Advanced Character Creation with Ben Erdt

Join senior Blizzard character artist Ben Erdt and learn to build advanced characters for game cinematics! You’ll learn to analyse a concept sketch, sculpt your character in ZBrush, create materials in Painter, light and present your work, and much more.

After completing the course, you’ll have a deep understanding of how to create your own world-class character art.

CINEMATIC CHARACTER WORKFLOW Starting off in ZBrush, Ben will teach you advanced techniques for building your 3D character from scratch. When concept sculpting the model, we’ll block in both the anatomy and hard surface mesh. Once the high-poly is done, we build the actual render mesh using clean and industry standard topology, built for animation and performance. The entire render mesh is UV mapped using UDIMS.

In Painter, we’re creating the materials step by step. We’ll set up basic shaders, build a color hierarchy and focus on storytelling by adding aging, wear and tear, and dirt to the textures. Finally, we’re lighting and rendering our character to make a stunning final image you’ll be proud to put in your portfolio.

HARD SURFACE MODELING We’re covering how to build the character suit and armour from scratch, and have packed the course with an abundance of advanced hard surface techniques. The entire suit is sculpted in Zbrush up to a rough state, and then cleaned up using three different techniques: Manual cleaning with Dynamesh, regular sculpting using brushes, sub-D modeling with Zremesher, and sub-D modeling in Modo. The finished result is a clean model ready for texture baking.

TEXTURING In Substance Painter, we’re texturing the character using a combination of hand painting and procedural techniques. Covering both the hard surface and organic skin texturing, you’re getting a full view of the whole texturing process. Adding wear, tear, and grime is clear focus during texturing, and is what makes the character feel alive and believable.

YOUR TEACHER Ben Erdt is a veteran games artist with more than 9 years of experience in the AAA game industry. He’s currently working at Blizzard as a Senior Character and Creature Artist, having previously worked at Guerrilla Games. Ben has worked on games like Diablo IV, Killzone: Shadow Fall, Horizon Zero Dawn and the Netflix show Love, Death & Robots. Safe to say, you’ll be learning from a true master in this course.

RECOMMENDED SKILL LEVEL This course is designed for artists with an advanced skill level who are ready to push their character art to the limit. The course does not spend time covering the basics, and assumes ample knowledge of the pipeline and software involved in creating 3D art for games. We’ve packed the course with advanced workflows and techniques, so if you’re ready to push yourself and learn from the very best, this is the course for you.

01_ConceptAnalysis

01_ConceptTalkAndRef

02_SculptingBody

02_SculptingBody_1 02_SculptingBody_2 02_SculptingBody_3 02_SculptingBody_4

03_SculptingArmor

03_SculptingArmor_1 03_SculptingArmor_2 03_SculptingArmor_3 03_SculptingArmor_4 03_SculptingArmor_5 03_SculptingArmor_6 03_SculptingArmor_7

04_HighPolyCleanup

04_HighPolyCleanup_1 04_HighPolyCleanup_2 04_HighPolyCleanup_3 04_HighPolyCleanup_4

05_BuildingRendermesh

05_BuildingRendermesh_1 05_BuildingRendermesh_2 05_BuildingRendermesh_3 05_BuildingRendermesh_4

06_UVsAndSurfacing_01

06_UVsAndSurfacing_1 06_UVsAndSurfacing_2 06_UVsAndSurfacing_3

06_UVsAndSurfacing_02

06_UVsAndSurfacing_4 06_UVsAndSurfacing_5 06_UVsAndSurfacing_6 06_UVsAndSurfacing_7 06_UVsAndSurfacing_8

07_RenderingAndPresentation

07_RenderingAndPresentation

materials_substancePainterFiles.7z [FlippedNormals] Advanced Character Creation with Ben Erdt-Subtitles.7z

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