Walter the Town Guard

Artstation/Marmoset Viewer Link: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/wVvR6

Introduction

For this project, I will be creating a medieval town guard. This will mean it will have to make sense for the time period, and for the setting (correct clothing/armour and appropriate for a low ranking guard). The reason I chose this character was mostly influenced by fantasy RPGs, which are my favourite genre, characters that sometimes get overlooked are the generic NPCs in an open world game and I wanted to take the opportunity to study these characters and what makes them stand out. I would like to aim for realism with this piece, as this style works very well in the games I enjoy, and this will also push me to work with high detail within sculpts and materials. Another thing that gets missed is the possible backstory to these NPCs, for my guard I have set him as a low ranking guard in a town that is run by a rich tyrant who is hated by his people. Although reluctant, the guard does his job and keeps the peace as he needs the money to provide for this family also living in the town.  The town has a large class divide and many of the poor are suffering, the guards are a desired position by the people as it pays well but some chose not to take it as they will be serving a man who is letting a vast number of his population suffer.  When posing the character, I want to be able to tell this story, bringing separate moods with each one. The first he will be doing this job with pride, hiding his conflicting morals, another will be a more relaxed pose, possibly when he is winding down at the end of a patrol. He will also have a pose showing him ready for a potential battle, although his is ready to fight and maybe kill, he does not want to kill his fellow man. The last pose he will be kneeling and looking up to his superiors, offering his sword, showing a forced loyalty.

Final Comments

Working on the guard has been a huge learning expeience and I am pleased with the result. I enjoy working with realism in mind and focusing on the smaller details in the skin and clothing. My overall pipeline to create the piece was starting in Zbrush to sculpt the base body, taking that into Marvelous Designer to create the cloth, going back into Zbrush to finish the sculpt, retopologising in Maya, baking and texturing in Substance Painter, posing in Maya and then creating the final scenes in both UE4 and Marmoset Toolbag. 

The final polycount was 44k tris, and used two 4k textures and two 512 textures, the two 512s could have been a 1k but I kept them separated to increase the characters use as a game ready character (keeping the weapons separate to possibly use for other characters). 

The main aim for the mood in the renders was for him to come across as a proud and skilled individual but with a slightly more sombre undertone to reflect his forced loyalty. The use of HDRIs and the stone base plane was to keep the setting realistic and show the guard as if he it was a snapshot from the town he is in much like a guard NPC in a open world game. I would like to further my knowledge of lighting within UE4, as I would like to be able to match Marmoset renders more closely.