Year 3 university project

Aerus

This character was also an entry to a competition "Grads <in> Games", marked as 100% by industry professionals.

Aerus is a 3D character I sculpted, textured and rigged for animation.
Created for a third year group project based on a game cutscene (animation) and soon to be used within a game I am occasionally working on - Aeryuu's Legacy.

Aerus was designed to be a mythical dragon, who lives in a fictional heavenly realm called "The Aether", which mostly consists of floating islands. He uses a powerful magical bow as a way to defend himself and protect ancient temples and artifacts.

Character: Aerus: Bio

Aerus turnaround

Rendered with Redshift

Click to view associated animation project

Character: Aerus: Gallery

Images

View character in Unreal Engine 4

Character: Aerus: Gallery

To process of creating this character started with concept art. I created an initial simple design, which then was improved and developed. The idea was then taken to ZBrush for sculpting - beginning with zpheres and gradually building up the shapes. The model was then retopologized and UVed for Substance Painter texturing.

Character: Aerus: Quote

Once the textures were finished, the final step was to rig the character using Advanced Skeleton autorigger. Some of the tool's features were difficult to implement, therefore manual customization was required - mainly the facials and bow controls.

Character: Aerus: Quote