Toolkit 3D - Character Sculpt Project

 Toolkit 3D - Character Sculpt Project

Research and Thumbnails

For the 3D side of toolkit, our project was to create a character from one of many briefs. With a specific style and inspiration I am already fond of, I chose brief number one: the Cybernetic Samurai.

Looking at the brief I have chosen, it states that the character needs to be "A fusion of traditional samurai armour with futuristic robotic enhancements, glowing energy veins, and a mask that combines human features with mechanical parts." This is a lot of specific details to unpack, so I created a diagram of the different features that I could add to as I research.

By treating these different sections as whiteboards, I can research them individually so that I have lots of ideas I could add into the thumbnails. 

As usual with 3D modelling, I started with researching specific styles to use as inspiration.

Style Research

To start with, I began by looking at games before individual artists.

I first looked at Bomb Rush Cyberfunk (Team Reptile 2023), which is a game I have played before.

A screenshot taken from Bomb Rush Cyberfunk (Team Reptile 2023)

 Despite being developed in 2023, the game emulates the art style of another game, Jet Set Radio (Smilebit 2000), both having cel-shaded, low-poly styles with characters having exaggerated proportions, such as their hands and feet being bigger. 

A screenshot taken from Jet Set Radio (Smilebit 2000)

Jet Set Radio (Smilebit 2000) characters take strong inspiration from 2000s Japan street wear, whereas Bomb Rush Cyberfunk (Team Reptile 2023) still carry across this same inspiration, but add a cyberpunk element to it, the main characters head being robotic as a primary example.

I really like this low-poly art style, and considering this is my first full project modelling an entire character, I think its the appropriate decision to make. I also like the exaggerated features, so I'm also going to add this to the style sheet.

In terms of individual artists, I took inspiration from june.buns on Instagram. They used a heavily stylised, low-poly style that I really liked the look of. What I most liked about their style is the way the faces on their characters were printed on via textures rather than actually modelled into the character itself, as it completes the stylised charm of a low-poly character.

Low Poly Chibi c: (june.buns 2024)

Armour Research

For samurai armour, I first started looking at traditional armour sets to study the different features. The main things I noticed were the prominent shoulder pads and the intricate patterns that come with the armour. Since I plan to use texturing to print the details on, I need to study the general shapes of the armour. Other features are the gauntlets and the cords seen around the armour. For future use, I saved a diagram from Japonalia.

Samurai Armor Parts, Japonalia

Next I looked at the cyborg mask, which needed to mix human features with mechanical parts. For this, I began researching masks that Samurai warriors may have used. According to the website Eiyo Kimono (2023) "Warriors and samurai adorn the Oni mask as a potent emblem of strength and power." Oni are demonic creatures from Japanese folklore. To mix this with human features, I could create a mask that only covers half the face, and add futuristic elements to the mask itself.

Oni Mask, Eiyo Kimono (2023)

Now moving onto the solely futuristic aspects. These were the robotic enhancements, including the glowing veins. When I saw this, I immediately thought of something in the realm of Cyberpunk, with cybernetics being visible on the face and limbs, and maybe a prosthetic arm in which there could be glowing veins.

A game that is a good reference for prosthetic and cybernetic designs is Cyberpunk 2077 (CD Projekt RED 2020).

Official art from Cyberpunk 2077 (CD Projekt RED 2020)

Initial Thumbnails

Now with the basis for which I can design a character, I moved onto the initial thumbnails. For all of these I drew the character A-posing to make it easier for comparisons.

For these initial thumbnails, I focused on variants of the face as I was unsure as of this point whether I wanted to make the mask a more prominent feature of the face or not. Trying to balance the stylised face and the detailed mask was hard, so I tried to make it a cybernetic on the cheek with teeth still visible on it. I need to make an effort to make them look more fang like.

Before moving onto thumbnailing any potential changes for the outfit, I asked for how people like the current faces and any potential changes they would want to see.

Here is an example of the general feedback I received. The majority of people said they preferred the last design, and that the first mask was too clunky for this art style. For the most part I agree, although I would like to work more detail into the smaller version.

I now moved onto designs for the armour and the cybernetic parts of the body. Before I started this, I remembered another game I had played which would serve as an excellent reference for this. Furi (The Game Bakers 2016) is a shoot'em up game consisting of entirely boss fights. Specifically looking at the cover art for the soundtrack, we can see the main character of the game with attention drawn to their cybernetic body/suit.

The Soundtrack cover from the game, Furi (The Game Bakers 2016)

With this in mind, I moved forward into thumbnailing variants of the armour. I wanted to thumbnail three variants, just like with the face, and see if there is any changes I can make before bringing it into the next phase.

In addition to the variant I already had, these are three I made. I then asked for feedback regarding the four different variants of armour I had.

The majority of people preferred the original body I had made, with the cybernetic legs from the second iteration. With this, I put together another design to see if people liked it. I also made the body armour look less one-dimensional whilst trying not to overcomplicate it.

After consulting everyone again, this was the final thumbnail I arrived at. With this, I moved onto designing the character sheet and orthographic.

When doing the flat colouring, I showed everyone multiple colour variations.

The general consensus was that the second one was the most liked. This is the colour scheme I opted for.

To try and be as accurate as possible to draw the side view, I made a lot of guidelines using the front and back view. The lines in blue represent measurements for the front, and the lines in red are for the back. To draw the side view, I also went part by part, starting with the head.

Modelling

The first thing I did was bring my references into Blender. I did this adding them as 3D planes with the image on. This is great for my general workflow, as I don't have to reference another window whilst modelling.

After this, I started with a cylinder. I lowered the amount of divisions it had, and then I flipped it, went into orthographic view, and began lining it up with the reference to model it. I used a combination of the loop cut, knife, extrude and bevel tools for this to create the general shape of the leg.

This is what it looked like compared to the reference when finished.

For the waist, I went into orthographic view after adding a cube. I lined this up with the torso and above the leg I had made. I then cut down the middle, and deleted half of the faces in edit mode. After this, I applied a mirror modifier, which is another feature of my workflow in Blender that massively helps with efficiency. This mirrors the other half that I model to create a symmetrical mesh.

Using the same tools as before (Bevel, loop cut, Knife and extrude), I created the shape of the waist against my reference. I then began modelling the waistband, utilising the mirror modifier again.

Here I couldn't get the extrusion to line up properly due to the mirror modifier settings. I went into them and enabled clipping so that the mesh clips into place here.

With this done, I moved onto the body, with no change in the tools I was using. I also used the mirror modifier here.

Moving onto the arm, I started with a cube, extruding it into a slender shape. Lining it up with my reference, I used the standard tools I have been using up to this point to create the shape of the arm.

For the hand, I created another cube, and modelled it to my reference the same way as the arm.

With all main body parts done apart from the cybernetic arm, I moved onto the face. I first checked my model so far against my reference.

I then started with a 3D plane. To get the symmetry I wanted here, I applied a mirror modifier the same way as I did before.

I then started using the knife tool to create subdivisions and specific elements of the face.

Checking the progress so far, I had created the nose and chin, as well as making the faces big enough for the eye textures to fit nicely onto later. One good part about this workflow is by thinking ahead, we can make it smoother and more efficient.

Here I adjusted the face before moving on. Also, the reason this face is a 3D plane only and doesn't have multiple sides is simply because the hair will take up the majority of the head. By only modelling what is visible, we are left with a more efficient model.

For the hair, I started with a plane, and then used the loop cut tool to create subdivisions. I moved these around to create the general shape of the hair. Here is also where I used vertices select mode primarily, as I could pull polygons by a point and create definition in the hair.

At this point I realised my side view orthographic drawings were not accurate to the model. Because of this, I went back and changed the drawing using what I had already modelled, and made the side view accurate.

Moving on with the new references, I combined both the hair and head into one shape, and began making some more spikes for the hair.

For the back spikes, I also used the vertices select mode here.

Then by pressing slash, I isolated the head. This was because I was going to begin filling the holes in, and needed to see the hair more clearly.

To fill in the holes, I selected edges where I wanted the space in between to be filled. I then pressed F to fill them, and the knife tool in case they were non planar.

When I was finished, I extruded the front edges to create bangs. By using the knife tool and deleting the left over faces, I added cuts and gaps in the bangs.

For the two final touches of the head, I added a spike at the top, and the horns by duplicating a single horn I made from a cube and placing them at the opposite places on the axis (as seen in the transform menu).

Next I looked back at my reference drawings and saw that the body was much different now. I deleted the old one and started again with a cube.

I used the loop cut, mirrored it, and began to work on it with my references.

I was left with this for the base body, which I was happy with. It was much lower in terms of the polygon count, which is once again good for the efficiency of the model.

For the front armour, I just used the loop cut tool to create a subdivision, and then extruded it forward. I used the same technique with the loop cut tool to create the band around the back.

Overall I was happy with what I had so far. A key part of this workflow is reviewing my own work as I go, so that I can change it in the moment if I need to. This is so problems don't appear later on that I could've prevented.

I went back to the leg to create the cables. I used the knife tool to create two gaps where the cables would run between, and used the transform menu to keep them in line with each other on the axis.

I then extruded from one, and by constantly extruding in different directions, led it up to the next gap.

I then simply went into vertices select, selected the vertices matching on both the gap and the cable, and pressed M for merge to merge them together.

I then bevelled it to add more form to the shape.

I then applied a mirror modifier onto both the leg and the foot so that the character had symmetrical legs.

Before mirroring the feet, I added some minor detailing with the extrude tool.

I began modelling the cybernetic arm. I modelled it using the other arm as reference for size. After I had created the general shape, I went into X-ray mode, and began moving the vertices around to give it more of a cyber look.

I then used the same technique as I did on the legs to create the gap in which the cable would run between, extruding the face on the gap to create the cables, and then merging the vertices as I guide them with extrude to the other gap.

For the hand, I duplicated the other one, flipped it around, and moved it over to this arm.

UV Unwrapping and Texturing

Before moving on, I made the decision to UV unwrap what I had done so far. This is so it doesn't take too long at the end, and I can get a general idea now of how the character looks. To start off with, I went into the UV Editing tab, and selected the head to start.

holding Z, I can bring my model into rendered mode, which will be really important in the workflow as I begin UV unwrapping and texturing.

Going back into UV mode, I go into orthographic view. I select the faces on the face of the character, and press U to project these from the view. This is great, as I UV unwrap the shape of the characters face quickly.

Before moving on, I wanted to create the material I was going to use, and so I started with creating a test texture too.

I used multiple colours here to test if any UV unwrapping was skewed later.

I navigated to the material tab, and assigned a new material. I set the material type to emission, as it was most suitable for the textures I was going to create and the look I  was going for with the character.

I then went down to the bottom left of the screen, and changed into the shader editor. With this open, I dragged in my test texture, and connected it to the material.

Moving the UV over the test texture, we can see that it works in rendered mode, which is good so far.

With this, I began with a new workflow - which involved flipping between my 2D and 3D, to create textures and assign them in Blender. Although this wasn't good for speed, it made be much more accurate and careful with how I created textures and UV maps. The next several images show how I worked: UV unwrapping via the projection or standard seam method, and then exporting those UV maps into Clip Studio Paint, where I draw textures over them and bring them back into Blender, assigning the material each time.

With the character fully textured, I was very happy with how it turned out. I then moved onto the next part of the workflow.

ZBrush and Sculpting

I began by exporting the file of my character as an FBX, making sure to turn on triangulate faces and limiting the export to only the selection I had chosen.

Moving over to Zbrush, I used the FBX ExportImport Zplugin to import my model.

After doing this, I found out this wasn't the best or quickest way to implement my workflow inside of Zbrush which I am still relatively new to, so I went back to blender.

I began creating the bases for objects inside of Blender, starting with the cloak.

Using the same FBX method to bring this into Zbrush, I began sculpting.

Here I used the shortcut Control+D to divide and create more subdivisions to allow me to sculpt easier, and create the creases.

I swapped to the clay buildup brush and used it whilst holding alt to invert the brush.

I then also used the cloth wind brush to add more form to the cloak and changed the stroke type to freehand. I also moved brush intensity up to give it more of an exaggerated shape.

I then held control and whilst using the mouse, masked specific areas. This made it easier to add form in specific places. I wasn't really happy with how this was going so far, so I moved back into Blender again and tried to do both pieces of the cloak in one go.

After using the same export method as before, and importing the FBX file into ZBrush, we can see that the 3D plane is unable to be seen from the inside. We can change this by going into the Display Properties tab, and displaying doubles, which will show both sides of the plane. We also press Make PolyMesh3D in the top tool section to make the mesh static and allows us to sculpt it.

I also enable poly-fill on the sidebar so I can see the polycount I am working with. This is very important for the workflow, as I want to retain the low-poly look I have for my character.

I wanted to use the transpose line to create the general shape of the cape, which I want to do before adding the finer details in. We access this by selecting the transpose tool itself, and then pressing Y to change from 

Before I do this, I have to up the poly-count enough so that I am able to actually change the shape of the object. 

After trying to increase the subdivision levels, I found that it was going to be much harder like this than if I modelled the cape and cloak part separately. With this in mind, I went back to trying to model the cape on it's own. For this I started from scratch, just creating a 3D Plane to work with, and turning on the previous settings that allowed me to see the polycount and doubles. To sculpt on the plane, I just made it a PolyMesh3D.

I then used the scale tool with the 3D Gizmo to adjust the size.

After this, I masked everything but the top of the mesh so that my transpose line would only effect that part.

For anything I was transposing or moving through this entire process, I didn't use any tools that would lock any movement or rotation onto an axis. I did this because it is meant to emulate cloth, so symmetry wouldn't make sense here.

Whilst also using the transpose line to add form to the cape, I also used the move brush at the same time to define more movement at the top of the cape.

Because I was going to start adding creases to the cave using the standard brush, I wanted a higher resolution. Here I went into the geometry menu and divided the mesh twice. I was still being conscious of the poly count, but also wanted this cape to look good.

I used the standard brush here, occasionally inverting it by holding alt to create creases in the cape. I tried to make them look realistic by doing long strokes down the back.

Whilst doing this, I was also using the smooth brush with the shift shortcut to make it look much less exaggerated.

When I was happy with the details, I used the move elastic brush to move it around whilst retaining the details. This sped my workflow up as I could focus on my details first, and then create the form of the cape itself afterwards.

Once I was happy with it, I exported the file as an FBX file, by using the Zplugin, and brought it back into Blender. After scaling it up and rotating it to fit the direction of the character, I was left with this cape, which I was happy with.

I was able to work much easier and faster by just starting from the base objects in Zbrush, rather than importing something to work on top of, so this is also what I planned to do for the next objects, starting with the other part of the cloak.

After starting with the cube, I basically started using the same workflow I had just used, starting with making this a PolyMesh3D.  After that,  I sized it to suit the part of the cloak I wanted it to be, and began dividing it to a high resolution to begin working on it. I began smoothing it out to make the general form.

I began with using the standard brush to add details, and then the move elastic brush to move parts of the object around.

Once I was happy with it, I moved it back over to Blender the same way as before, exporting and importing it as an FBX file.

I scaled it up, moved it around, and removed the old original version of the cloak. With the cloak and cape finished, I moved onto the armour pieces, those being the mask and shoulder plate, starting with the mask.

Starting off with this, I selected the faces on the face of the character the mask was going to go over, I then pressed shift+D to duplicate them, and separated them by selection in the separation menu (Accessed by pressing P).

At this point the mask base was a still only a plane, so I extruded it to give it more depth, which I know now I will need when I get to sculpting.

I then did the exact same workflow again - exporting the file as an FBX, importing it into ZBRUSH. what I did this time however, was use ZRemesher to make the poly-count of the model higher.

After that, I masked everything but where I wanted the fangs of the mask to be. I did this by masking the opposite since it was easier, and then inverting the mask by holding control and pressing on the empty space. After this,  I just used the default brush tool to create a mouth shape.

I then began using the default brush to create the shape of the teeth, using the inverse brush to make the teeth look separate to the mouth.

With all the teeth finished, I just cleaned up around the mouth area.

To add details here, I used a combination of the clay build-up and standard brush tools. Once I was happy, I exported it back to Blender as an FBX, scaled it up, and slotted it onto the characters face.

I then assigned a new material, and changed it to emission for now.

Finally, the last thing to model was the shoulder plate. For this I started with a 3D plane, using the loop cut tool in the middle, aligning it with the shoulder, and finally extruding the sides to create this.

Next I used the loop cut tool to create divisions in the armour, extruding the cut faces, and then bevelling the edges. After that, I moved the faces further out to create this look.

After some final tweaking with the edges, I exported it as an FBX into Zbrush, using the same workflow as before again.

I then used ZRemesher again to up the polygon count, so that I was able to model with a higher resolution. After this, I masked everything but the two sides.

After this, I used the standard brush and smooth brush to model the sides, making them look more worn.

I then inverted the mask by holding control and pressing on the empty space, and used the standard brush to make the plates look more worn. I also changed the draw size to be smaller. I then used Clay Build-up to create dents in the plates.

I then exported this back to Blender.

One thing I found was that the poly-count was far too high for my liking for a few of the accessories, so in Blender I tried using the decimate modifier to lower this in this case. This made the mesh look really ugly in most cases, but due to how we are texturing with the emission material, I didn't think it really mattered, and I thought it was very fast and efficient for this specific workflow. However, it made the geometry clip inside of each other, which won't work out with texturing, so I opted to just use the high poly version.

Next, with the material assigned to all of these accessories, I began UV mapping using the same technique as before, after creating the template for the UV.

Turntable Animation Process

With the model complete, I moved onto creating a turntable video for the model. Firstly I created a collection with all parts of the character in it.

I then selected everything in the collection, by right clicking the collection and selecting all. I also changed the shader editor open at the bottom to timeline.

I then pressed shift and S to set the cursor to the centre of the character. After this, I pressed shift and A to add a plain axis. I then selected the axis and the character, pressed control and P to open the parent menu, and set the parent for the axis as the object.

I then made sure the timeline was on frame 1, and opened the side menu. I selected the Z rotation and pressed I, which inserts a keyframe.

I then set the current frame to 251, which is 1 frame above actual last frame. I do this so it creates a looping animation. I then set the rotation at that frame on the Z axis to 360, and pressed I to create another keyframe. I also press T whilst hovering the cursor over the timeline, and change the interpolation to linear, which makes it move at a constant speed when turning.

I then adjusted the camera to a good position, and went into the render menu to render the animation. This is the turntable animation I was left with: 

Overall, I really enjoyed this character modelling process. Using Blender to model and ZBrush to sculpt the accessories and parts of the character taught me a lot about the workflow of going between different 3D software, as well as how to best implement tools between the two. Another multi-program workflow I used was between Blender and Clip Studio, which I used to draw the texture maps for, which in my opinion worked out really well.

Looking back at the project, I wish I had used ZBrush as a more prominent part earlier on in the process, since it really only became a main part of the workflow later on. Despite this, I feel my skillset has improved massively in all programs, and my understanding of character modelling and implementation of it has got off to a great start.

References

Smilebit, 2000. Jet Set Radio (Application). Sega Dreamcast. Available at: https://www.amazon.co.uk/SEGA-Jet-Set-Radio/dp/B00004XQWB (Accessed 27/12/24).

Team Reptile, 2023. Bomb Rush Cyberfunk (Application). Steam. Available at: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1353230/Bomb_Rush_Cyberfunk/ (Accessed 27/12/24).

june.buns, 2024. Low Poly Chibi c: (Social Media). Instagram. Available at  https://www.instagram.com/reel/DCawPmuxWxx/?hl=en (Accessed 27/12/24).

Samurai Armor Parts (Online) Japonalia. Available at: https://japonalia.com/samurai-armor-parts/ (Accessed 27/12/24)

2023. Japanese Mask Tradition: The Kitsune, Oni, and Samurai Masks (Online) Eiyo Kimono. Available at: https://eiyokimono.com/a/blog/japanese-mask (Accessed 27/12/24)

CD Projekt RED, 2020. Cyberpunk 2077 (Application) Steam. Available at: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1091500/Cyberpunk_2077/ (Accessed 27/12/24)

The Game Bakers, 2016. Furi (Application) Steam. Available at https://store.steampowered.com/app/423230/Furi/ (Accessed 04/01/25)