For Character Inspiration, I looked at the new Zelda remasters games( Zelda: links awakening and Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom). I ended up being heavily inspired by the games style and I wanted to try and replicate it myself by creating my own character.

After sketching four isometric views for reference, I was able to model my very own Chibi Zelda inspired character! I tried to keep everything very exaggerated when it came to the style of the character, e.g. big hands and head, this was to ensure that my character felt like it belonged in Zelda World.

With this model I wanted to do something more challenging to show off my 3D modelling and substance painter skills.

Unwrapping the character’s model felt like solving a 3D puzzle, I placed the seams of the UV seams in less noticeable areas, like the inner edges of clothing and under the character’s hairline. This allowed for the textures would blend seamlessly in the spots players are most likely to focus on.

Unwrapping the arms was very simple as they are basically cylinders. However the shoes were a little bit tricky to unwrap, but the textures applied don’t stretch.

For the character to be able to have animations in the game, I added a skeleton to the model. This allowed me to create my own animations or use other humanoid animations on my asset. This is very useful as it will allow me to save time animating this character in the future as I am able to use pre existing animations made by other people.

Next was to make sure that all the bones moved the correct vertices. Using weight paint allows me to control how much effect each bone has on each vertex on the model. Using blenders weight painting tools I was able to modify the weights which were created with the model to fix any issues I came across.

For the characters skin I went with a hand painted technique to give the character more of a cartoonish stylized look. Since realistic skin textures wouldn’t have went with the style I am trying to go with.

For the characters clothing I decided to go with more realistic materials to gave the character more texture. Since I don’t have great artistic skills when it comes to creating hand drawn fabric materials or leather, I used substance paint to generate the PBR materials which I can apply to the model.

Putting the model into unreal, I was able to see how the materials I created looked within a game engine. This model was very successful and I was able to do a lot more with it and use more of my skills within 3D modelling to explore different techniques. I was able to spend more time with this model as it had a lot more to do that the previous models I have made in the past.