The project is inspired by a concept by Shaamiaan, aligning with the Star Wars universe through practical costume design, material authenticity, and a sense of lived-in detail. The character is developed within a traditional game art pipeline using the MetaHuman Framework in a high-to-low poly workflow, with sculpting in ZBrush, retopology in Autodesk Maya, and clothing created in Marvelous Designer, followed by texturing in Substance Painter to achieve realistic surface variation and wear, and final rendering in Unreal Engine using custom shaders to enhance depth and material response.
Marmoset Baking
The textures are designed to draw inspiration from contemporary Star Wars games, capturing a stylized yet grounded surface quality. After the baking process, the model is hand-painted in Substance Painter to establish color, material definition, and subtle surface variation.
​
Once imported into Unreal Engine, the base textures are integrated into a custom material shader. Additional detail is introduced through a fuzz component, along with tiling maps for normal and roughness, enhancing surface richness and breaking up uniformity across the model.
Throughout this project, I aimed to develop a deeper understanding of the MetaHuman system by exploring how custom meshes and textures can be effectively integrated into its workflow. I focused particularly on using the system’s conform functions to adapt external assets, so they align properly with MetaHuman’s underlying structure and rig. This process involved sculpting on a metahuman base mesh and maintaining proper topology thus preserving the fidelity of the original asset within the MetaHuman framework.
