Group Project: Hell Circus

We established our concept for the Group Project as soon as it started, brainstorming together for ideas. We wanted something unique that would reflect the Transition theme and after some thought, we settled on a horror game set in a Circus that is the entrance to Hell. The levels would be like the circles of hell and the player would transition from one to the other as the environment gets progressively more aggressive and scary.

Once the high concept had been decided, we started thinking about how to implement it using our characters and how to convey the creepy mystical vibe of the Hell Circus. 

After putting together a mood board, I settled on a demon clown character that would be standing in the third level, blocking the player from proceeding to the last one. His assets would be a mask, a dagger and a bowling pin. Initially, as you will see in the concept art I made for it, he was supposed to have a butcher knife and a revolver. I switched the butcher knife with a dagger as it didn't fit the character. The revolver I wasn't sure I would be able to make in time, so I changed it to a bowling pin, that the demon would throw at the player in an hypothetical boss battle. 

I started sculpting, blocking out the main shapes at first. For the face, I blocked out the muscle structure first, to make it easier to shape it into the face I wanted. 

Initially, the pants were really puffy, but it looked unnatural and it would have caused problems when it comes to baking, so I changed that. I also had some problems with the posture of the character and managed to fix it using Transpose Master to move all the elements together. In the end, I added some strands on the hair to make the hairstyle more interesting. 

I really like how the mask turned out. It looks clean and sharp. On the other hand, I think the posture of the character might still be slightly off and could have been improved. 

I then retopped the character, skinned and rigged it. I think I could have used less topology for the face, but since it's a high detail area, I think it works, though it's something I should keep in mind. I also made and retopped the assets. 

I then textured everything in Substance Painter, using mainly Fill layer and procedurals to add variation to the texture, as well as Mask Editors to darken cavities and lighten some edges. I handprinted the skin using Fill layers with black masks and a dirt brush. 

I made the eye texture in Substance Designer and then implemented in the same way as I did with the fox's eyes: I made a simple eye shader using Parallax Occlusion Mapping. 

I added it into Unreal and lit it using a Rectlight. I had some problems with the dagger texture, as it wasn't exporting properly from Substance Painter: the Metallness was wrong and the sRGB was turned off automatically and couldn't be turned on so I knew from the start something was wrong. When I applied the material to the dagger, it looked shiny, but in a plastic kind of way rather than metal. 

I took the textures in Photoshop and exported them from there after checking the channels (everything looked fine there), which fixed the problem. 

This is the final outcome:

I think the character could have been more detailed in terms of texturing, but overall I am quite please with how it turned out, since it was my first go at more realistic textures, rather than the stylized ones I prefer.