If all of Hyrule are like you...

....then maybe you'll do all right


Hey! It's a new semester and now I get to work on 3D portfolio pieces. Woo! 
(Well, next to Capstone Game and a Cinematic piece. But details!). 

I have to work on two different pieces and I have 6 weeks to sculpt, model, texture and "bring to life" what is chosen for those pieces. 

This time around, I'm moving away from the animal aspect, as much as I love to sculpt and model critters, to expand my character repertoire. 

This time, I shall work on one of my favorite characters of the Zelda Universes. And no, it isn't Link nor Epona. Rather, I'm planning on bringing the character Midna to life. More specifically her True Form. 

She has such an awesome design, and one of the biggest things I get to practice with would be the fact that she's human. I don't often work on creating humans. But, it would be good to practice, and I can't pass up the opportunity to work on a Zelda Character. Could have done Ganondorph, but doing a female would probably be a good idea.

Anyway, this is what I'm shooting for for this project. Optimized final look would be from Hyrule Warriors (top photo), as this is their current format for "high definition" LoZ game.

Attention Monsters!

He has finally ARRIVED!


The time has come for me to pay up and show off the final piece. The master piece. The coup de gras. You get the idea.

In case it was forgotten, I worked on a deer-like creature for my assignment named Aiju from the game called Gyromancer. It was developed by both Square Enix and PopCap Games in 2009. Never played it myself, though I really enjoyed the artwork so I chose this guy because he just called out to me.

There was a lot of things learned from this experience, one is that doing planes for hair is REALLY difficult and I would need to find another process to do them than what I did for this guy. Maybe I can get a Tech Artist to make me a short cut. lulz

First up, final render in Game Engine. He came out pretty nicely, spent hours getting those planes to look good, and now they are pretty nice. Still not sure how to properly get that realistic look Square does with Final Fantasy, but I think this is a good step towards the right direction.

He made it into engine, and he looks fabulous~

3 quarters view, just to see that awesome tail of his

What's interesting is that the render in Maya is much darker than the final render in Unreal. It's the usual in that case, but I always find it funny.

Front and Side views of the final render from maya.

Maya Render, and his mane looks much more fiery in comparison to Unreal

And in case you were curious, here's his mesh. Final poly count was a good 20,246 polys. Just 246 over what I wanted to cap myself at. Nothing too worry about. Probably could have thought of something a bit more creative for the plane placement of the head, but I'll think on how to do that another time.

His mesh is pretty clean, if you ignore the mess that is the planes

Unfortunately, due to time, Aiju couldn't be posed. But he looks fabulous anyway, right?