91福利

Alexander Cherepov, a student of the Department of Digital and Additive Technologies at 91福利, presented the result of a large-scale work - an animated three-dimensional character for the popular computer shooter Deadlock. His hero was an itinerant trick dealer exploring an alternative reality.

The developer himself notes that the global gaming industry with an audience of more than three billion people continues to grow steadily. In the genre of competitive shooter, it is the visual image of the hero that becomes the key factor in immersing the user in the gameplay. According to Alexander, the audience always appreciates the characters behind which there is a deep and thoughtful design. The hero he created is a middle-aged man whose figure is visually burdened by a massive backpack with many gas lamps of various sizes.

The creation process began with the formation of primary volumes from the simplest geometric primitives - cubes to which the Subdivision Surface modifier was applied. Each such block corresponded to a specific part of the body. Then followed the stage of digital sculpting, imitating the work of a clay master: Alexander drew a muscle relief, adjusted the geometry to achieve natural anatomical proportions and fixed the starting A-pose for debugging the model, working out. After the sculpting was completed, hair was added using curves, clothes were created on which realistic folds of fabric were manually formed.

An important step was retopology - an optimization method during which the model is covered with a mesh of lower resolution. This is necessary to minimize calculations for the engine, for maximum character performance. After that, a UV scan is performed - a "section" of a three-dimensional model into a flat 2D map, which is necessary to create an even and undistorted texture. During the texturing process, the young man created a fill layer with the specified parameters of smoothness, metallicity, color and relief.

As the model's appearance approached reality, she needed a virtual "skeleton." The rigging process made it possible to build a hierarchy of bones, joints and controllers connecting the skeleton and body. Thanks to this, the program received a clear understanding of the mechanics of movement: exactly how the joints will bend and the elements of clothing will be crushed. In the final of this stage, manipulating the position of the bones, Alexander performed a storyboard and set the animation keys.

Having completed work on the merchant himself, the student moved on to designing his environment. Level assembly took place directly in the game engine. In order for the location to keep the player's attention, Alexander created a deep stone gorge with an abyss going down, threw bridges between the islands, placed different types of houses, water towers and neon signs. The final touch was the lighting adjustment: the customizable positions of the sun and moon, as well as volumetric clouds, created the necessary atmosphere of an alternative universe.

Now that the character is fully ready, Alexander has moved on to modification. He changed the original model and interface elements of the Sinclair character of the Deadlock game, as it still uses the "stub" model, which lags behind the rest in development. The character also received a new backstory and motivation.

The student did a great job creating the video. According to the storyboard, he recorded the gameplay and shot the necessary fragments. I imported a series of received images into Premier Pro, which automatically combined them into a video. He also cut fragments of video from the Unreal Engine and gameplay recordings, exported patron sound tracks, surround sound and music.

To evaluate his work, Alexander published the result on the Deadlock resource Gamebanana, an online community that contains various modifications of users for video games. In the first few days alone, the mod was viewed by more than a thousand people with a slight popularity of the character. The gaming community became interested - users wanted to install and try it out.

In one review, the player wrote: "The model is so elaborate and with high-quality textures that I initially wondered "what game is it from." Otherwise, in the game it also looks fantastic and fits perfectly. I really liked the video too."