ZBrushCentral

Assassin's Creed II characters

ZBrush Artworks
#1

ZBC1.jpg
Hi there, better late than never, here’s my contribution to the AC2 videogame, a bunch of characters I made during the year I’ve worked on it, including faces and full costumes.
Like Nicolas Collings already said earlier, the heads share the same base mesh, and the bodies were around 4000 triangles in polycount, with a 1024x512 set of maps including diffuse, normal, specularity, and opacity.
I hope you guys will like it.
[attach=183643]blade.jpg[/attach]
that’s the left hand hidden blade of Ezio, and the Assassin logo on his belt (early version but still interesting)
[attach=183644]FULL_AGILE.jpg[/attach]
[attach=183645]FULL_AGOSTINO.jpg[/attach]
I didn’t do the head on this one, so I won’t show it…
[attach=183647]FULL_BARBARIGOs.jpg[/attach]
those guys from the Barbarigo family use the same texture kit to reduce memory usage
[attach=183646]FULL_ANETTA.jpg[/attach]
[attach=183648]FULL_BARTOLOMEO.jpg[/attach]
[attach=183649]FULL_CLAUDIA.jpg[/attach]
the head is a scan from the AC: Lineage actress’ head
[attach=183650]FULL_FEMME_FLORENCE.jpg[/attach]
[attach=183651]FULL_FEMME_PAUVRE.jpg[/attach]
[attach=183652]FULL_FEMME_WETLAND.jpg[/attach]
various crowd women
[attach=183655]FULL_JACOPO.jpg[/attach]
[attach=183653]FULL_FRANCESCO.jpg[/attach]
[attach=183654]FULL_VIERI.jpg[/attach]
Pazzi family: same texture kit as well
[attach=183656]FULL_HISTORIAN.jpg[/attach]
the head I did was fanillay replaced by a scan of Danny Wallace’s head, a British author and comedian
[attach=183657]FULL_PAPE.jpg[/attach]
the head of the pope was made by Nico Collings
[attach=183658]FULL_HOMME_RICHE_VENISE.jpg[/attach]
recognize him?
[attach=183659]FULL_MARCHAND_FLORENCE.jpg[/attach]
[attach=183660]FULL_MARCHAND_VENISE.jpg[/attach]
[attach=183661]FULL_MUSICIEN.jpg[/attach]
metal head dude
[attach=183662]FULL_OUVRIER.jpg[/attach]
[attach=183663]FULL_PICKPOCKETEER.jpg[/attach]
[attach=183664]FULL_UFFICIALI.jpg[/attach]
[attach=183665]HEADS_ALL.jpg[/attach]
some Mental Ray renders of the faces I’ve done

Attachments

blade.jpg

FULL_AGILE.jpg

FULL_AGOSTINO.jpg

FULL_ANETTA.jpg

FULL_BARBARIGOs.jpg

FULL_BARTOLOMEO.jpg

FULL_CLAUDIA.jpg

FULL_FEMME_FLORENCE.jpg

FULL_FEMME_PAUVRE.jpg

FULL_FEMME_WETLAND.jpg

FULL_FRANCESCO.jpg

FULL_VIERI.jpg

FULL_JACOPO.jpg

FULL_HISTORIAN.jpg

FULL_PAPE.jpg

FULL_HOMME_RICHE_VENISE.jpg

FULL_MARCHAND_FLORENCE.jpg

FULL_MARCHAND_VENISE.jpg

FULL_MUSICIEN.jpg

FULL_OUVRIER.jpg

FULL_PICKPOCKETEER.jpg

FULL_UFFICIALI.jpg

HEADS_ALL.jpg
HEADS_ALL.jpg1508×720 158 KB

#2

Oh yeah cool to see you posting your stuff here as well :wink: :+1:

#3

great character work !!!

#4

Finally, great to see you here Lo, excellent job !!! See you tomorrow , tile master :wink:

#5

character are cool.specialy cloth texturing is superb.good job,:slight_smile:

#6

great!!! and good work with poses :slight_smile:

#7

euh…wow !

:+1:

#8

Great stuff , congratz with this awesome work.

#9

Great designs! Really professional work. I like how you paid attention to details all over the characters. Any chance to know you better! I tried to check your public profile but there are no links to any website or web page! I sent you a private email because I’m not sure if you would like to answer this question in public.

Thanks anyway for sharing your designs!

<img src=“http://www.zbrushcentral.com/pixo/atn.gif”>

#10

How long did each character take?

#11

by the way, I already answered to a lot of questions in my AC2 thread but i’m gonna reply for him on this one as i don’t know if he’s gonna check the thread often. The timeframe by character was btw 1 and 2 weeks during the production.

#12

Nice job.
Since you probably worked in the same building, do you know the name of the artists that did the NEW characters for Splintercell Conviction ?

#13

Such character in all of these! Just completely blown away by all of the variety and level of detail with so few polygons!

I do have a few questions for ya.

1.For characters such as the Barbagio family, the NPC woman below them the guy with the sword and the pope, did you wind up modeling the interior side of objects such as the kilt/dress/robes/arm sleeves or did you wind up using a double sided texture instead? If you did model them, how much of an issue was it to prevent clipping/what was done on the modeling side to help the rigging/weighting work properly?

2.Were there ever any alpha/depth sorting issues with the hair? If so, what were some of the workarounds used to bypass them?

3.Typically how many bones were in the rig for characters that have multiple overlapping objects (ex. the Pope or the barbagio family members)

4.How was the fur accomplished on the Pazzi guys robes???

5.It has been my experience that to get metal to look good in 3d productions for film/commercials it is highly dependant on the reflection. The diffuse element only comes into play when you want to have a tinted metal. In game production how do you create a metal that looks good in both sunlit areas as well as in shaded areas since there isn’t really any bounce light in shaded areas? Are omni lights used selectively to push the normal/specular elements so that the assets look good both in and out of the sunlit areas?? Any tips on creating believable metal like Azio’s blade would be greatly appreciated!

6.I’m sure everyone is dying to see the wireframes! Is there any way we could see those for these awesome characters?!

7.In game production what seems to be the best topological methodology for addresing areas of extreme deformation such as the shoulders?

8.You have very limited texture sizes so am wondering how you were able to achieve such fidelity in the texture work. (especially for things like the embroidery) Are you using tileable textures for these in many instances???

9.Lastly, these are fantastic renders for sure but is there any way we can see screen grabs from the game engine to provide a more realistic expectation as to what can be achieved with today’s game engine tech rather than just renders from max/mray? I know there are images on the web of gameplay but was hoping for something like what we are shown here, just in the engine instead of pre-rendered shots.

Thank you VERY MUCH to Ubisoft for allowing the artists to showcase their phenomenal work and for all the love and detail put into crafting such a high quality game and experience.

#14

Thank you.
I’m not really a public relation kind of guy, I mean I appreciate all the sharing, and feedback and stuff, but you won’t heard a lot of me, I’m pretty quiet, just doing my job the best I can. You can check my linkedin page if you like, but there’s nothing fancy to be found, and I’ve got an old portfolio website (I really need to update it)…

nope, sorry… 2000+ people, in two différents buidings, can’t be friend with everybody!

That’s a lot of questions! Let’s try to be quick and precise…

  1. Some characters use double sided faces, some have a modeled thickness; no particular trick to avoid flicking, just enough space betwenn those, and a good rigger.
  2. Most of the hair stuff is done with punch-through alphas, black or white opacity map, when it’s possible, in order to avoid sorting issues; if not, when we have to use 8 bits alpha, the engine is responding to them just as Max do, so you have to create and rearrange them to look good, and trust me it can take hours!
  3. We start with about 140+ bones for a naked character, including the facial rig, you can add 20+ on top of that for overlapping clothes, and 10+ more if the character has realtime softbody such as a cape or a large dress…
  4. I’ve tried many techniques, including hair and fur, and splines, etc… but the old technique using pictures of animal fur and painting the alpha is still the best for me.
  5. We have a very good technical director, he may be able to puke a rainbow if someone would ask him… No kidding!
    Truth is I create metal for ingame asset exactly the same way you could make it for a render: the specular map do pretty all the job! The normal map is quite useful to influence it too…
  6. and 9. I’ll try to do some screen grabs of Zbrush, engine, and wireframes.
  7. usual stuff: quads, loops, more polys in the deformable area, nothing out of reach.
    8.I use a lot of tileable texture for all the pattern work, and all the duplicate elements are using only one bit of it, for exemple the laces, or the trims… everything that looks pretty the same is actually the same, and then you can add variety with vertex color, or stuff like that.
    Thank you for the good feedback, I hope my answers will provide you good intel!
#15

ahahah

( 5. We have a very good technical director, he may be able to puke a rainbow if someone would ask him… No kidding! )

true … so true.

congrat.

#16

these images are awesome! what can you tell about your workflow. especialy creating of the normal maps. what kind of soft you are using?:+1:small_orange_diamond:+1:small_orange_diamond:+1:

#17

You must try Hairfarm for doing hyper realistic hair, it’s amazingly fast compared to hair and fur and it’s 1000x time faster to do a detailed air cut, you are actually modeling your hair cut, so it’s as funny as modeling is :slight_smile:

#18

Wow, possibly the best low-poly characters I’ve ever seen. :+1:

#19

you guys have an incredible output :eek: . how much time did you spend on a head/body?

#20

Great stuff :+1: :+1: :+1: