Kingdom Defense Update #004

More than two month have passed since our project last update. And I must say that we are 80%-90% finished Kingdom Defense demo. UI is finished and now is on implementation stage, kingdom map also finished in general and it only needs some towns to be placed here and there. Same story with almost all aspects of the demo, all of them are almost complete but need extra work so we would feel it's done properly. And also this is the main reason you didn't hear from us for two month. We just wasn't sure that we want to show something unfinished, and I thought that meanwhile it would be a good time to show you some of our design routine.

So this blog entry will be about creating an regular Orc warrior for our game. At the point when I decided that different type of goblins isn't enough for Kingdom Defense beta, our main 2D artist was very busy working on map, so I couldn't count on any concepts from him. And I being not that good in traditional painting, I decided to just sculpt Orc with all ideas that will come to my head. I search web for some Orc reference, and of course 80% of stuff that I found was Warcraft or Warhammer Orcs. And I think that this fact could be clearly seen in my final Orc sculpt.

So I started with creating simple polysphere humanoid character. I reshaped it a little bit using "standard" and "move" brushes creating some big arms and small legs. Then after working with muscles a little bit more I went to higher subdivision level and started to work at his face.




After working more at his face and pants I realized that my model isn't really too symmetrical and geometry doesn't flow in right directions, it lucks polygons on his face and have more than needed on his shoulders, arms and legs. So I had to retopologise the model in order to have right flow and density of my geometry.




Thanks God, Zbrush have some really easy way to do retopologise by means of of zspheres, adaptive skin and topology tools. After I did that I could sculpt without any topology worries. I played a little with his body and head sizes using transpose master tool, I still was searching for the right shape and look. After that I imported teeth and eyeballs from 3D Max. I usually just import those minor details as separate shapes rather than sculpting them on the main model.




Then I played a little more with Orc overall build and started to go on higher and higher subdivision levels and refining his muscles line, face, etc. And also I decided to sculpt eyeballs on the main model.




Worked with the muscle sizes a little bit more by jumping back on lower subdivision levels and using inflate and magnify brushes. After I decided that Orc build is exactly the way I want and his muscle lines and and face details are at needed level. I exported Model to .obj opened it in Max and modeled basic arm bracelets, bots and belt. Imorted them to .obj and added them to my model in Zbrush. There I subdivided those things and sculpted them a little. When boots, arm bracelets and belt was finished I sculpted folds on the Orc legs so it would look like my Orc is in pants. :)



At that point I decided that he looks exactly the way I want. I showed Orc to our team, and get some positive feedback from everyone. They just loved it.

We don't want that any of the same units in our game would look exactly the same. It's bad when player see that all units that attack him or under his control is just a bunch of clones. It makes game less believable I guess or may be it just gives a player feel that he commands or attacks a gray mass of exactly the same creatures. So keeping that in mind I created some ammunition details, and different haircuts for our Orc warrior. That stuff will make duplication less visible I think.



Anyway, ammunition, haircuts, plus different shields and weapons that I showed you in previous blogs should make all Orc look more individual rather than just like they pop-up from some cloning device that was installed by dark forces somewhere in the deep forest.


Also I already finished low-poly, textured it, baked normals and sent it to our animator. When he will finish animation and Matt will put Orc in game I will show you Orc in game low-poly with weapon, shield, and in some attacking poses.

As always your thoughts and crits are welcomed.