Game Character Creation in 3ds Max and ZBrush
In this tutorial we will learn how to create a highly detailed game character.
What you'll learn
Throughout these lessons we will look at the steps required to build a game character from scratch. We will start by using ZBrush to create a 3D sketch based on our character's concept art. Along the way we will use 3ds Max to lay out our UVs and create our texture maps. By the end of this tutorial you will have a solid understand of the workflows that are required to create a highly detailed game character.
Table of contents
- Defining the Main Shape with Dynamesh 20m
- Continuing to Shape Our Character 9m
- Building Our Character's Legs 14m
- Starting to Make the Clothes in 3ds Max 21m
- Exporting Our Character from 3ds Max to ZBrush 4m
- Making New Elements for Our Model 14m
- Continuing to Refine the Base Elements 7m
- Using Transpose Master to Rotate the Arm 14m
- Separating the Armor from the Arm 5m
- Making the Refined High Poly Armor 8m
- Continuing to Make a High Poly Version of the Armor 5m
- Adding Detail to the Armor 8m
- Building in More Armor Detail in 3ds Max 3m
- Starting to Detail the Head in ZBrush 7m
- Continuing to Refine the Head 3m
- Adding More Detail to the Head 2m
- Rotating the Head and Sketching the Hair 7m
- Sending the Bracelet Mesh to 3ds Max 5m
- Starting to Retopologize the Arm Plate 9m
- Beginning to Tweak the Arm Plate Shape 7m
- Continuing to Refine the Shape of Our Character's Arm Plate 6m
- Starting to Tweak the Clothes 8m
- Adding Some Other Cloth Elements 12m
- Creating a Rope in 3ds Max 12m
- Modeling a Belt Strap for Our Character 4m
- Refining the Belt Buckle 8m
- Continuing to Refine the Belt Buckle 6m
- Adding Details to the Clothes 8m
- Building in Some Details to the Metal Armor 14m
- Continuing to Add Details to the Metal Armor 5m
- Defining the Arm Shape 23m
- Adding a Piece of Armor on the Arms 8m
- Redefining the Armor in ZBrush 3m
- Continuing to Tweak the Shape of the Armor 9m
- Adding Some Details to Our High Polygon Model in ZBrush 1m
- Adding Scratches and Imperfections to the Armor 16m
- Creating Imperfections on Our Character's Face 6m
- Sending the High Poly Mesh to 3ds Max 16m
- Working on Our Final Low Polygon Mesh 14m
- Modeling the Final Arm Mesh 4m
- Starting to Model the Low Polygon Clothes 9m
- Finishing Our Character's Clothes 3m
- Creating UV Maps for the Torso 8m
- Continuing to Unwrap the UVs for Our Character 5m
- Rearranging the UVs in 3ds Max 2m
- Unwrapping the UVs for the Head 4m
- Baking the Normal and Occlusion Maps 3m
- Applying the Normal and Occlusion Maps to the Head 4m
- Combining Our Maps in Photoshop 2m
- Projecting Our Masks in 3ds Max 2m
- Starting to Make the Base Textures in Photoshop 4m
- Creating the Base Colors for Our Character's Head 3m
- Painting Base Colors for Our Character's Clothes 4m
- Continuing to Paint Base Colors for Our Character's Clothes 1m
- Projecting Our Textures on the Final Model in Mudbox 8m
- Using Mudbox and Photoshop to Tweak the Head Texture 8m
- Refining Our Character's Hair Texture 6m
- Detailing the Armor Textures in Photoshop 6m
- Adding Some Refinement to the Cloth Textures 9m
- Continuing to Refine the Cloth Textures 5m
- Starting to Add Hair and Fur to Our Low Polygon Character 7m
- Finishing the Fur for Our Character 5m
- Finalizing Our Character's Hair 4m
- Making Specular and Gloss Maps 3m
- Finishing Our Specular and Gloss Maps 2m
- Creating Specular and Gloss Maps for the Head 6m
- Reviewing Our Final Render 3m
About the author
Fabricio Moraes graduated in design and since has worked in advertising at Seagulls Fly Studio, located in Rio de Janeiro. His passion for games and animated films led him to study character modeling, and after that, he started to work as freelance character modeler at Liquid Development. He worked on some cool projects like Rock Band 3, Dota 2 and the recently-released Max Payne 3. Today, he is a senior 3D generalist with emphasis on character modeling.