Full Guide to

Creating Awesome Game

Ready Characters.
Table of Contents

Preproduction 2
Modelling 3
Texturing 9
Rigging 10
Exporting to a Game Engine 14

1
Preproduction
Before I start working in blender I first start with building reference boards, which is
basically just a compilation of images to give me a clear idea of what I’m going to
be making later.
This can be a very simple board or very detailed depending on the detail and how
specific I want to be with my character. Let me quickly take you through my process
for building my reference boards.
Step 1,
If I’m working for myself, I start by making a brief to give me an idea of what images
I need to start looking for. It can be really helpful to also write down the personality
of the character which will be used later when pushing the shape of the character to
convey the message of our character.
Step 2,
I personally like using Pinterest for finding reference images, just because the “find
similar function” is so easy and the recommendations for images are better than
search engines in some cases or some big projects.
Here is when I nail down what I want my character to look like, from hair to the shape
of the character, from the clothing to the smallest prop.
These images make your life a lot easier in the process and is totally worth it.
Step 3,
Start compiling images into PureRef, which is basically a software that you can drop
images into, to have floating on your screen while you’re working.
Make sure you have your reference
board in always on top mode so you
can while you’re working you don’t
have to keep going back and forth
between your reference and blender
scene.

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Modelling
When you start designing characters, the first thing you gotta do is get yourself a
base mesh. You can either create it yourself or just download one online, but either
way, it's gonna be the foundation for everything you do from there on out. Now, there
are two big things you need to think about: proportions and topology.

Proportions are super important, especially if you're trying to give your character a
unique, stylized look. You wanna play around with the proportions to give your
character a certain vibe that helps tell their story. And that's where shape language
comes in - it's basically using different shapes to communicate what your character
is all about.

Shape language plays a crucial role in conveying the essence of a character. Three
fundamental shapes that are commonly used in shape language are the square,
triangle, and circle. Each shape has its own unique properties and conveys a distinct
message to the audience.

The square shape is often associated with stability, strength, and reliability.
Characters with a square shape language are often portrayed as grounded,
practical, and no-nonsense. The sharp edges of the square can be used to create a
sense of authority and dominance, making it a popular choice for villains or
authoritarian figures. On the other hand, rounded squares can give off a more
approachable and friendly vibe.

The circle shape is often used to convey softness, friendliness, and approachability.
Characters with a circular shape language are often depicted as warm, comforting,
and nurturing. The round edges of the circle can create a sense of safety and
familiarity, making it a popular choice for characters who are meant to be trusted or
relied upon. Additionally, circles can be used to create a sense of playfulness and
whimsy, making it a popular choice for characters meant to be entertaining or
comedic.

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Finally, the triangle shape is often used to convey power, aggression, and danger.
Characters with a triangular shape language are often depicted as sharp, edgy, and
unpredictable. The pointed edges of the triangle can create a sense of tension and
danger, making it a popular choice for antagonistic characters or creatures. In
contrast, inverted triangles can give off a more stable and grounded impression,
making it a popular choice for heroic characters.

The other thing you need to think about when making your base mesh is having
good topology is essential for ensuring that they animate and deform properly.
Topology refers to the flow and organization of polygons on the character's mesh.
Poor topology can result in deformations, glitches, and other issues that can detract
from the player's immersion. So, what makes for good topology in game characters?

Firstly, it's important to have an efficient mesh with as few polygons as possible
while still maintaining the desired level of detail. This helps to optimize performance
by reducing the strain on the game engine. Additionally, having a clean and
organized mesh can help to facilitate the rigging and skinning process, allowing the
character to move and bend in a more natural and realistic way.

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 Another important consideration is edge flow. This
refers to the way that the edges of polygons are
organized to follow the natural contours of the
character's body. Proper edge flow can help to
ensure that the character animates and deforms
smoothly and realistically, with minimal distortion or
stretching. It's also important to have good edge
loops around joints and areas of deformation, as
this can help to maintain volume and prevent
unwanted collapsing or stretching.

The easiest way I have found to learn topology is by

looking at other people's models, you can easily find
the character models from games and start
breaking them apart to see how their model's
topology flows or go download some models from
online that you like the look off, make sure they’re for
animation or the topology might terrible. Sketchfab
is useful for this because you don’t even have to
download the model, you can use the inspect
feature that will show you the wireframe of the
model and from there you can study the topology.

Now that we have a clean base mesh we need to go

about creating the clothing, hair and props for our characters.

Clothing:
When designing the clothing for your character this is the point where you can push
the shape of your character even more. This is also when I start to lean more on the
references I gathered in the beginning since I'm not great at clothing design.
Again it's all about conveying the story of your character through the design choices
you make.

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The simplest way I’ve found to make clothing is to duplicate parts of the base mesh,
then start moving around, adding geometry and removing some, until you get the
shape you want. Then go to the modifier tab and add a solidify to give some
thickness to your model.

Example:

This process can be repeated and then for the rest of the clothing in your character
design unless you have something that doesn’t fit the shape of the character like a
cape or parts of a dress.

Props:
Adding in more props can help tell more of a story with your character, fleshing out
the backstory and helping audiences resonate with them. Adding more detail can
also really help when making low poly characters, the low poly counts don't give us
an excuse to be lazy and make bad art. There has to be a reason behind everything
we do.
I like to break down the shapes of all the small assets into their simplest forms,
almost like the shape language, and then with the simplest modelling tools turn

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them into 3D. With low poly creating assets isn’t too confusing because you don’t
have to worry about adding in a ton of details and managing a ton of geometry.

Hair:

This is a quick drawing breaking down

the shape of the hair with simple
straight lines. I will use this to make the
hair in 3D.
Basically all I do is duplicate the scalp
from the head and add a solidify, and
then start extruding hair down.

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Here are some examples of hair if
you would like to see how I’ve made
some of my character's hair.
Adding in some extra strands helps
make the hair look really nice.

8
Texturing
The way I used to make models for games was to use blender’s built-in materials
which turns out to be really bad for games, the standard method for games is to use
a UV Texture which is going through the character and adding seams in each part
to lay it flat and paint textures.
But if we’re making flat textures, there's no point in having to paint the image, we
can just do something called a UV Atlas, a small image where each pixel is a
different colour and this can be mapped to your model by selecting the parts of
your mesh that you want to make a single colour and clicking U > Unwrap or if you
run into an error click U > Smart UV Project.

Creating a low res image: Low Res image to paint colours:

Make sure you set the image properties in

blender to be closest so that there's no
smoothing between pixels on the image.
Which would end up with random colours getting generated and random
smoothing with the colours.

If you want to save

the image, open the
image editor or UV
editor and click
Image > Save as.

9
Rigging
Rigging can be either very complex or very simple, in a nutshell, it's a bone structure
that can be used later to move and animate your character, which is very important
for games as most characters will have movement and animation.
Here's an example of a rig for my camel.
I’ve heard from some beginners
that they are confused about
where to place the bones.

Something you can try to make

rigging easier is to use the
reference of a human skeleton to
see where the actual bones are
placed in the human body.

These are going to be around

places that pivot like elbows,
knees, shoulders, etc.

A quick way to build a skeleton to

start placing the bones without
having to extrude all the bones
and name them which is a very
time-consuming task.
All you have to do is go Edit >
Preferences > Addons then search
for rigify. Now if you go press Ctrl A
these new menus will pop up under
the armature tab.
This will create a simple rig that I
like to use for my rigs. The only thing
I have to do is place finger bones
and name them.

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The usual naming convention is something along the lines of “Bonename.L” so for
the hand it would be Hand.L and now when you’ve done the left side of the rig press
Armature > Symmetrize, in the bottom left you can click the black box and chose
which side of your rig you want to override with the other side.
Another thing you need to do is delete a
couple of bones to streamline the character,
especially for games.

These bones don’t really help with

your animation or posing so I
delete them whenever I create a
rig with rigify.

The next topic to cover is adding IK

to your rig. IK rigging is when you
create a bone a the end of a chain
of bones(Like the leg or arm) then
you can move the bone and it
moves the rest of the leg/arm.

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IK Leg movement FK Leg Movement

All you have to do is create a small bone

a the ankle joint or the wrist joint then
press Alt P > clear parent. Then select the
IK bone and the bone to be the last
bone(the forearm bone or calf bone)
And press Shift + i to add the Ik to active
bone.

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 Heres how to add the IK to a leg bone.
Make sure to select the IK bone then the
Leg bone then press shift i > to the active
bone.
The highlighted bone is the active one.

Another example to the right is the arm

bone.

IK is really useful for when you’re doing

animation, if you’re moving the pelvis
bone in FX the legs will follow with you can you have to spend a bunch of time
rotating all the bones in the leg to fix the position but in IK you just drag the pelvis
bone and the feet stick to the ground.

13
Exporting to a Game Engine
When exporting your models the steps
all you need to do is to select all the
parts of your mesh and rig that you want
to export, go to the top right, click File >
Export > FBX and copy the settings from
this screenshot.
These are the settings I use for unity,
which may not be the best, but I think
this is the way to do it. The only thing you
might want to change is the apply
transforms if you don’t already do that in
your scene.

Then go to your game engine, for

example unity, and drag the fbx file into
your scene.
You’re going to have to create a material
with your UV atlas and set the filter mode
on the image to point to not have any
blurring between colours

Then add the image to the material and

drag it onto your character.
And you’re DONE!

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