Character Renders

I imported the character to Blender to create some renders to show case the 3D model.

Clay render of the turtle; rendered using Eevee

Turtle model; rendered using Eevee

Composite image of the turtle in a marine environment; composited on Photoshop

I also created a turntable animation to show case the model from all angles.

Exporting character to Unity

After the modelling, sculpting and texturing were done, the character was ready to be imported into Unity.

I imported the base model along with the 4 texture maps (Base color, Normal, Roughness and Ambient Occlusion) into unity and created a prefab of the turtle in order to move it easily into the main project.

The turtle prefab inside the main project in Unity

Since the polycount is important when it comes to games I made sure that the model for the turtle doesn’t exceed 7000 tris, because as I know from my experience using SpeedTree:

• For mobile: don’t exceed 1000 tris.
• For desktop: make sure the model is between 4000 and 7000 tris. It can go up to 10,000 but only if there are a few instances of that model in the scene.
• If a model has 15,000 to 25,000 tris, then use it once per scene. (SpeedTree used to call these models “Heroes“)

Turtle model inside Unity’s viewport with less than 7000 tris

Rigging

I tried to rig the base model of the turtle, but I ended up with this problem. I kept trying to fix it via skinning but it took me a while and in the end the problem persisted.

Vertices problem I faced while rigging

I later understood that this is because I didn’t have the entire skeleton but some bones thrown around in the model and this is not the correct workflow. I should follow a reference, mainly that of a turtle’s real skeleton, and create the rig based on that. I should not include every little bone in the real skeleton but the rig should be simpler version of it.

Turtle’s skeleton reference

I plan to use the above reference to correctly rig the model in the next stage.

Character texturing

I imported the base model along with the normal map into Substance painter and started texturing.

I first created some fill layers for the turtle’s different features, and then using masking I applied the appropriate fill layers to their respective features.

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  Skin

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  Shell (top)

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  Shell (bottom)

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  Scales

The final result looked like this.

Final result after masking

I then exported the texture maps.

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  Base Color

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  Roughness

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  Ambient Occlusion

Character sculpting

I moved the base model to Mudbox and did some sculpting, and then I exported the sculpted details as a normal map to apply it to the base model so I can achieve high details with a low poly count.

Sculpting result

Exported normal map

Character modelling

I started off with a base mesh from Maya’s content browser. The base mesh had the shape of a real-life sea turtle, but since mine is slightly stylized I had to do some tweaks to it.

Maya’s content browser

I used the concept art I created for reference.

Reference Image

This was the final result of the modelling phase.

I also did the UV unwrapping as well.

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