In Art Spotlight, we invite Sketchfab artists to talk about one of their designs.
Hi! My name is Dmitry and I’d like to share with you the process of creating my Caitlyn model for the Riot art contest on Polycount. Before we start I wanted to thank Riot and Polycount for that awesome contest and Sketchfab for giving an opportunity to show this model in 3d!
As a base for a model I used an official Riot Caitlyn wallpaper for a base skin. I like that illustration very much and my goal of this entry was to create a model of Caitlyn and come as close as I can to an illustration.
First thing I started is to make a body and head in Z brush. I wasn’t trying to push it too much, I needed a base for lowpoly because it is much faster to do a quick sketch of body and face, then made some fixes in lowpoly rather than creating lowpoly in maya from the beginning. Well, at least for me this is the fastest way.
Highpoly to lowpoly process
When I was happy with the result I started doing lowpoly over highpoly adding belts gloves and boots all details that are simple and easy to do right on the fly. Next step adding dress, belts and hat with it glasses system and hair. It is much easier for me to create all that details right in lowpoly to keep a control on all the verts and shapes. Next step was a weapon. I made a rough side projection concept and made a model in Maya.
Weapon concept and model
After receiving feedback on Polycount forum on my WIP thread I tuned up silhouette pushed belts and make legs longer cos it is a stylized model and long legs will work better from the ingame perspective. After that made a UV mapping, AO bake, gradient bake and headed over to painting texture.
For painting textures I use 3d Coat and Photoshop. I’m setting up a model for painting by making a full version and over it separated version where I break apart a model to have a easy access to all parts of a model. Best thing about 3d coat for me is the applink with Photoshop: by pressing Ctrl+P you send all layers in Photoshop and compose all maps right there. After importing all maps in file from 3d Coat I started to make flat colors to make layers by materials in order to have a good and easy to use system that later will help alot with adjustments and painting with “Lock Transparency” inside 3d coat. Also as a main tip for painting textured from me is to change color of AO map from black to color. When you setting AO to multiply it add black and all colors look dirty in shadows. To avoid that merge all flats in one layer, then using AO as a selection source and make a new color AO layer via copy. Set the result to multiply and there you have it cleaner shadows with some color in it that very good thing to have.
Separated model and color AO overlay
All that’s left to do is to paint all materials one by one jumping from 3d Coat to Photoshop and back to 3d Coat. In some cases the blending tools and brushes of 3d Coat is not enough so it is easy to send the snapshot of the model to Photoshop (Ctrl+Alt+P) and paint it right there with all the power of Photoshop brushes. And the best thing is you have same layer structure that you have in 3d Coat and you can use Lock Transparency in Photoshop to keep the layers clean. Amazing feature! And this is the moment when you will thank yourself for creating layers by color/material and naming them properly.
Final texture
After many tests and fixes the easy part was adding a skeleton, skinning and posing. And here is a final result.
Here is a 3d version:
Riot art contest Caitlyn by Dmitry Grebenkov on Sketchfab
Thank you for reading and I hope you found something useful here!
Thanks Dmitry!
You can find more of Dmitry’s works on his Artstation portfolio and on his Sketchfab portfolio.
- Bart
