From the provided illustration reference book, S. Petersen’s Guide to Lovecraftian Horrors (2016), we were tasked to create a game ready model of a monster concept of our choosing.
I picked the Leng Spider. The art style is based on the game Call of Cthulhu (2018).
I looked up pictures for the trickier parts of the monster.
I made a paint over to identify the primary shapes of the monster.
Sticks for legs, rectangles for cephalothorax, and a bean shape for the abdomen.
(1) (2) (3)
I received feedback from my module tutor to fix the legs’ idle stance, to match it to the concept art. There shouldn’t be any problems with rigging and posing later on.
(4) (5)
(6) Completed
I assume these are young or newly hatched Leng Spiders since we can see lots of them crawling all over and that the Leng Spider has a cluster of eggs on it.
The book wrote about the ‘The Leng Trap’. It provides details about the Leng Spider’s environment and how it traps prey. I thought it’s suitable for a diorama piece.
All parts except the abdomen and egg sacs are manually retopologized.
The leg is the exact same and will get duplicated later on.
I used Hair Cards instead of actual polygons in order to minimize the tri count and because the illusion works well despite it being flat.
At this point I noticed that the leg size is not the same in the concept art, so I scaled them larger.
Larger and longer leg
Final low poly count, including all the small spiders on it
2 sheets of 2048 x 2048 maps
Texture work done in Substance Painter.
Only one leg is baked and textured as it will be duplicated later.
Both the Leng Spider’s and the smaller spider’s rig is done using CAT Rig in 3DS Max.
I found it helpful during work when the CAT bone is shaped to be similar with the model.
I imitated the pose in the concept art because I find the leg pose interesting.
I found in game footage photos for reference while setting up the correct look and lighting of the scene.
Renders are done in Marmoset Toolbag 3.
Additionally, we were tasked to have a composite piece by combining in faking in the model to look like it is inside the game environment.
I found one suitable shot of in game environment that the Leng Spider could be at.
Taken from:
SHN Survival Horror Network "Call of Cthulhu | 4K 60fps | Longplay Walkthrough Gameplay No Commentary" (1:58:02)
Overall, the final product turned out alright. I discovered and learnt about helpful tools and shortcuts used to speed up my work. I am still rusty with the weight painting process during skinning so I plan to practice more. One thing that I aim to work on is learning animation, so that in the future my models can come alive in a simple idle or walk/run animation loop.
I received one final feedback after the piece is complete, that I could boost up the intensity of the Ambient Occlusion map to make depth and details pop out even more. I’ll keep this in mind for my next projects.