessed: 6 March 2025). 

[tanith-davies]

Practice 2: Creative Project Development, Live Professional Brief, Post 6

To collect feedback on 3D Hit, I posted my work and additionally followed several other work in progress threads from other MA projects, providing inspiration, alongside advice -  noting the feedback they received and how this can translate to my own work. 

With retopologising the shirt, I followed the curves of the fabric, rather than creating a more uniform topology, and cutting into the mesh to form the sharper folds later. This means the mesh is hopefully better equipped to further deform the shirt with animation later.

I was happy with my retopology for the hands, using limited geometry while adding triangles around the joints to reduce the fingers deforming in unrealistic ways on animation.

Finishing up

Overall my tricount was reaching the upper limit of my budget, and I had yet to duplicate the chain links, spikes, or other jewelry bits around Jane. I am removing the skirt and the chain from my final submission, since they make a large amount of the polycount up, and don’t quite form the ‘bust’ the brief asks for. However, I will continue to render and texture the skirt, as I feel they really add the punk aesthetic to the character, and benefit her presentation.

I could have been far more optimal in the way I retopologised the hair - rather than retoping each strand individually, I should have created one overall mesh for the bun, and fringe retrospectively, then connected the strands together, producing a watertight mesh. This would be more easily animatable and potentially save on tri count, however there are limited animations for the hair within Fortnite, so I don’t believe this would be much of an issue. But if I were to need to cut down more geometry for my character, the hair would be the first place I'd turn to.

UVing

On re-reading the brief and familiarizing myself with the requirements, I separated my characters head and body onto two separate texture sheets, focusing on orientating my meshes to all face the same x y directions for easier texturing. I am getting much quicker at retopologising characters, and Jane didn’t take as long to create her lowpoly mesh, in comparison to the sculpting process.

I was concerned I gave too much resolution on the texture sheet to the hair pieces, and didn’t explore duplicating and repeating hairstrands around her head. It would be great to see how much texture resolution is given to the face in comparison to the hair pieces within Fortnite characters, but here I have guessed, by giving the face proportionately slightly more, but not much.

While UVing Jane, I created a separate mesh to use to bake and texture her, separate to the final rendered game ready asset. This mesh separates her re-occuring UVs to produce a clean bake and texture - separating her bracelets, chain links, spikes, earrings, rings, and removing an arm.

My final UV sheets feature above, separating the head with the body. More work should have gone into aligning the fingers of the hands straight, additionally straightening out the curly hair strands, and having the fingers go sideways means they will get a less crisp resolution.

References

Programs:

Autodesk (2025) Maya (2025) [computer program]. Available at: https://www.autodesk.com/products/maya/overview (Accessed:  3 March  2026). 

[tanith-davies]

Practice 2: Creative Project Development, Live Professional Brief, Post 5

Research

While creating my lowpoly mesh for Jane, I did some research into the wireframes of Fortnite meshes, to try and match their polygon distribution and universal loops. There was limited online reference regarding Epic’s character topology, but Chris Wells and Nuare Studio provided some excellent examples of their topology distribution with a variety of character builds. They include dense topology round the face, and drastically reduce the polygons for the hair, and flatter clothing items.

When retopologising the face I followed universal facial loops around key muscle groups - predominantly eyes, nasal loop and mouth for easy deformation during rigging and animation. I started here, and worked down her body, prioritising the face and hands to start with, being important areas.

Retoping and Uving

While retoping I started to consider my UV layouts and texturing, due to the limited texture sheet size, I have decided to create multiple instances of objects and duplicate instances of artifacts around my model for Jane’s accessories - predominantly spikes, earrings and chain links.

I am additionally considering mirroring the arms and hands’ UVs, to duplicate the textures, saving space and improving resolution, since the main visual interest for my character currently comes from her accessories and clothing, rather than the un-uniformness of the textures

Primary topology references I followed for simplifying the hands, and fortnite body and arm loops.

References

Video Games:

Epic Games (2017) Fortnite [video game]. Epic Games.

Programs:

Autodesk (2025) Maya (2025) [computer program]. Available at: https://www.autodesk.com/products/maya/overview (Accessed:1 March 2026). 

Artwork:

Wells, C. (2018) Fortnite: Large Base Male [digital artwork]. Available at: https://chriswells.artstation.com/projects/k0r1d (Accessed: 1 March 2026).

Nuare (2026) Fortnite. Available at: https://nuare.com/fortnite/ (Accessed: 2 March 2026) 

[tanith-davies]

Practice 2: Creative Project Development, Live Professional Brief, Post 4

Reflections On The 3D Sculpt

Reflecting on the sculpt in its final form, there are a few things I would like to adjust if more time later on in the project. Firstly, I don’t feel that the hair sufficiently matches the Fortnite style. I did sculpt in more detail into the separate hair fringe and bun strands, however the resulting artifact quickly became very visually noisy. The gathering of hair into the bun, could also do with some further work to better define the clumps of hair, and give it the same planular crispness that is felt with the mesh strands with the fringe and the bun.

The folds in the t-shirt additionally need to be sharpened out more, after softening them to try and match the bulkyness of the Fortnite style, I have been left with something less accomplished, and more work is needed here.

The ear of the character has not had the same love that the rest of the face has had, and the hands need further defining, paying more attention to the anatomy.

My eyelashes are additionally a bit too thin,  and refinement on the shape to frame the eye in a more natural manner would give a better feel for the character.

Later in the project, I will spend some considerable work improving these points if time permits, but for now I need to move onto the retopology phase of the project, to keep to my time management plans, and hopefully some aspects can be fixed, or disguised in texturing and presentation.

Due to the large amount of polygons, I decimated Jane to bring it down to a file size Maya can handle, and began to create my lowpoly using Quad draw in Maya.

References

Programs:

Maxon (2025) ZBrush (Version 2025.1) [computer program]. Available at: https://www.maxon.net/en/zbrush (Accessed: 29 February  2026).

Artwork:

Slavsky, M. (2025) Punk Goth Lady. Available at: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/3ENryA (Accessed: 28 February 2026). 

[tanith-davies]

Practice 2: Creative Project Development, Live Professional Brief, Post 3

Finalising The Sculpting

For the first two weeks I had on this project, unfortunately I was without my graphic tablet, and so the progress I made within ZBrush was a lot more limited then I had previously planned, and I needed to speed things up. I quickly got behind on my Gantt chart, an effective time management plan, and so needed to re-scope.

When reunited with my tablet, I continued iteratively refining my sculpt. I further refined the folds of the shirt, attempting to create a half way point between the crispness of the concept, and the bulkier, softer forms of the Fortnite style. I replaced the hair strands with some more considerate shapes for the fringe, as well as bun fly-aways, and then sculpted the main volume of the hair using the clay buildup and dam standard brush primarily, echoing Epic’s workflow.

At this stage the hair definitely needed some more refining, since the forms were still very bumpy and the clumps of hair flow were not clearly defined.

When tackling the chain, it would make sense from a performance perspective to create multiple instances of the same chain link asset, rather than sculpting each link individually. But I still wanted a high poly for both the bake, and proportionally blocking out the sculpt. So to do this in Zbrush, I learnt how to create my own curve brush, by following a tutorial on Youtube by AbeLeal3D, which I used to create the high poly of my chain.

When adding in the eyelashes, I simplified Jane’s concept to 3 bulky lashes, which is still more than the typical Fornite character has, but after simplifying it further, my model lost the essence of Jane, and I was comfortable with this being a compromise of the two styles.

Regarding adding seams for the clothing pieces, I started to further analyse the Fortnite clothing. The bulky assets such as jackets, all had very predominant seams in their clothing, but many t- shirts and vests didn’t model, or texture in the seams to reduce the visual noise. This variation of techniques made me lean to not adding in seams for the top, since I felt the design of the sharp folds had enough visual interest to take precedence for the viewer, so as not need further detail round the sides. But, I can always add in seams later or during the texturing process after feedback.

I was nervous to move onto the hands, as I am aware this is one of my weaker areas of sculpting, but it needed special attention. I sourced more research images in this area to help with the process of capturing the Fortnite style. 

The very square, blocky fingers are distinct to the Fortnite style, so I paid special attention to avoid a ‘sausage’-like feel, over exaggerating the joints that I was previously prone to. Making the fingers practically rectangular to start with, and keeping all aspects very planula provided me with a good base to refine with subtler ridges on the joints.

Nearing the end of my sculpt, I went back over some of the lowpoly accessories I modelled early on in the process. The first earrings I made, were designed to heavily match the concept, and thus being asymmetrical and wonky in shape, but later realising that it was a very stylistic choice for the 2D image, and reminding myself I was taking lots of artistic liberties elsewhere to primarily match the Fortnite style, I re-made the earrings without warping their shape - keeping them blocky and solid.

With the final polishing touches, I sharpened up some of the top folds, Dynameshed and created holes in between the belt buckles, sharpened the eyelashes up and added a few extra sculpted details to the hair. 

References

Video:

Leal, A. (2023) How to Create Chains and Ropes in ZBrush [video]. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j0gViuAjQWA (Accessed: 28 February 2026). 

Video Games:

Epic Games (2017) Fortnite [video game]. Epic Games.

Programs:

Maxon (2025) ZBrush (Version 2025.1) [computer program]. Available at: https://www.maxon.net/en/zbrush (Accessed: 29 February  2026).

Artwork:

Slavsky, M. (2025) Punk Goth Lady. Available at: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/3ENryA (Accessed: 28 February 2026).