Hi, I'm Francisco Rojas! Though most people know me as Pako.

I’m a 3D artist from Mexico, currently in the US. This is my final project for my MFA from the Academy of Art University. I worked on these two characters and creatures together. I went from concept art to final 3D modeling, texturing, and getting them ready for presentation in Unreal Engine 5. Thanks to my mentors, Tan Bi and Rey Hernandez, who guided me throughout the process.

Inspiration and Initial Steps

As a part of my MFA thesis project, I needed to create a theme and concepts for a variety of characters. The parameters were one female, one male, and a quadruped creature. I explored many themes before settling on a pirate theme. I wanted to design characters that were fantastic but grounded in a time period and setting. I was very much inspired by games like God of War, Ghost of Tsushima, and artwork by Even Amundsen. What I love about all of that work is that just by a cursory glance you can tell a lot of the character's backstory and setting.

The title "Devoured by the Red Moon" came from the short little backstory I gave to this world. In short, this is a crew of pirates practicing blood magic in order to survive the deadly sea they traverse. An event known as the red eclipse wakes up creatures from the sea to devour any ship sailing across. 

Concept Art

I started drawing up initial sketches and ideas for the characters. I gathered reference images and went through various iterations throughout the entire process. 

Sculpting and Iterations

I was sculpting and making changes in ZBrush, trying to figure out how to showcase the best of these concepts. The sculpting is my favorite part, as it can be very iterative and similar to sketching. Moving up the hierarchy of forms to reach a good result. 

Facial Blendshapes

I created a series of facial blendshapes in ZBrush to take into Maya and create a short showcase of them.

Marvelous Designer

I used Marvelous Designer to get the base garment of the clothes and took them into ZBrush for further sculpting. I used the Marvelous Designer Retopology Toolkit for Maya by Derrick Sesson and jQuadCloth by Jacopo Ortolani to retopologize the garments. 

Retopology and UV Mapping

This can be the part of the process that is pretty meticulous because the edgeloops need to be placed in the correct place for the mesh to deform and bake correctly. I was also keeping a close eye on the silhoutte of the topology since I knew I would be taking it into Unreal Engine 5 and not subdividing the mesh for smoother corners.

Baking

The baking was done in Marmoset Toolbag for its great tools for fast alternations. It was a huge time saver being able to easily and quickly identify and fix issues with the maps. 

Texture Painting

The texture painting was done in Substance Painter, and at this stage it really was a back and forth between the various stages so far. If I needed to modify the mesh or UVs, I'd reimport the model and continue working on the textures. I was thinking about how these maps would help the UE5 shader with the standard PBR workflow maps but also with masking maps. 

XGen Hair

The hair was done in Maya XGen because I wanted to understand how UE5 supports it. It is a little tricky, but JHill's video on it really helped address the issues that I faced when importing it. 

I like using XGen because it can be a really powerful way to get realistic-looking hair. 

Posing the Character

I did the posing in ZBrush using the low poly. I used the mannequins to get a rough idea of the pose before committing to the actual mesh.

Unreal Engine 5

Getting everything into Unreal was a relief, and the software is very intuitive for presentation. Organization was the biggest key factor because the UE5 scene can get bloated if you aren't careful keeping track of all the assets created at this stage. 

Final Thoughts

This project was a big undertaking for me, and I learned a ton from it. As an artist, I am both proud of my work and can't help but notice all the ways I can improve. The biggest takeaway for me was time management. I feel like I did my best to give each character and creature enough work to reach a good level of quality, but I do want to dedicate more time to the models. I feel I can achieve that by prioritizing and not getting stuck on certain parts of the process. I love doing this work, and I want to keep creating.