I wanted this project to focus on learning new areas for myself and for my portfolio. The Grads in Games “Search for a Star” competition has been mentioned in University multiple, previously I didn’t feel ready to go it a go but now I’m in my Final Year I decided to enter. Throughout this document I have covered my entire process from research to the final product.
The project is to create a game ready character in the visual style of Persona 5, the character will be created by myself and be designed to fit within Persona 5’s world. The project will include; • Concept Art, including artwork resembling the games • A game ready character with 2 costumes, both rigged with blendshapes • Another game ready character in the form of the characters Persona • An environment to accompany the character • A visual mock-up of the “All Out Attack” from the game.
The theme I will be following is I believe this theme is very fitting to the Persona game series as a whole, within Persona 5 the main characters create a group called the “Phantom Thieves” to stand against corrupted adults by stealing their dark hearts in order to try heal society.
Alongside with a great love for the Persona game series, this project covers a lot of my weaker skillsets which I know I need to improve on. Some of these topics include: • Working to a unique artstyle – A lot of my previous work has a very similar theme and I often stay in my comfort zone. Persona has a very unique artstyle, so this project will push me forward to learn something new. • Practice 2D Skills – I love drawing, and I like trying to add 2D work in my projects when I can. However, I still need a lot of practice in this area. I have lots of chances to improve drawing through this project. • Learning Unreal – I’ve only had a bit of experience with unreal prior to this project, so this is an area I was definitely weaker on. Through this project I have lots of ways to learn Unreal, such as experimenting with materials, working with animation and setting up renders.
I have approximately 7 weeks to finish this project from start to finish, I think this is possible within the time frame but I will need to plan everything so I have enough time to get everything done. I planned this project to have base goals then stretch goals if I manage to achieve the base goals.
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Concept Art Game Ready Character – one costume A rig for the character The All Out Attack video
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Another costume for the character A Persona character Additional Art An environment
I will need a verity of different software to do this project
• Zbrush – I will be using Zbrush for all my sculpting of the character • Maya – I will do doing all my retopping, UVing and modelling in Maya
I will be doing my texturing in both Substance Painter and Photoshop, I will be using them both for a mixture of different parts of the texturing
All my presentation will be done within Unreal 4 and presented with effects afterwards using Premiere Pro.
All my rigging and posing will be done in Maya using their animation tools
Persona 5 released the 15th of December 2016, as another sequel to the Persona series. The game received high reviews and became known within the industry for its stylish design and unique take on JRPGs.
I have been a fan of the series since Persona 3 in 2006, and ever since adored the unique artstyle. The game series have continued to use a similar artstyle, however within Persona 5, the game stepped up to another level and managed to convey stylish designs into the UI, which has been adored by fans. Shigenori Soejima is the art director at Atlus and one of the core people responsible for the distinctive look for the Persona games.
Examples of Shigenori Soejima’s Art : Plunkett Luke. (2013, April 22). Persona! The Art Of
Persona 5 Box Art : Persona 5. (n.d.). PlayStation Store. Retrieved January 10, 2021, from
Shigenori Soejima. Kotaku. https://kotaku.com/persona-the-art-of-shigenori-soejima-477580840
https://store.playstation.com/en-gb/product/EP4062-CUSA06638_00-PERSONA512345678
I want my character to fit within the world itself therefore I need to see what already exists within the game and figure out what is missing within the main roster.
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After this research of the existing characters I wanted to create a character similar to both Futaba and Haru, a character who is shy and reserved yet always willing to help friends in need.
Using PureRef to make a moodboard, I wanted to keep a lot of greytones and purples as these are colours not seen within the other characters. I went with the theme’s of Lolita and Punk’s with most of my inspiration, this is something that has been covered in previous Persona games briefly but 5 was missing.
There were a few characters from the same series and other video game series that inspired me whilst designing the characters. Celestia is from the Danganronpa series, similar to Chidori this inspiration comes from her aesthetic
Mishima is one of the non-major characters within Persona 5, He is one of my personal favourites from the game, his personality is similar to what I want to achieve
Chidori is a nonmajor character from Persona 3, her personality is not what I want for my character. However, I love her Lolita aesthetic and silhouette
Whilst only having a small amount of time on this assignment, I still wanted to do the whole development process for character art as much as I could. “Silhouette thumbnails are among the most helpful and productive methods of design” Corriero, M. (2011) To do these I quickly blocked out shapes in Photoshop with the mood board I created as a base for all my ideas. I knew I wanted a shy posture and female, so made all the silhouette based on this. Out of the silhouettes, I circled the parts that I liked most and quickly sketched this design- I got this idea from Shigenori Soejima’s concept art, a lot of it is very quick sketches so I tired that technique for myself I was really happy with this quick sketch and saw a lot of protentional with the silhouette because of the hair Artwork from the artbook: ATLAS. (2016). Persona 5 Official Artbook. Mana Books.
Now I had the sketch done, I want to develop it further
Hair spikes to represent little horns, inspired from a real life hairstyle
After this head was drawn from the sketch, I took it into a more frontal view for the character sheet
I tried my best to match the Persona style but I didn’t view this as too important as the actual character is the most important bit to match
As I wanted to potentially do multiple outfits for this character, I drew her frontal view inspired from Dress Up games online
I knew from the beginning I wanted to have multiple costumes but with limited time I had to pick which ones I thought we’re the most important. Within the game the most used costumes are the school uniform and their Phantom Thieves Uniform, due to this I prioritized these 2 whilst concepting, If I have time I would also like to create a daily outfit but this is less seen within the game.
The Persona series school uniforms are always unique and have a stand out feature, for this case it’s the check pattern across the bottoms, and the school emblem. Example of different outfits Artwork from the artbook: ATLAS. (2016). Persona 5 Official Artbook. Mana Books.
As mentioned the school uniform features iconic patterns on the bottoms and a logo on the uniform, however, whilst every main character from the school wears this uniform. Each character has their own unique take on the uniform, this makes them all stand out within game.
Examples of how the main characters wear their uniform
Artwork from the artbook: ATLAS. (2016). Persona 5 Official Artbook. Mana Books.
The first pass of the costume came out like this, I tried to mix up the uniform to fit with the punky look I wanted
The reworked concept Added a backpack to keep the backview more interesting
Added bracelets hanging over the sleeves
After I showed this initial concept, I got some feedback that she needs more details
After feedback I changed the hair for each costume to add variety
I am happy with the school uniform now so I wanted to move onto the Phantom Thieves outfit. Within the game the Phantom Thieves are what the group of main characters call themselves, they are Persona users and when in the “Metaverse” they have different outfits. These outfits are described as their “true selves” within the game and reflect their personalities. Based her mask on a bear, also went for a slightly smaller mask compared to some others in game
Added a cape to add to her shy personality
Large bow to give an interesting silhouette at all angles
Inspired from Lolita dresses, I want the outfit to feature big frills along the skirt
Now I am happy with the concept’s for each costume I can move onto the actual character.
Before I start the character I want to research and Identify the key features of the character’s model. The textures are just an Albedo which feature a lot of gradients
The face features flat shading whilst the rest has a very basic cel shading
Detail is textured on, models are low poly The eye shape is very distinct and features sharp block colours
In game example of the models.
I knew going into this assignment I wanted to do the character in Zbrush regardless if it has a normal map or not, this is because I would of found modelling all in Maya very difficult and it would of taken me longer.
Sculpting anime is an entirely different thought process to what I was used to, as I had to think in basic shapes rather than muscle structure. Tutorial from :Kreuter, D. (2020). [#05] Anime Character 3D Modeling Tutorial 2020 – Face Sculpting - YouTube. Youtube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pCm4v-cADxU&t=1s
Unlike with other 3D character’s anime characters constantly have a flat face at all angles apart from their side view, where their nose, lips and chin can be seen
After watching this video, it takes about using shapes to block out the shapes then merging them together to get one shape, I found this useful for getting the overall head shape.
I found myself trying to cut in shapes I didn’t need which made the model look too away from the desired style
Despite getting the basic shape In for the head, I was really struggling to not have my character have an alien look to her, I found it really difficult to think in 2D whilst sculpting 3D detail
Within previous projects I have found using Polypaint can really help me with getting my desired look. After applying Polypaint to the model I found it much easier to find the initial shape of the head that I wanted
Base BPR Filter
At this point I learnt about the pre-loaded BPR filters within Zbrush which I could use to simulate that flat shaded look you see in anime
Edited BPR Filter
After adding a block out hairstyle to help give more context to the artstyle, this BPR filter was still missing the Persona look
Despite this I struggled to find one that matched perfectly, therefore I tried to fiddle with existing ones to get as close as I could.
Before I move onto anything else, I wanted to make sure I had a way of being able to sculpt in Zbrush whilst having a filter as close as possible to the Persona artstyle. Whilst I was struggling to do this, in a lecture one week I was introduced to NPR Filters in Zbrush. After reading the documentation for this on the Zbrush website I was ready to begin experimenting to try reach my own Persona material in Zbrush.
In the end of this I ended up with my own material which I exported and can be used in all future projects Zbrush’s example of NPR filters
Pixologic. (n.d.). NPR Filters | ZBrush Docs. Zbrush http://docs.pixologic.com/userguide/materials-lights-rendering/rendering/npr/npr-filters/
Before and after the material
After making the material, I could fix the current issues I see within the face and start the body. I changed the face to make it sharper and I added more detail to the hair by adding spikes
I did a basic block out for the clothes with some colour to test proportions quickly. I wanted to get the body blocked out early so I could figure out the shader before I go back and finish the character.
Whilst I know there are a lot of issues with my current process in the face- and the body. The scariest part of this assignment to me is the shader as I have no idea where to even begin. Ide, T. (2017). Anime-Look Cel Shading in UE4 | Theoroy. Blog.Theory. http://blog.theoroy.com/2017/04/27/anime-lookcel-shading-in-ue4/
I’ve briefly covered Post Process Volumes in my first year of university but I’m not sure if they can give me the effect I need
I’ve only ever used materials for applying Albedo’s and PBR values so I’m unsure on how far they can go
Thankfully there were a lot of documentation on how to achieve anime style looks, but none of them we’re exactly what I was looking forWhilst Persona 5 is an anime game, anime graphics have a large variety
Unfortunately there is no real documentation on how Persona 5 was developed so I had to go on my own to research into protentional methods
I also learnt that there are different kinds of cel-shading and how to achieve each one requires different nodes within Unreal, so I determined that Persona only features 2 bands of cel shading
I read a lot of forums for this, as a lot of fans of anime games also question the development of them so I learnt a lot from other fans of the games
Tran, T. (2018). Unreal Engine 4 Cel Shading Tutorial | raywenderlich.com. Raywenderlich. https://www.raywenderlich.com/146-unrealengine-4-cel-shading-tutorial
Finding development knowledge on how the Persona games were made was very difficult, therefore I looked into games that had similar Cel-Shading to see If they had any documentation. Genshin Impact, released in 2020, features a similar shading effect to Persona once again. This game is insanely popular therefore it sparked a conversation on the artstyle which got people discussing the shader used
The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, released in 2017, features very similar cel-shading within the number of bands it has. The artstyle is different however, there is a lot more documentation on this game on how it was made.
Glove, S. (2020). Creating Breath of the Wild’s Shader in Unity | Unity Tutorial - YouTube. Youtube. https://www.youtube.co m/watch?v=_C_nKcijb7M
Whilst this tutorial is made in Unity, the material creation uses very similar names to each other. So what I learnt from this video can be carried across into Unreal.
This video was very interesting on how Genshin achieved their artstyle and a good explanation of every factor that goes into it xxerbexx. (2020). Genshin 3D shading explained - YouTube. Youtube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OdZTf4JdqCY
Guilty Gear is a game series that has a similar artstyle, however back in 2015, the developers did a GDC talk on their development and how they achieve their anime style both in shaders, lighting and textures. Whilst this game is much more stylised in its anime look compared to Persona’s, it still features that clear cel-shading
Certain factors they spoke about in this talk really got me reflecting on how these kind of games must have been made, its completely different to how other kinds of games are made in terms of how they control character lighting
When they spoke about this part of the process, where every character has their own lighting that is tweaked per cutscene. It made me wonder if this is what Persona 5 do as their lighting doesn’t visibly change drastically within the game, only noticeably in cutscenes. Depending on how my shader goes, this could be the way I light all my poses during the end of the assignment.
GDC. (2015). GuiltyGearXrd’s Art Style : The X Factor Between 2D and 3D YouTube. Youtube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yhGjCzxJV3E&t=1353s
After doing some research- I wanted to try make my own- as my model wasn’t finished I just gave it a messy retop and block colour’s purely for testing purposes. From research I knew that I needed a material over a post processing volume so I started there and combined tutorials I had found to get this result
After looking at this video my outcome for the shader was far from what I needed- I think being in Unreal scared me again so I stuck too closely to a tutorial rather than combing my research to get a better product
I kept the retop relatively neat despite it being a test model, this is because I am unsure if topology effects cel-shading Engine, U. (2018). Post Processing in UE4: Cel-Shading | Live Training | Unreal Engine Livestream - YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cQw1CL0xYBE
GDC. (2015). (182) GuiltyGearXrd’s Art Style : The X Factor Between 2D and 3D - YouTube. Youtube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yhGjCzxJV3E&t=1353s
Whilst I was unhappy with the current outcome of the shader- I rewatched the GuiltyGear GDC again and realised that they spoke a lot about how the models are textured. Outline is way too thick • For some reason it makes my textures darker than their Albedo • Artstyle issues •
Even with my albedo’s turned up in brightness in Unreal the colours still look weird and washed out.
This got me thinking that instead of focusing on the shader right now I should wait until I get more of the artstyle sorted, and texture fixes done so I can test again. As previously I didn’t realise that a lot of how the shader looks actually comes from how the model is textured.
Now that I had a plan moving forward for the shader- I went back into Zbrush to try achieve that Persona look more. I also fixed the eye shading so they were more like Persona’s.
The first thing I did in Zbrush was redo all the Polypaint- I saw that Persona faces are just a gradient of colour rather than shaded with blush etc.
For the body, I added in a lot more detail with Polypaint, but I also added in sharper creases into the clothing like the shirt.
Happier with this pass of the model, I retopped it again ready to test out the shader for more tweaking. New
Old
For this test I made sure that the textures were more detailed than previously as I now know that is a major factor in the development in these shaders and their final outcome. I did all the texturing by baking out my PolyPaint from Zbrush then painting over it in Photoshop.
Once I put the newer model on the shader I started working on its improvements.
The shading really gave a drastic change, I found it much easier to adjust the shader to look more accurate when the textures were more detailed.
Combining knowledge from both the Unity tutorial mentioned earlier, I created this material. The way it works is very simple, it takes the information from the light within the scene and uses that to work out what areas of my model will be dimmed and thus creating those cel-shading bands.
This tutorial was really helpful for understanding how these statements work and how they reflect the final product
Es. (2020). Stylized Anime Character Cel-Shading in UE4 [Tutorial] - YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xf21CBx8rYs
I realised my previous shader was so dark because I put the Albedo into Base Colour rather than Emissive.
This IF statement works by checking the threshold of the lighting and weather it is dark or light depending on where the light is hittingng the character.
This second IF statement works as what causes the second band of colour to appear for the cel-shading. They work so they can’t overlap eachother
Happier with the current shader I worked further into the textures and changed the model to fit the artstyle more. I noticed that the current eyes I had were way too thick, the Persona eyes are quite thin and have obvious eyelashes so I changed the shape.
I receiveded some feedback that the bottom half of her face looks off, this was due to her lipstick colour. Due to this I changed it to a pale pink colour, similar to other female characters in the game and it completely changed the entire face to give a better look.
Whilst I was getting feedback for my shader I realised that within the Persona 5 games there are vast differences between the way the characters look in each one. There are 3 Persona 5 games which use the same models but they visually look slightly different with their shaders. The look I am wanting to achieve is the main line game, Persona 5/Persona Royal (A recently released upgrade to the base game)
Dancing in Starlight features an entirely different shader which gives a bloom effect around edges rather than banded-cel shading
Persona 5 features 2 banded celshader with hand painted texture to show other details such as creases in clothes
I wanted to make this one due to its popularity, all the other Persona games are considered spin-offs rather than main games to the series. Therefore I found it appropriate to choose this one over the others.
Persona Scramble, an upcoming release, features a much sharper comic like cel-shader.
Now happy with the shader I thought I’d go back into Zbrush and fix final issues that I can see wrong with the character matching the artstyle. I added all the extra details within Zbrush such as the bag and necklaces, I kept the Polypaint on this very simple as my PC is not strong enough to have everything high poly
I was unsure how to make fishnets in Zbrush therefore I made a simple Diamond alpha and masked out the area with the intension of neatening it up when I’m texturing over the Polypaint
Each main character in the game has their own distinctive eyes, often the shape reflecting on their personality in a way. Such as big wide eyes for a more innocent character. Due to this I slightly changed mine to have a calmer look by using rounder shapes and having a smaller amount of eyelashes compared to others
Now that the sculpt is complete with the additional details from the concept, I could now do a proper retop. Since the last one was roughly done I had to start from scratch with this retop.
I wanted to keep the polycount low for this character, to keep in theme with the others in game. Whilst keeping it fairly low poly I also made sure that the loops were in the right places for animation.
With the face- I kept a slice gap between the lips so that a mouth could be inside for future facial expressions, I also left features such as the pupils and eyebrows as floating geometry to make them easier to animate later on.
Extra features she has such as the bracelets, bag and necklaces I kept as a separate piece than the body. However, as I kept the geometry for them fairly close it shouldn’t make rigging the character any harder
I am very comfortable with UVing in Maya but I still needed to plan for it. I came to the conclusion that I needed 3 maps for the entire character. Head – The head has no shadows, implying that it has its own shader Body – The body has celshading which covers more dark and light values Hair – The hair follows a similar path to the bodyhowever the shading here is vastly different to the body. This gives me the impression it also has its own shader values. For the UVing process, I mostly used the tools; Cut & Sew and Unfold. I find these tool sets give me the best results when UVing characters.
When UVing the face, I kept the features of the face very separate compared to what I would usually do. This is because the face in Persona actually have quite a lot of detail in the shading for the lips. Due to the shader I can have these features separate without having a noticeable seam in the final renders
I tried to keep the seams in places you might not see, hopefully the shader can help cover these up when in Unreal.
Whilst other anime games may feature normal maps, Persona only has Albedos for the characters, due to this I didn’t need to bake out an AO and Normal map. However I still baked out my PolyPaint so I had a guide for the retexture. Zbrush – Zbrush has the ability to bake Polypaint as well as UVing Xnormal – A more recent version of Xnormal features baking vertex colours (PolyPaint)
Thankfully I learnt that Xnormal can also bake out PolyPaint. It was very easy to do, I just needed to save out my High Poly and when baking make sure “Ignore per-vertex-colour” is unticked. I also needed to make sure that in my baking options “Bake highpoly’s vertex colours” is ticked.
I baked everything in 4096x4096 with the intension of downscaling this once texturing is complete.
After researching into baking out PolyPaint from Zbrush, I realised I had done the completely wrong pipeline for this. In order for it to work properly I needed to do my UVing also in Zbrush. Unfortunately I did not as I already had both the Low Poly model and the UV for it in Maya.
PhoenixIncep, D. D. M. (2016). Export Polypaint from Zbrush - YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0SCxp2Y0HUA
Now I had a neat, revisited model with new textures I could take them back into Unreal
With the face being on a different UV, and different shader- I can get the Persona effect of having a flat face whilst the rest of the body is shaded
The results of the newest version of the model really improved the quality of how the shader looked overall. Whilst the textures still need a lot of fixing, it could really help me gauge what was missing from the shader currently.
I can easily mess with the shader settings to get dark or light lighting examples, similar to how the GuiltyGear shader works with custom lighting per scene
Before I continue with finishing the texturing for the school outfit, I wanted to start the sculpting for the 2nd costume. Development for this costume will take a lot less time than the first, this is due to being able to reuse the same face, arms and legs. Which means that even when retopping I can miss out those parts and reuse the same ones. The first step I took toward making this second costume was blocking out all the base shapes of everything so I can check the silhouette against the concept.
Layna Lazar. (2018). Quick Tip: Ruffles in ZBrush. https://80.lv/articles/quicktip-ruffles-in-zbrush/
Previously the dress was too bell shaped, to fix this I gave the dress some asymmetry on how each part of the dress would sit on each other
A tutorial I found on LVL80 showed me a simple way to create frills in Zbrush, these frills are currently a WIP and will be neatened up in Maya once retopped
As I did with the previous hairstyle, I added flicks coming off it to give it more detail, I also added in the mask in.
Now that I had the 2nd costume done in Zbrush, I wanted to move back onto the 1st to finish other details. The current goal is to make sure the school costume is complete before moving onto the retop for this one. This is due to the fact that a lot of the work completed on the first costume can be transferred across such as the rig.
I mentioned in a critique session that I would love to be able to give my character some expressions, similar to the ones seen in game. This was when I was mentioned about “Morph Targets” this is a term that I had only heard a few times whilst I was on placement. Morph Targets, also known as BlendShapes, are an animation technique often used for facial expressions. The way this is done by morphing the vertex’s between 2 shapes. Morph Targets are used against a skeleton and part of the animation pipeline.
Out of the animations software available, the ones I have the most knowledge of are between Autodesk’s Max & Maya. However deciding which I use was a big decision
• We have briefly been taught Max’s animation tools in my first year of university and I used them in 2nd year. Therefore my knowledge on these animations tools is far superior to Maya’s. • I know people who also use Max for animation, therefore If I get stuck I can ask them for help
• My knowledge in how to use Max is lacking compared to Maya, so if I will most likely get stuck a lot in general navigation • Whilst Max’s animation tools are not bad, Maya’s have been praised more for being more user friendly
• I have much more knowledge overall how to use Maya over Max, Maya is also my 3D modelling package of choice so If I also use it will save me time going back and forth between software • Maya’s animation tools are known to be better than Max’s they are also more used within industry
• If I get stuck I won’t be able to get any help from friends, instead I will have to search forums for help • I will be learning this software from scratch so this will take up a lot of time when I don’t have too long to produce the full product
In the end I have decided to go with Maya, this is mainly due to the fact I want to learn how to use something new to benefit my own skillset after graduation. I know Maya is more popular for animation over Max so it seems appropriate to learn what is more popular. I would also prefer working in the same software for the entire process, and expanding my knowledge on Maya in general
After deciding that I wanted to use Maya for my animation I did research into rigging, skinning and blend shapes. Academic Phoenix Plus. (2019). Rigging for Beginners: Painting Weights in Maya - YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lA5gVcLEZWk&t=564s
Tutorials like this often covered knowledge I already knew but I still found it useful as part of a recap of animation I briefly used the skinning tools in my last assignment, however this was only to fix very minor issues rather than skinning a proper rig. The skinning tools in Maya are very different to Max’s as they are more about painting weights. This tool seems very powerful but at the same time fragile and can break your rig easily, so when I get to that stage I know to be careful. Santana, Y. (2019). Maya 2019 - Intro to Animation - YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_y96FpWJyzw Autodesk. (2020). Maya Help. https://help.autodesk.com/view/MAYAUL/2020/ENU/
There were multiple Maya tutorial series which covered all the basic’s about it, however this one by 3dEx was very appealing to me as they described what tools did as they went along. This allowed me to understand what was going on rather than viewing step by step
3dEx. (2017). Autodesk Maya 2018 - Simple Character Rigging Part 1 of 3 YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cOokoFED7QE
I also read through the Maya 2020 documentation as it has useful explanations of how each tool works and their shortcuts
After some research into animation in Maya, I found that the tutorial series by 3dEx called “Simple Character Rigging� was the best for what I needed. As mentioned before this tutorial described what they did as they went, and why certain parts of rigging were important. Pluralsight. (2018). Creating the IK Thankfully my first rig in Maya could be a standard humanoid rig
I learnt a lot through this process, the video covered a lot of key rigging tools however I also had to detour from the tutorial to fix errors I made on my own. For example; I wanted to change the location of certain joints after I placed them. This is where the Maya document came in handy as I could see which tool is used for moving joints
The tutorial also covered controllers, however I wanted more than it showed. So I looked into how to add elbow and knee controllers
The tutorial also covered IK so I could easily move the entire arm and legs at once
Controls in Maya - YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g TLOmSC5_7g&t=465s
Now I was happy with the rig I could begin skinning it.
Maya’s “Bind Skin” tool is how you first put the model onto the rig. Surprisingly Maya’s auto skinning was actually pretty accurate and had some parts almost perfect
Whereas areas like the elbows had some major skinning issues which had to manually be fixed The legs for examplele were almost perfect when skinned automatically I found areas like wrists and fingers really hard to skin as I kept skinning over previously skinned fingers so they couldn’t move by the joints properly
Learnt from previous years at University I knew that “Stress testing” is the best way to test a rigs skinning. To do this I just moved joints as far as they could go in different directions to look for obvious breaks and tears within the model
Whilst I found painting skinning an easier way to skin, it was hard in certain areas to not have it overlap and paint somewhere I don’t want it to. This is where I discovered the “Select Geometry” and that I can manually select vertex’s or edges and only skin those areas
Now that the skinning is complete I can look into BlendShapes and how to use them in Maya. Whilst watching this video I learnt about “Soft Selection” in Maya, whilst I knew this tool already existed I didn’t know how useful it would be for facial expressions.
I learnt that it is important that whatever you create blendshapes for the topology is EXACTLY the same, if not the blendshape will never work
By using Soft Selection on these settings I could move the mouth open without disrupting the vertex’s on the top lip. This made creating extra facial expressions easier and quicker
The location of the blendshape is also very important, the shape you want to blend it to must be on 000 in its current location or else the blendshape will break. I found using Freeze Transformation in Maya fixed any issues I had with this as it reset the model to 000
Blendshapes within Maya seemed surprisingly easy after watching these tutorials, as much as I want to have a full facial rig within a short time frame I think it is best to aim for variety of blendshapes over facial rig controls Redman, R. (2017). Maya blend shape tutorial (blendshapes) - YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C29DJYBLh_ M&t=13s
AntCGi. (2019). Face Rigging in Maya - Part 1 YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K9qT9kmRCA g
Before I made a variety of facial expressions I wanted to make sure I had at least one working.
These are the settings I found work best when I set up my BlendShape, other settings caused the facial expression to not blend properly or break when exporting
The blendshape worked perfectly with the setting and allowed me to tweak each layer individually to give a different effect
When exporting the model into Unreal, I made sure that in the export settings “BlendShapes” and “Skins” were ticked.
As the face was made of lots of different parts of geometry, I had to made every separate part its own blendshape. This exported fine as I made sure everything had the same name
Now that I knew the way to get facial expressions in worked, I could work on the rest of them. Persona uses dialogue portraits mostly for their expressions, these will be what I am using for my reference for my facial expressions to fit within the game theme I also did eye movement ones which could override the facial expressions as they had no eye movement in their layers. Having the eyes move separately can improve or even change the overall emotion.
The expressions went fairly quick for me as I had the examples from in game to go off, I tried to focus on the main ones that stood out to me such as happy and sad. When I first decided on creating facial expressions I considered doing it like you see in AAA games where each mouth movement is its own blendshape, however I decided against this as with a upcoming deadline facial expressions are easier to produce. Having facial expressions also makes it easier to reach the desired look without having to fiddle with multiple layers.
With the facial expressions now in Unreal, I did a little experiment to see if they all worked. Changing the facial expression of the pose In Unreal really helped give it a different emotion
I made a test pose based of a “shy� personality
Having the eyes on a separate layer really helped with giving expressions a different look. I could also combine different layers to give more expressions
Now that the blendshapes are complete, I can work on making the textures better from the original PolyPaint bake.
I did all the retexturing in Photoshop, I have intentions of doing the final pass in Substance to give it the final bits of detail.
With the texturing for the first costume out of the way, and its rig and blendshapes. I could go back into finishing the 2nd costume. I saved a lot of time on this retop as I could reuse a lot of parts from the previous retop
I did the cape floating above the head so it can easily be toggled when in Engine whenever I needed to, I also did this with the mask so it could be dethatched easily
I decided for the dress to keep the frills separate so when I get onto rigging I could considering scaling them separately in animation to get a more puffy looks with certain animations
Now I can UV the model . Just like with the other costume, I stuck to the 3 UV maps for the body, head and hair. Instead of making an entirely new UV for the face when its so similar, instead I merged the new parts in with the old UV. The only different I would need to do is change the eye colour but I could do that easily afterwards.
Once again using the same tools as I did previously, I predominately used Cut, Sew and unfold for this UV process. The entire process for this went even quicker this time as I knew exactly where to put seams and knew from the previous costume that seems aren’t as prominent when the shader is applied to the model
I used Xnormal once again to bake the Polypaint down onto the UVs.
I baked everything in 4096x4096 again with the intention to downscale after retexturing.
The bake went pretty well, all the issues that happened such as bleeding textures can be fixed when I retexture them
As the base for this model was almost the same I could reuse the same rig. With the same rig I could just bind the new costume it so it can share multiple models
Now that was complete I could move the 2 models simultaneously and everything will be shared between them. This will be very useful if I wish to make more costumes in the future.
Whilst it was not perfect I could copy the skinning from the other costume directly onto this one, this saved me time in areas such as the legs are they’re almost identical
It was important to make sure everything was on its own layer, this would avoid accidental breaks in
Whilst copying the skinning across I still had issues in others, mainly around the dress that I had to fix manually.
The bow was a tricky area to skin as it was so large it intersected with multiple bones and I had to make sure it didn’t bend weirdly in places.
The dress was difficult to skin as it had different parts of geometry which I matched up the best I could when skinning.
Even though this model is almost the same as the previous- the skinning took a lot more patience due to the dress, cape and bow. Due to this I still stress tested it to look for obvious breaks.
After already setting up previous blendshapes I assumed they would both work fine in conduction with each other, this was not the case. I’m unsure why it didn’t work but trying to set them up left the face not fully reaching 100% of the blendshape even though It said it was.
As you can see in this image, my happy blendshape is at 100% but its only about 50% of the way with the smile. I tried researching into why this could be happening but I couldn’t find anything, my only thoughts that maybe the skinning could have affected it? Regardless I worked round this by setting up new blendshapes, however I aimed for less this time and focused them more on combat expressions.
Despite having issues with the blendshapes the second time round, I still got everything in Unreal.
Thankfully despite having less blendshapes I could still achieve a good variety of facial expressions
All the characters in game have weapons when in the “Metaverse” on top of their Persona’s. As I won’t have enough time to make a Persona now, I want the weapon to be more character in replacement of the Persona. Other characters with a similar silhouette and personality also inspired me
I concepted this early on in the process on an idea I once had for her weapon. The idea of it is to be a plush bear that comes to life when in the “Metaverse”
The main inspiration from the idea came from Final Fantasy X, where the character, Lulu uses a processed Moogle teddy to attack for her. I’ve always loved this idea for a weapon.
Another inspiration I had is from the Chao’s in the Sonic series. They’re childish yet each one is full of personality. In Sonic Adventure 2 they also feature the ability to do abilities like fighting.
This is how I imagine the weapon to work in game, the bear moves on its own and the character directs them. Similar to a Pokémon.
There are a couple of examples of items from the real world changing once in the “Metaverse” within Persona 5. One of them being guns, within the game the characters all have their own fake guns which turn into real guns when they’re in the “metaverse”
A better example of this is the character Morgana within the game, he transform drastically from a real life cat to a cartoon cat when in the “metaverse” Because of this I don’t think the bear coming to life would be too plausible in the games lore.
I made the bear in Zbrush just like the other character. Made sure to do the bear in a T-pose, so once I get to animation it’ll be easy to start from It was pointed out when I first showed this that the silhouette its self its quite boring, I was suggested to try adding little tufts coming out of the bear to give it more texture
Adding the tufts really helped give the bear more personality, I also give the cut ear more texture by making it stuffing that’s falling out
I made the face a separate floating part of the mouth, I thought if I did it like this so it was a cleaner way of creating the character. The Zbrush material also makes it barely noticeable that its not on the base mesh
There aren’t any other bears from Persona 5 to go off for artstyle apart from this bear which is an enemy. I can take inspiration from this however the enemies in Persona 5 are actually quite a different artstyle compared to the characters.
Since the bear is much more simple compared to a humanoid character it didn’t take me long to complete the sculpt. Whilst the sculpt for this is currently very basic, I plan to texture it with more detail like this Minion from Final Fantasy XIV
I kept the bear relatively low poly as its just a weapon, but I wanted to keep it high enough that it could feature all the loops needed for animation
I kept everything to one UV sheet and baked down the Polypaint again to be neatened up later
I still needed to rig the bear as I wanted to pose it however, the current rig I had wouldn’t fit the bear. In my last assignment I learnt about “Quick Rig” In Maya and how to use it efficiently Quick rig puts all the joints in for you and a good estimate on the skinning, a downfall to this is that it doesn’t come with fingers. However, for my bear this wouldn’t matter as the nails don’t move individually. This is why I decided this was the best and quickest way to get the bear rigged. Setting up the quick rig was really easy to do, just have to click on this button in Maya it automatically does it for you
Channel, M. L. (2016). Quick Rigging and Skinning a character for beginners - YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c538zkwxgTQ &t=1s
Despite the skinning being done I still had to do some manual fixes in areas like the tail
Now I had everything in Unreal I could complete the retexturing for the 2nd costume and the bear.
Same as before, I did all the texturing in Photoshop. I will go back into Substance soon with all of them to fix obvious seems and give a bit of material definition
Now that I had achieved both costumes and the bear, I could begin the Persona. With little time left I didn’t have time to concept this character but I had an initial design in mind. The idea for the Persona is for it to be a gigantic bear controlled like a puppet, the idea came from a couple of things.
Digimon like these were my main inspiration, a design with digitigrade legs and massive arms to act like a shield for the character.
Whilst talking to my friend about my idea, they kindly drew up an example of how they saw my idea in their head. Surprisingly, the concept they drew was really close to what I saw in my head except theirs had a horror theme
A lot of inspiration also came from YuGiOh cards which featured bears in similar designs to what I wanted to achieve
With a lot of reference to look at I could go into Zbrush and begin making the Persona. Early on in this process I decided to give the character a thumb nail rather than just 3 nails like before
My first plan for the sculpt was to get in the base shape for everything then I can go from there in adding more detail and getting the overall better silhouette
I added my character model into the Zbrush file so I would have a constant scale to go against
After previously working on the characters I quickly managed to get these base shapes done. I knew that I could leave the shapes like the cone as they were as the extra detail wasn’t needed when the model will only have an Albedo at the end.
After receiving some feedback on the overall shape, It was suggested that I try to bring the overall shape more hunched and extend the arms to much fatter at the ends, just like how real bear stuffing would work. Due to this feedback I used “Kokomons� silhouette as my reference for the shoulders and legs
After changing the body to match more to my feedback, I feel like it looks much better, it also fits the theme better than I wanted it to look like a a puppet. The next plan was to go and add the extra details to make it look creepier.
Adding the marionette to the bear to make it a puppet
I added a broken arm to the body which had been restitched but was still lose to add some asymmetry to the character.
I added little tufts, like I did to the smaller bear to try add the fur effect whilst staying in the Persona theme.
Just like with the other characters, I did my retop in Maya with the aim to keep it fairly low like all Persona 5 characters.
I kept parts like the head completely separate to the body, I thought this would give me a lot of options when it came to animation in the future. For example – I could have the head spin 360 or completely come off during attacks.
I gave the model 2 UV sheets, one for the entire body and another for the marionette itself. I did this because when the model is in Unreal the marionette will use an entirely different texture, as I will make a glowing texture in Unreal.
I baked out the Polypaint so that when I take the model into Substance I will have a base guide for everything I need to add to. Before I started retexturing the bear I wanted to make sure everything worked in Unreal, thankfully I had no issues and everything scaled properly. I also experimented with the marionette by adding emissive in Unreal with some opacity. Currently it needs a lot of work but I can work on that after getting the texturing done.
I did all my texturing for the Persona in Substance and used the PolyPaint as a base.
I did each part one at a time and tried to add extra details as I went along such as additional rips that had been fixed
As with the original bear, it had no fingers that would actually move, due to this I used Quick Rig in Maya again to save time. The results this time weren’t as good as I’d of hoped as Quick Rig doesn’t deal well with digitigrade legs.
I still had to do some fixing with the skinning in areas like the head as it had lots of small pieces of floating geometry.
After some skinning fixes the rig was ready to start posing the character with, later on I would like to revisit this rigging process and create my own rig for the bear. Then I can really get the way the legs would move to work properly.
Happy with current process of the characters, I wanted to start developing the environment.
I’ve always loved the Persona environments even from Persona 3 on the PS2, I think they’ve always got nice details whilst not remaining too distracting.
The idea for the room is to base the environment off an existing location in game that you cannot enter.
In the game, within the school, there is an entire practice building which has no interiors you can actually enter. It is just used for certain story events. This is one of the reasons I want to make a classrooms in here.
The classroom I want to do is the Textiles room, the reason I want to do this one is the character I am creating will have a particular interest in this area. This could be a place she does repair on her bear after combat.
As you cannot enter actual buildings here I can only go off the exterior of the room, however the dimensions are very similar to the actual classrooms you can enter with the game. I can use this to help work out the size of the room.
Now that I knew what environment I wanted to do, I did a basic block out of the shape of the room judging off the exterior seen in game
I based the room as much as I could off the research I had from in game, then on the inside I went off on my own and tried to add extra details you’d see in a textiles room
I wanted to keep everything low poly to fit in with the games theme, instead of going for big hero pieces I went for smaller details which could fill the desks and shelves
Modelling for this environment did not take long, however UV took me a long time because I had lots of little objects. I tried to keep the UV’s as small as I could without taking away too much detail that the textures can give.
Once I had everything UV’d I look into how these environments are textured
From this image of the environment with no shader, it seems that the textures are quite basic and somewhat photorealistic compared to the characters.
The environment uses a different shader to the characters, they also seem to have more shading compared to the characters. I’m not sure yet how they make this shader but it certainly looks like it uses the Albedo node in Unreal over Emissive.
aPapini, L. (2019). ArtStation - Cafe Leblanc Persona 5 - UE4, Lucas Papini. https://www.artstation.com/artwork/kV962
I found it really hard to research much into how these textures are made, however I found some things that could be helpful
This dev video shows environment textures being made with a lot of gradients and minor texturing.
Whilst looking at Persona 5 screenshots from in game, I considered that maybe everything that isn’t a character is controlled by a Post Process Volume with a shader, as every object has a similar look to it
An Artstation post remade one of the Persona environments with a more realistic look, whilst its not matching artstyle wise its interesting to see their lighting set up in Unreal Websites like Sketchfab let me look at similar environments and their texture maps to see what they looked like BigMiniGeek. (2018). Anime Classroom - Download Free 3D model by BigMiniGeek (@BigMiniGeek) [1375eb3] Sketchfab. https://sketchfab.com/3d-models/animeclassroom-1375eb36d7b640bfad315e76053d63c6
On this screenshot it looks as if everything has a very slight white outline, apart from the props like the book.
Cripps, R. (2020). Creating a 3D Anime Environment in Unreal Engine: Project Feline Indie Game Devlog YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8G0aRvKGqM
With an idea on what the textures look for these environments, I started the texturing with the goal of having everything with a first pass which can be looked into again once I understand the shader more. Hand placed all the assets in Unreal
Tried to make little scenes like this where students could be working I did all the texturing in Photoshop for the first pass, I wanted to mainly focus on getting the block colours down for everything then take it into Substance once I have a better understand of the shader used.
On top of the school environment I wanted to have some very small environments for supporting backgrounds to poses. The butterfly will be the characters focus of the scene, it resembles a character with the game itself.
Based off an environment seen in the Persona game’s I made a small diorama of a table and chair resembling the environments seen in the game. I textured this diorama in Substance and tried to do a mixture of both painted lighting whilst considering the actual lighting in Unreal.
From the beginning I had a few ideas for poses
Persona already features a wide variety of character poses, with the game fundamentally being anime you movements and restrictions you’d get with a photorealistic character don’t apply
In the persona games the characters poses and posture resemble the type of person they are. This is the kind of thought process I want to go with mine
As mentioned earlier, the Phantom Thieves are their true self. This tends to lead to the characters visually appearing more confident. This is why I have decided to make my character do this too.
With the rig from earlier, I could easily set up a lot of poses whilst still having the blendshapes to work with
By using animation layers I could set up multiple poses all together and toggle between them, therefore I wouldn’t lose anything
TheCGBros. (2015). CGI 3D Tutorial : “Using Animation Layers in Maya” - by 3dmotive - YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PuB6pOX1JnQ&t=1 40s
As I modelled the school environment, it seemed right to make the school costume themed within the environment. Because of this I made the poses based on tasks she could do within the environment.
For the 2nd pose I wanted to incorporate more of the environment and have her reaching high up a shelf for something Since I had previously made a sewing machine, I thought it’d be a good idea use that for a pose where she is fixing some fabric
I wanted to have the bear always visible on her, or at least close to her. So for this I needed a way for to carry the bear around.
I posed the bear in a crumbled up pose so he can fit into the bag nicely, I connected the bear to a bone in Unreal
For the third pose I wanted to go with something that could be in with the environment and work on its own. I also made this basic stand that can showcase the 360 of the pose better. The design of the pose is based on designs you’d see in game.
Engine, U. (2015). Skeleton Assets: Using Sockets | 04 | v4.8 Tutorial Series | Unreal Engine - YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DyPq1-JGMKY
Revisting the diorama made previously, I posed the school costume and bear looking confused at the butterfly in the scene.
I wanted this pose to more emotion compared to the other school poses, I wanted her to look confused by the butterfly, yet intrigued to know why it was there
I wanted a more action based pose for the character and Persona, due to this I made a diorama pose of her signalling the Persona to attack
I also made some simple VFX to support the pose with some blue sparks and a flame around the base of the stand.
As mentioned previously I wanted the poses for this costume to reflect a more confident side to her personality. The bear on these costumes can appear more alive than the others also.
Similar to the one next to it, I wanted this one to showcase the cape in 360, I tried to get a more angled look this time and giving the bear some personality by jumping mid air.
The first pose I did was to showcase the overall model, so all aspects are visible and you can see everything in 360. I wanted the bear on this one to held so that it can show its weight and seem more realistic.
The stand for this pose is the Phantom Thieves logo from in game. The logo in game is very red but the way it clashes with the character doesn’t feel visually nice on the eyes. Its very distracting. I might change this to be a silhouette of the logo or changing the purple for a more muted purple.
I wanted to get some more variety in the poses so for this one I got her sitting down whilst patting the bear to show their friendship
Tried to show a different side of the character with this one, something that reflects more onto themselves in the real world
One of my favourite things from Persona 5 is the All Out Attack, it’s a factor of the game that has become very popular for its style. This is something that at the beginning of the assignment I didn’t think would be possible, however with some spare time left I want to try it. Each piece of art is reflective on that characters personality
An All Out Attack is a special move which can be used if all the enemies are knocked down in a battle, the move can be used by any of the characters and deals a large amount of damage.
The attack contains multiple shots of art of the characters which ends in a unique splash art of the character who lead the attack
【XCV//】. (2017). PERSONA 5 · ALL-OUT ATTACKS (All Characters) *SPOILERS* - YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sDkdZpQguBM
This entire task is very daunting, it’s a big part of the game and requires a lot editing software knowledge to accomplish it.
The All Out Attacks contain multiple shots of art for the character which I will need to make myself, I will use Photoshop to produce the art as it is my go too drawing package
The only editing software I know, and own is Premiere Pro. I have used this briefly to put clips together for other assignments so I know the general navigation of the software and how to cut up clips.
I will also need to use OBS to record my clips of gameplay and the audio. I have used OBS multiple times for tasks like this so I am comfortable using this.
The final shot of the all out attack is also slightly animated which I believe I can do in Premiere so I will need to research into this
The shot just before the final piece of art is an animation that leads to the final shots static image. My animation skills are very weak so I’m unsure if I have the skills to achieve this. However there are alternatives available such as Mixamo
I had a very small amount on how to use Premiere so I researched into the kind of things I’d need to know for the video. Tutvid. (2017). HOW TO Green Screen (Chromakey) Premiere Pro CC - YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uwnlASSHaEY
I knew a big task for this video could be done by using green screens and it after watching a tutorial on how it works in Premiere it seems simple to work with
Tutorials, M. A. (2017). How To Create A Mask In Adobe Premiere Pro | Tutorial - YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FtH5-kH_vVE
Tutorials, D. A. (2020). How to Animate Pictures in Premiere Pro - Adobe Premiere Pro 2020 - YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8wL1Z9WGqWA
In order to put my art over what already exists in game, I needed to know how to mask out areas to be able to put my work ontop
Adobe. (n.d.). Adobe Premiere Pro User Guide. Retrieved January 6, 2021, from https://helpx.adobe.com/in/premiere-pro/userguide.html/in/premiere-pro/using/welcome.ug.html
I knew working with layers was important for this as using masks and green screen needed a neat hierarchy
Daniel, B. (2016). Layering Photos or Videos Using Adobe Premiere Pro - YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yqTCiWUehmc
The final image on the all out attack scene needed to be animated, you can do this in Premiere by animating each layer separately
The user guide for premiere was very useful for better descriptions on tools mentioned in tutorials
I also got a “Falling” animation from mixamo for the bear
The animation at the end of the video is one of the key parts to the clip, therefore I knew I needed something with a good quality animation to finish it off. My animation skills are very weak therefore I knew Mixamo was the best way to go forward with this
Whilst Mixamo doesn’t allow as much creative freedom as creating my own, it ensures that the animation is clean and won’t have any issues.
The animation I chose is called Northern Soul Spin, I found it good enough for what I wanted and with the sliders I could change it slightly to be more fitting
https://www.mixamo.com/#/
I animated the bear jump myself as I didn’t find any on Mixamo I found accurate for what I wanted
I also got a jump one from mixamo for the beginning of the attack
I only needed 2 animations per character so getting these wasn’t too difficult. The downside to using miaxmo is that my blendshapes can’t be carried across, so I will have to redo a specific expression for this pose
The best way I could think of putting the animations easily into Premiere was by making my own green screen in Unreal then exporting out the videos
I used a Post Process Volume in the scene too, as previous recordings had motion blur so it ruined the quality
I just placed a large green cube in the background of the shot, then using the “Sequencer� in Unreal, I took a video of my animations with these settings.
With these settings in the end my video came out a good quality that I could take into premiere
Using “Ultra Key” In premiere I could easily remove the green screen from the clips I took from Unreal I wanted to get everything into Premiere so I had one full video that rather than working on each part individually to a good quality, once I had the clip in from start to finish I could then go back in and add the appropriate art
By using a “Mask Path” I could mask out the area where my art will eventually go, for a placeholder I used a capture I took from Unreal
When I set up all my clips I used temporary static shots that I took to make sure the timing was accurate before I started the art
Thankfully some of the areas I was struggling to get cleanly from the game came available on Youtube with green screens
A lot of the clips are taken from in game but as I couldn’t put my character in there I had work round that
Manga. (2019). Persona 5 All Out Attack Green Screen Template - YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l5sNbWlrM_A
Now that I had my video blockout down, I could move onto the art I wanted to start the final shot first as it was the one I knew would require the most iterations as it has a background with it
I took this screenshot from the clip as it was the last shot of the clip that will be seen, so I will use this as my guide.
As I already had the pose sorted, I did a few thumbnails for the protentional background design, I wanted to go for something that came from the base and took over the screen
This was the current process of the final shot, I liked the background currently as its something different from the previous characters and it fits within her theme.
Now that I had my video blockout down, I could move onto the art With the first pass on the final shot out of the way, I could move onto the other art
As the clip I am using features parts of the UI before the official all out attack clip begins, I created this head in the same artstyle of my character. I could then put it over on the other existing UI in the clip.
This art is for the part where the screen shatters and the characters in your party appear In the shards. I’ve really struggle with this piece of art and hope to revisit it if I have time
I got the idea of the spiral eyes whilst in this art of the assignment, the idea came from Uzumaki, the Horror manga by Junji Ito.
The eyes aren’t specifically part of the All Out Attack, instead they’re used when the player gets a critical hit. However, I decided to add them into my video as it gave me more opportunity to try tie my character into the game since I couldn’t properly put her in the game
I received some feedback on my final shot, with comments saying that it wasn’t as on theme with the artstyle as it could be. I decided to revisit it and try my best to make it more accurate
I came up with the idea of having lace move around the sides to match with her dress and give some movement to the scene
I changed the art to have thicker, harsher lines. I also made the shading more intense and add a check effect to her for light shading
Now I could fully put together my video Using tracks in Premiere I could animate the lace moving
I could use tracks to try add my character the best I could by scaling and adjusting colour values to match the other characters. Whilst I was putting together all the clips I added some new details like this puff of smoke when the bear lands on the ground. I got this clip from a royalty free green screen pack
Whenever an All Out Attack is used the character will have their own unique dialogue for it. I couldn’t have this so I used dialogue from another game that I felt was appropriate, the character I chose was Celestia from Danganronpa
Steeel, L. (2020). Celestia Ludenberg Voice Files (Japanese) - Danganronpa - YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5VGIBGR2PyE
I had all the main goals complete now so I could revisit areas to make improvements I took the school costume back into Substance so I could fix up obvious seams in the texturing and in more detail where I can.
Areas I mainly focused on for this were the hair, and patterns on the skirt and hairband
Textured the cape, added a lace design at the bottom
Added some facial expressions to the bear through textures
After some feedback on the environment I revisited it.
After some feedback, I learnt that the environments seem to be mostly done with baked lighting, I watched a video on this a set up my lights In Unreal Loeb, A. (2018). UE4 tutorial: Realistic baked lighting for videogames - YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XLP1sFHRuGY
I also revisited some of the textures to give them more detail than previously. I think this helped a lot with the how the environment came out
I wanted to have at least one dialogue portrait pose so I decided to use one of my previously made poses to create a UI example of dialogue like you’d see in the actual game.
With spare time I had time to revisit the art in the video. The shot fits in the glass better now without having any details cut off
I also added in a puff of smoke for the jump effect so she no longer flies off whilst leaving the smoke behind her. I also changed the frames here a bit to make the jump look less awkward
The first piece of art I revisited was the art seen at the shattering glass scene. This was the art in the video I hated the most. Previously I draw the shot as one image, where as this time I used the shape of the shattered glass as a base.
Inspired by the game’s end credit art, I did my own which I can use in my portfolio post and the video introduction so the beginning isn’t so quick
I was given some feedback that they wished the character was shown more in game. I was unsure how to do this properly however instead I thought of adding a segment of animation based on the “Showtime Attacks” from Persona 5 Royal. Mixamo didn’t have an animation I felt was appropriate for what I wanted, I also couldn’t use my blendshapes if I used Mixamo which would take a lot away from the video. I used my rig for the animation and aimed to go for a simple shy pose where she went from his arms down to a shy positon during the pan around.
BuffMaister. (2020). Persona 5 Royal - ALL SHOWTIME Attacks - YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VrWtuvf0D9U
The plan was to have a pan around the character, a voice line and then an effect into the video that I had before. Whilst this was no longer accurate to the game as much, I thought it was the best way I could include my character more
I can take bits from YouTube Templates to give more effects to my video to help incorporate the character into the game more
Parsti. (2019). Persona 5 Victory Green Screen - YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a1QLAv_kkt0
For the bear I could reuse the animation I made earlier for the same video.
Goragames. (2018). Annabel Facial Animation - How to YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jTLoMVfneI&t=22s
Once in Unreal I could use the animation tools to add the facial expressions in. The plan was to have the eyes follow the camera round and slowly turn into a smile
Same as the design in game, I could recolour this background to match my character and stay within the games visuals.
A duplicate of the animation slightly off centre and pitch black to give the Persona Shadow effect
Now that the assignment has ended I can look over everything I did, the main part being did I achieve the artstyleI actually really enjoyed doing the 2D for this assignment, it was fun to work in new works and bringing graphical design skills into the artwork. I learnt a lot of new digital painting skills in Photoshop and I will continue to develop artwork for my future characters.
I think I was close to reaching to artstyle but I’m still missing aspects of it, once of these the artstyles. Currently I know my texturing skills need a lot of work to achieve the artstyle, I also think once my Unreal skills have improved I can take the model further forward and learn how to utilize Unreal’s toolset.
Despite not fully reaching the artstyle I still learn a large range of skills which I can use in all my future projects such as rigging and BlendShapes, having this in my model helps it drastically and I can use this on all my future characters to take them a step further.
Overall I am actually really happy with the outcome of this project, I achieved more than I thought I would at the beginning of the project on top of that I also learnt a variety of new skills I didn’t think was possible within the time frame.
• Unreal – I went into this project barely knowing anything about Unreal, where at the end of it I have managed to create my own shader and learn the animation tools inside Unreal. Whilst I did really struggle with learning these skills in a short time frame I still managed to what I set out to. • Matching Artstyles – I tend to fall into the pit of going for the same artstyle every time I do something, however this time I pushed myself to try something new and a more unique recognisable artstyle amongst JRPG fans. Despite not perfectly matching the artstyle I managed to get fairly close • Animation – I thought going into this project that I would be using the same process I did for the previous module and using Quick Rig in Maya to pose everything. However, this time I pushed myself to make my own rig and also experiment in BlendShapes. • Art – The art produced for this might be perfectly matching towards the artstyle I can still see a huge improvement in my 2D skills. Something that I have been wanting to improve on for so long.
• Texturing – Whilst I think my texturing came out okay, I still think I could of pushed it further to help reach the artstyle. This all goes back to my 2D skills being weaker than I would like, all I can do from here Is continue to work on texture passes in order to match the artstyle closer. • The video – Whilst I am happy with the outcome of the All Out Attack video, I wish I had a way to put the character into the actual game to test everything properly. • Limited time – I believe my time management has improved drastically from my last assignment, I managed to get everything I want to achieve and more- However, I do wish I had more time to prepare more artwork to help push the character more. • The Environment – I really struggled to get the lighting on the environment to look as accurate to Persona I could, this is something I would definitely like to revisit later on to improve once I have a better understanding of light maps.
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