Prototype Comic Style Pipeline
Last year I had the opportunity to do some art and pipeline prototyping for a small team pitch for a vampire game which unfortunately did not get off the ground.
Goal was to have a very unique character look (Partially inspired by Tim Bradstreets Punisher art) that was heavy on stylization. The mouth bits were my favorite to concept out.
I kit bashed the high and low poly together in about 2 days and spent about 3 days throwing together the texture pipeline.
The shader work took a week or two though as I wanted two tone lighting that was driven by the texture map but also heavu inking that would respond to changes in light. In additon I wanted to have actual material definition. Leather to feel like leather, denim like denim, etc.
This also needed to be as automated as possible which lead the setup of a substance painter file that essentially auto generated all the necessary textures shown here.
Final test character look
Sculpt was done in about 2 days by kit-bashing parts from various characters together along with a bit of resculpting.
Jacket was to test something leathery
Pants were for Denim and the exposed skin was to figure out the flesh look with this aesthetic
The substance painter file generates the AO+Ink, Skin Mask, Light ink pass, and Heavy ink pass. All you really have to do for color is drop in a basic material at the bottom for each clothing element.
The shader in action. The shadow color can be modified as well as the color texture itself tinted, so a variety of comic book style "lighting" can be created. The inks spreads based on the angle and position of the light, between the default, light inking
The character can still be lit "normally", the materials will receive the lighting info, as in the specular. The shader light could be parented to the main light to keep them in sync together.
Close up of details in action
The teeth were meant to be a mix of the vampires from blade 2 with a bit of resident evil thrown in and some of my own weirdness on top
