Since I was a little kid I have loved fantasy characters like orcs, trolls, goblins, elves, dwarfes and so on. That's why I really wanted to integrate them into my demo.
I stumbled over this concept from James Child on Artstation a year ago. At this point I didn’t even think about that I could use it for my Demo Reel. So when I started planning it some months later I remembered this one…
![](https://cdn.myportfolio.com/cacece78-16f3-40df-8514-8e0df4438cd2/059e0246-b264-4ed0-9efc-1ce07ca23beb_rw_3840.jpg?h=fa99eeab3046bddc3e29ee16479dd2d2)
The animation I made for him.
![](https://cdn.myportfolio.com/cacece78-16f3-40df-8514-8e0df4438cd2/1b15a3d5-7911-4bf5-8968-2396db1413dd_rw_3840.jpg?h=64aeea9ceff2e735adaf63a58fed7ecb)
Turntable
Since I’ve never done any real time hair before I had to find out how to do it in the first place. I think the hair cards were also by far the most struggling part of this project for me.
At first I even thought about modeling the hair as meshes, but I really didn’t like how that turned out. So I took the time to learn how to make hair cards.
I ended up creating with xgen in Maya. With an orthographic camera I rendered out the albedo, normal, AO and alpha map. I have to admit that I’m still not happy how the hair cards look in the final result... definitely a thing I want to improve next time and spend more time on learning.
Another thing that took a lot of time was the texturing. When I started this project I didn’t know much about real time and UE so I didn’t really cared about how much UV space and UDIMS the character had. So I ended up with way too much texture resolution and UDIMS to work with in Unreal properly.
So I started unwrapping and texturing all over again and ended up with 3 UV Patches, one for the accessories and two for the body.
![](https://cdn.myportfolio.com/cacece78-16f3-40df-8514-8e0df4438cd2/0f1b0a1c-aa41-4c0e-b5ea-28eb2e6524c8_rw_3840.jpg?h=1459af5f528c153d35ad8e001570d8f4)
Wireframe
![](https://cdn.myportfolio.com/cacece78-16f3-40df-8514-8e0df4438cd2/e1d91e1c-c51b-4266-82fb-4fa783370017_rw_3840.jpg?h=feb1c2583c8a3cddac7a77c3c1d0ff1a)
Clayrender
![](https://cdn.myportfolio.com/cacece78-16f3-40df-8514-8e0df4438cd2/1681ef1d-388d-465b-89cb-bb98e808ef71_rw_1920.png?h=65ec8c0e3c45bb9028475f14989c0649)
![](https://cdn.myportfolio.com/cacece78-16f3-40df-8514-8e0df4438cd2/04f22244-0535-42d2-b8f2-4b052c7e3252_rw_1920.png?h=b3ba0fa1fc6390e3ee3f6c5327c2f496)
![](https://cdn.myportfolio.com/cacece78-16f3-40df-8514-8e0df4438cd2/44f3230c-6093-4a9b-bb1e-b7d22559e179_rw_1920.png?h=374236809372382c99d78478750d5ad5)
![](https://cdn.myportfolio.com/cacece78-16f3-40df-8514-8e0df4438cd2/be6a353d-c153-4571-88c4-159a2c44ab3a_rw_1920.png?h=2b9fb2b13a15eaabdeb5a48e0689c72e)
![](https://cdn.myportfolio.com/cacece78-16f3-40df-8514-8e0df4438cd2/35196f5d-968a-49b9-b08e-21b1bc93bf46_rw_3840.jpg?h=9c001df93a09eaa50f485b3dc981b08e)
Additional to the Marmoset Toolbag renders of the character I wanted to create a suitable environment for him, since I wanted to get more involved with Unreal Engine, real time rendering and environment art. I may have overstretched myself a little, as I only had about 7 or 8 weeks to do it and had to learn a lot of new techniques and Unreal Engine on top of that. But somehow I managed to get it done in time!
So below you can watch the sequence I rendered in Unreal Engine:
So below you can watch the sequence I rendered in Unreal Engine:
The Environment I created for the Troll in UE.
Here are some screenshots:
![](https://cdn.myportfolio.com/cacece78-16f3-40df-8514-8e0df4438cd2/492a2976-256b-4d1d-88ed-7e01cdcd41aa_rw_3840.jpg?h=3840d19166c0903176b03d69b5c70d18)
![](https://cdn.myportfolio.com/cacece78-16f3-40df-8514-8e0df4438cd2/66ed1191-14f1-465e-8191-ca45318bd637_rw_3840.jpg?h=a5fa201f860dc4d073ac17b54e15c52c)
![](https://cdn.myportfolio.com/cacece78-16f3-40df-8514-8e0df4438cd2/8c44bb45-76ab-4613-9d77-839adcaa0db1_rw_3840.jpg?h=17ed21d0d334ab60f5728b67d3d716bb)
![](https://cdn.myportfolio.com/cacece78-16f3-40df-8514-8e0df4438cd2/c26cf093-8d42-4503-8a4d-5f4a1a7abc8f_rw_3840.jpg?h=5eaea64ea3b401e714d0b66200580cd1)
![](https://cdn.myportfolio.com/cacece78-16f3-40df-8514-8e0df4438cd2/064dc88e-a484-45d4-a1e6-0478c9138d95_rw_3840.jpg?h=498bbb0c37544fc1bac8d8293f43ab07)
The Assets for the environment are all made in Maya, ZBrush and Substance Painter like the character. The foliage though I created in Substance Designer with a plane and the highpoly mesh.
The only thing I didn’t made by myself were the watertextures for the river and waterfall, because I ran out of time. (I bought them in the Unreal Engine Marketplace from James Stone)
![](https://cdn.myportfolio.com/cacece78-16f3-40df-8514-8e0df4438cd2/47997be5-8042-4a83-88ac-c0a39db275d8_rw_3840.jpg?h=30eedbafc740a5a8259d98b953907fa9)
The assets that I made for UE
![](https://cdn.myportfolio.com/cacece78-16f3-40df-8514-8e0df4438cd2/cf5870ff-5c90-4d2c-9ae7-bb17ac6961eb_rw_3840.jpg?h=ab743077ec2cc3d1d69bfef5bcdc6943)
Assets Wireframe
I especially searched for reference material and inspiration for the environment this time to get a more accurate idea of it. But of course I also gathered references for modeling, texturing and the overall style.
Overall I learned so much during this project. First and foremost about real time rendering in general and Unreal Engine. I created my first real time hair and my first big environment. In conclusion this was the project from which I learned the most so far I think.