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Introduction
Hey! I’m Bernardo Cristovao, and I’m a Senior Character Artist working in the games industry! Currently, I’m working at Rovio’s Battle Studio. My role here has been mostly about helping the studio develop a new IP and all things associated with that – I’m involved in developing the 3D character style and pipeline for our game, as well as helping with prototyping and visual development.
介绍
嘿！我是Bernardo Cristovao，我是一名在游戏行业工作的高级角色艺术家！目前，我在Rovio的Battle Studio工作。我在这里的角色主要是帮助工作室开发一个新的IP以及与之相关的所有事情 - 我参与开发我们游戏的3D角色风格和管道，以及帮助原型设计和视觉开发。
I’m originally from Portugal, where I started my career as a freelancer working for collectibles, animated TV spots, and game art outsourcing companies. After that, I moved to the UK, where I lived for nearly 4 years – there I worked on Jagex’s Runescape, a canceled MMO at Automaton Games, and also had the chance to work remotely for Fortnite with DragonFly Studio. After one year of working on Fortnite skins, I decided to join Rovio to work on a new project!
我来自葡萄牙，在那里我的职业生涯始于自由职业者，为收藏品，动画电视广告和游戏艺术外包公司工作。之后，我搬到了英国，在那里我生活了近4年 - 在那里我参与了Jagex的Runescape，这是Automaton Games取消的MMO，并且还有机会与DragonFly Studio一起为Fortnite远程工作。在Fortnite皮肤上工作了一年后，我决定加入Rovio从事一个新项目！
The Character Artist Path
I started getting into 3D art in my last year of university. I studied at the University of Fine Arts of Lisbon, and during our last year, we had this very generalist Digital Arts class where I was introduced to ZBrush. My teacher was super inspiring and he made such a big effort to show us the previous students' portfolios and just good art overall. From there, I remember just spending countless hours over at CGSociety and ZBrushCentral, completely baffled at the quality of the artworks there and wondering how I could reach such a level myself.
角色艺术家之路
我在大学的最后一年开始接触3D艺术。我在里斯本美术大学学习，去年，我们有一个非常通才的数字艺术课，在那里我被介绍给ZBrush。我的老师非常鼓舞人心，他付出了很大的努力向我们展示以前学生的作品集和整体上很好的艺术。从那以后，我记得在CGSociety和ZBrushCentral花了无数个小时，对那里的艺术品质量完全困惑，想知道我自己怎么能达到这样的水平。
I always loved creating and imagining stories for characters, so with 3D character models being the final “medium” in a game or animated feature that you get to experience and interact with, following the path of Character Art just felt like the right thing to me.
我一直喜欢为角色创建和想象故事，所以3D角色模型是游戏或动画长片中你可以体验和互动的最终“媒介”，遵循角色艺术的道路对我来说就像是正确的东西。
My 3D learning route was quite bumpy I would say. Most people these days would probably go to the Game Art program to study 3D, but there wasn’t such a thing back in Portugal, so I just pushed very hard to land small freelance gigs, and with that, I just kept investing in online classes and industry events such as THU. So pretty much as I was stepping into the industry working as a freelance 3D artist, I was also learning. I did this for about 3 years until I landed my first in-house job working for Jagex’s Runescape as a Character Artist.
我会说我的3D学习路线非常颠簸。如今，大多数人可能会去游戏艺术课程学习3D，但是在葡萄牙没有这样的事情，所以我只是非常努力地争取小型自由职业者演出，因此，我只是继续投资在线课程和行业活动，如THU。因此，当我以自由3D艺术家的身份进入这个行业时，我也在学习。我这样做了大约3年，直到我找到了我的第一份里面工作，为Jagex的Runescape担任角色艺术家。
I definitely got most of my Character Art knowledge from all the workshops and mentorships I took, I was really lucky to have taken classes with Blizzard artists at Brushforge, which really pushed me to be more creative, made me look beyond the 3D world, and study things such as character design, color, and light.
What also really made me grow as a Character Artist was having the chance to work for Runescape. This was my first experience working in a huge and fast-paced production environment where you have to meet deadlines and go through feedback cycles very often – having this sort of routine really improved my efficiency, productivity, and discipline.
我的大部分角色艺术知识都是从我参加的所有研讨会和指导中获得的，我真的很幸运能在Brushforge与暴雪艺术家一起上课，这真的促使我变得更有创造力，让我超越3D世界，研究角色设计，颜色和光线等东西。
真正让我成长为一名角色艺术家的，是有机会为Runescape工作。这是我第一次在一个庞大而快节奏的生产环境中工作，你必须在最后期限内完成任务，并经常经历反馈周期——拥有这种例行程序确实提高了我的效率、生产力和纪律。
The one other thing that keeps helping me improve is studying my favorite artists' work and countless hours of scrolling through Artstation. I truly believe that visual culture and a good sense of aesthetics are the most powerful tools for artists in this industry.
帮助我不断改进的另一件事是研究我最喜欢的艺术家的作品，以及无数个小时在Artstation上滚动。我真的相信视觉文化和良好的审美意识是这个行业艺术家最有力的工具。
Inspiration
I can’t really tell or put into words what my “art style” is, nor do I know if I actually have one. What I can say is that I always try to channel all my favorite things and influences into the art I create, if that makes any sense.
My core inspiration definitely lies in the fantasy realm, especially from IPs like World of Warcraft, League of Legends, Darksiders, Battle Chasers, and Lord of the Rings. Being born in the 90s, I had the privilege of seeing these titles develop and in a way “growing up” with them, and that had a huge impact on me and my own artwork for sure.
灵感
我无法真正说出或用语言表达我的“艺术风格”是什么，也不知道我是否真的有。我能说的是，我总是试图将我最喜欢的东西和影响都融入到我创作的艺术中，如果这有什么意义的话。
我的核心灵感绝对在于幻想领域，特别是来自《魔兽世界》、《英雄联盟》、《暗黑血统》、《战斗追逐者》和《指环王》等IP。我出生于90年代，有幸看到这些作品的发展，并以某种方式与它们一起“成长”，这对我和我的艺术作品产生了巨大的影响。
That said, I definitely lean towards the stylized handpainted area more, obviously influenced by the amazing art style of World of Warcraft and League of Legends. As much as I love clean stylized PBR textures, for me personally, the handpainted style is the best middle term between 3D art and painting – you get to sculpt in 3D, but you also get to be very creative when it comes to painting your textures – and I just love that.
也就是说，我绝对更倾向于风格化的手绘区域，显然受到了《魔兽世界》和《英雄联盟》惊人艺术风格的影响。尽管我非常喜欢干净风格的PBR纹理，但就我个人而言，手绘风格是3D艺术和绘画之间最好的中间术语 - 你可以用3D雕刻，但在绘画纹理时你也会非常有创意 - 我只是喜欢这一点。
Duncan, the Fallen Paladin
I started this project with the intent of creating a unique character that could fit inside the World of Warcraft universe. My goal was to create something that was in line with their art style, but in a way that you could still tell that it was made by me – through simple things such as the facial anatomy, sculpting style, and overall design.
邓肯，堕落的圣骑士
我开始这个项目的目的是创造一个独特的角色，可以融入魔兽世界宇宙。我的目标是创造一些符合他们艺术风格的东西，但以一种你仍然可以分辨出它是由我制作的方式 - 通过简单的东西，如面部解剖学，雕刻风格和整体设计。
My first step was to establish a very short story to help me develop my design. I love character arcs that revolve around some sort of “comeback” and revenge narrative. So I decided to go with a Paladin Dwarf who has witnessed all his dearest peers perish at the hands of evil, lost faith in the way of the Light, and now seeks revenge. Just really basic keywords that help me set the tone and mood of my future design explorations and decisions.
With my narrative set in place, I started gathering references and working on my concept.
我的第一步是建立一个非常短的故事来帮助我开发我的设计。我喜欢围绕某种“回归”和复仇叙事的角色弧线。所以我决定和一个圣骑士矮人一起去，他目睹了他所有最亲爱的同龄人在邪恶之手下灭亡，对光明之路失去了信心，现在正在寻求报复。只是非常基本的关键字，可以帮助我为未来的设计探索和决策设定基调和情绪。
随着我的叙述到位，我开始收集参考资料并研究我的概念。
This was my reference board, which I kept open on my second monitor all the way through the concepting phase:
这是我的参考板，我在整个概念阶段一直在我的第二台显示器上保持打开状态：
My initial focus was to create a unique face alongside a hair and beard style that didn’t exist in the game.
As for the plate armor design, my objective was to come up with a concept that didn’t feel too cliched and didn’t rely too much on existing in-game Paladin patterns, such as all the eagle, hammer, and fist symbols. I want to somewhat represent the Paladin theme through simple shapes of the armor and the overall silhouette of the character. I used a lot of angular and V-shapes to convey this sort of wing shape and silhouette.
我最初的重点是创造一个独特的面孔，以及游戏中不存在的头发和胡须风格。
至于板甲设计，我的目标是想出一个概念，不要觉得太陈词滥调，也不要过分依赖现有的游戏中的圣骑士图案，比如所有的鹰、锤子和拳头符号。我想通过盔甲的简单形状和角色的整体轮廓来代表圣骑士主题。我使用了很多棱角和V形来传达这种翅膀形状和轮廓。
Below, you can see my rough initial concept. Since I’m working on my own design and have plans to keep interacting with it during the 3D stage, I don’t really need a super polished concept, just something that can give me a good direction for when I start sculpting in ZBrush.
下面，你可以看到我粗略的初始概念。由于我正在从事自己的设计，并计划在3D阶段继续与之互动，因此我真的不需要一个超级精致的概念，只是当我开始在ZBrush中雕刻时，它可以给我一个很好的方向。
Modeling
My step-by-step workflow in ZBrush is very straightforward, and I usually follow these steps:
建 模
我在ZBrush中的分步工作流程非常简单，我通常遵循以下步骤：
Establish basic anatomy, just good enough for me to dress my character up;
Blockout facial proportions and hair – I always like to focus a bit more on the face when I start a new character, this really helps me guide the direction of the rest of the sculpt;
Blockout all the remaining elements with the help of ZBrush primitives and ZModeler. Since discovering ZModeler, I never leave ZBrush to do hard surface work in any other software, it’s such a powerful tool;
Once all the blockout meshes are done, I just go one by one, subdivide them and detail them.
建立基本的解剖结构，足以让我修饰我的角色;
遮挡面部比例和头发 - 当我开始一个新角色时，我总是喜欢更多地关注脸部，这真的可以帮助我引导其他雕塑的方向;
在ZBrush基元和ZModeler的帮助下阻止所有剩余的元素。自从发现ZModeler以来，我从未离开过ZBrush在任何其他软件中进行硬表面工作，这是一个功能强大的工具;
一旦所有的块状网格都完成，我就一个接一个地去细分它们并详细描述它们。
You can check a progress GIF of my sculpt below:
您可以在下面查看我的雕塑的进度GIF：
Hair, Cloth, and Metal
Sculpting hair is definitely one of my favorite things to do. I think it’s really challenging but also very rewarding (when it comes out right!)
头发、布料和金属
雕刻头发绝对是我最喜欢做的事情之一。我认为这真的很有挑战性，但也非常有益（当它正确出现时！
I always start sculpting hair using a mix of IMM brushes and ZBrush primitives. I think a lot of artists (myself included) crave nice stylized hair IMM brushes that can save them time. But over time, I realized that IMM brushes often get you really stuck to their original shapes and flow, it can get really messy too because you’ll easily go a bit wild and insert way more hair strands than you actually need. So, these days, I just chill and use whatever. I don’t care if it’s a sphere or a cube, the key is to have visual clarity on what you’re doing, keep things clean and take baby steps. Often, tools like a sphere, Snake Hook, and Dam Standard will do the job perfectly.
This is a short breakdown of how I approached some of the facial hair elements on my character:
我总是开始使用IMM刷子和ZBrush基元的混合来雕刻头发。我认为很多艺术家（包括我自己）都渴望漂亮的风格化头发IMM刷子，可以节省他们的时间。但随着时间的推移，我意识到IMM刷子经常让你真正坚持其原始形状和流动，它也会变得非常混乱，因为你很容易变得有点狂野，插入比你实际需要的更多的发丝。所以，这些天，我只是冷静下来，使用任何东西。我不在乎它是一个球体还是一个立方体，关键是要对你正在做的事情有视觉上的清晰度，保持清洁并采取小步骤。通常，像球体，Snake Hook和Dam Standard这样的工具可以完美地完成工作。
以下是我如何处理角色上一些面部毛发元素的简短细分：
And this is an example of one of my other recent projects with more complex hair, where I used the exact same pipeline:
这是我最近的另一个头发更复杂的项目的例子，我使用了完全相同的管道：
I believe that sculpting stylized hair is actually not that technically demanding, what I find demanding is achieving the right flow, the right silhouette, and the perfect amount of details. This comes from experience and your own personal taste.
When it comes to all the hard surface pieces, I always kick them off with ZBrush primitives, which I then manipulate with ZModeler. The goal here was to keep everything very low-res and easy to keep editing on the go. For this purpose, I work on these pieces using Dynamic SubDiv until very late stages of the project. Once I was happy with the overall shape of the armor set, I subdivided everything and detailed it using a mix of Orb Clay, Orb Cracks, TrimDynamic, and Polish – I kept my surface detail level very simple because I still wanted people to focus on the overall shape of my design, rather than on micro details.
我相信，雕刻风格化的头发实际上在技术上并不是那么苛刻，我发现要求是实现正确的流动，正确的轮廓和完美的细节。这来自经验和你自己的个人品味。
当涉及到所有坚硬的表面部分时，我总是用ZBrush基元启动它们，然后用ZModeler操作它们。这里的目标是保持一切非常低的分辨率，并易于随时随地进行编辑。为此，我使用Dynamic SubDiv处理这些部分，直到项目的后期阶段。一旦我对盔甲套装的整体形状感到满意，我就细分了所有内容，并使用Orb Clay，Orb Cracks，TrimDynamics和Polisr的混合物对其进行了详细描述 - 我保持了我的表面细节水平非常简单，因为我仍然希望人们专注于我设计的整体形状，而不是微观细节。
For the cloth pieces, I always go for a more organic approach. I still start with a very low-res mesh, in which I aim to have a very clean topology so I can have a better sculpting base:
对于布料，我总是选择更有机的方法。我仍然从一个非常低分辨率的网格开始，在这个网格中，我的目标是有一个非常干净的拓扑结构，这样我就可以有一个更好的雕刻基础：
One of the most important aspects, when you start sculpting and detailing your cloth pieces, is identifying tension points. Tension points set the whole flow and direction of the folds. I knew I wanted to have a big diagonal piece of fabric that could help me break the whole symmetry of the character, but to make it natural, I came up with that small “wing” metal piece where I could hide the tension point, this way I could naturally tuck the fabric in and expand it from that point, from tighter to wider folds, which is really simple but looks really cool if sculpted properly.
当您开始雕刻和细节化布料时，最重要的方面之一是识别张力点。张力点设置褶皱的整个流动和方向。我知道我想有一块大的对角线织物，可以帮助我打破角色的整个对称性，但为了让它自然，我想出了那个小的“翅膀”金属片，在那里我可以隐藏张力点，这样我就可以自然地将织物塞进去，并从那里扩展它， 从更紧的褶皱到更宽的褶皱，这真的很简单，但如果雕刻得当，看起来真的很酷。
When it comes to my fold sculpting brushes, I really recommend checking Shane Olson’s Cloth and Detail brush. Using the Cloth brush to define volumes and the Detail brush to crease the folds around the tension areas is such a powerful combination.
This is a clay render of my high poly sculpt:
说到我的折叠雕刻刷，我真的建议看看Shane Olson的布料和细节刷。使用布画笔定义体积，使用细节画笔在张力区域周围折痕褶皱，是一个强大的组合。
这是我的高多边形雕塑的粘土渲染：
Retopology
I used Maya for both retopology and unwrapping. I remember retopology being such a daunting task back when I started doing 3D, but I think Maya’s Quad Draw tool just makes it so easy (and less painful).
重新拓扑
我使用 Maya 进行重新拓扑和解包。我记得当我开始做3D时，Retopology是一项艰巨的任务，但我认为Maya的Quad Draw工具只是让它变得如此简单（而且痛苦更少）。
Since this is just a bust and not really a production asset, I just focused on getting a decent tri-count and overall topology flow in areas like the face. I also welded and optimized as much of the armor topology as I could to make it easier to unwrap, bake and paint. This sort of optimization is also what you would normally do when working for a game, it saves you UV space and it’s also so much easier for the rigger to work with later on.
This is what the low poly model looks like. I ended up with roughly 7,600 triangles and one 2048*2048 UV map:
由于这只是一个萧条，而不是真正的生产资产，所以我只是专注于在像面部这样的区域获得一个体面的三计数和整体拓扑流。我还尽可能多地焊接和优化了装甲拓扑结构，使其更容易拆包，烘烤和喷漆。这种优化也是你在为游戏工作时通常会做的事情，它可以节省你的紫外线空间，而且装配工以后也更容易使用。
这就是低多边形模型的样子。我最终得到了大约7，600个三角形和一个2048 * 2048 UV贴图：
Texturing
Although handpainted textures are something you can often do without bakes, I really like sculpting all my characters, so I always aim to make the best out of it!
My texturing pipeline is usually split into the following stages:
纹理
虽然手绘纹理是你经常可以在没有烘焙的情况下完成的事情，但我真的很喜欢雕刻我所有的角色，所以我总是致力于充分利用它！
我的纹理管线通常分为以下几个阶段：
prepare my high poly and low poly models for baking in Marmoset;
bake masks, AO, normals, and complete lighting;
import all maps to 3DCoat;
set base colors or gradient maps between 3DCoat and Photoshop;
polish/render textures.
This is a short breakdown of my baking process inside Marmoset Toolbag:
准备我的高聚和低聚模型，以便在狨猴中烘烤;
烘烤面膜，AO，法线和完整的照明;
将所有地图导入3DCoat;
在3DCoat和Photoshop之间设置基色或渐变贴图;
抛光/渲染纹理。
这是我在Marmoset工具袋中烘焙过程的简短细分：
I really like the Diffuse Lighting bake option because later on I can bring it into Photoshop and create Gradient maps from this for each of my materials. It also provides really good light information that will help you texture your model better.
This is a step by step GIF on how I approached my textures inside 3DCoat:
我真的很喜欢漫反射光照烘焙选项，因为稍后我可以将其带入Photoshop，并从中为每个材质创建渐变贴图。它还提供了非常好的光线信息，可以帮助您更好地构建模型纹理。
这是一个循序渐进的GIF，说明我如何在3DCoat中处理我的纹理：
I really try to keep my workflow as simple as possible. I just use the basic brush inside 3DCoat and keep adjusting my values using the Contrast and Brightness tool in either 3DCoat or Photoshop.
To give a bit more context behind the way I render my materials, specifically non-organic materials like metals, these are definitely the 3 core principles I try to always keep in mind:
我真的试图让我的工作流程尽可能简单。我只使用3DCoat里面的基本画笔，并使用3DCoat或Photoshop中的对比度和亮度工具不断调整我的值。
为了在我渲染材料的方式（特别是金属等非有机材料）背后提供更多背景信息，这些绝对是我试图始终牢记的3个核心原则：
One thing I found out over time, after texturing many assets and after looking at the textures of League of Legends and WoW, was just how much work planar lighting does for you, specifically when you’re working on assets that will be small on the screen. I would say this stage alone makes like 70% of your texture work, which is pretty crazy if you consider that it’s so easy to get lost in your model trying to render everything on the go.
Once you set all your planes, it’s so easy to mask them individually and paint both light and shadow, without having it “bleeding” over to other colors or planes.
随着时间的推移，在对许多资源进行纹理处理并查看了《英雄联盟》和《魔兽世界》的纹理之后，我发现了一件事，那就是平面照明为你做了多少工作，特别是当你正在处理屏幕上很小的资源时。我想说的是，仅这个阶段就使你70%的纹理工作，如果你认为在模型中很容易迷失方向，试图在旅途中渲染一切，这是非常疯狂的。
设置所有平面后，很容易将它们单独遮罩并绘制光影，而不会让它“渗入”其他颜色或平面。
Rendering
To showcase my character, I used Marmoset Toolbag. I honestly just love this software, I think it’s super flexible and so easy to use.
渲染
为了展示我的角色，我使用了狨猴工具包。老实说，我只是喜欢这个软件，我认为它非常灵活，非常易于使用。
Since this was a handpainted character, I decided not to use any light on my scene and keep everything unlit. This is what my Marmoset scene looks like:
由于这是一个手绘角色，我决定不在我的场景中使用任何光线，并保持所有内容不发光。这是我的狨猴场景的样子：
One thing I really like to do when presenting my characters is to use very low Field of View angles. Very often I see artworks being presented with really big distortion due to a very exaggerated perspective, so I think finding the right balance there makes a huge difference when it comes to presenting your artwork.
In regards to the character showcase itself, I always like to start with the “main” render of my character where you can see the whole thing, followed by close-ups of my favorite areas or specific parts that I want people to see. One thing I also like to share (when possible) is a Marmoset Viewer or Sketchfab link, I think it’s great to show how your character looks in a real-time renderer, besides it’s also great for when you’re applying for a job – it’s very easy to look at things like topology, texture maps, and so on.
在展示我的角色时，我真正喜欢做的一件事就是使用非常低的视野角度。我经常看到艺术品由于非常夸张的视角而呈现出非常大的失真，所以我认为在展示艺术品时，找到正确的平衡会产生巨大的差异。
关于角色展示本身，我总是喜欢从我的角色的“主要”渲染开始，在那里你可以看到整个事情，然后是我最喜欢的区域或我希望人们看到的特定部分的特写镜头。我还喜欢分享的一件事（如果可能的话）是Marmoset Viewer或Sketchfab链接，我认为在实时渲染器中展示您的角色外观非常棒，此外，当您申请工作时，它也很棒-很容易查看拓扑，纹理贴图等内容。
Conclusion
And that's it! I hope you enjoyed this small breakdown of my character, Duncan! It wasn’t incredibly detailed, but all the main aspects behind my decisions are here! I hope you find them useful.
If you’re just getting into stylized 3D art, all I can say is things take time! Don’t get demoralized for not being able to achieve clean folds or hair sculpts, just keep practicing, studying, and pushing for quality, one character at a time!
结论
就是这样！我希望你喜欢我性格的这个小小的崩溃，邓肯！它不是非常详细，但我的决定背后的所有主要方面都在这里！我希望你觉得它们有用。
如果你只是进入风格化的3D艺术，我只能说事情需要时间！不要因为无法实现干净的褶皱或头发雕塑而士气低落，只要继续练习，学习和推动质量，一次一个角色！
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