Caroline - Overwatch character study

Caroline

Wanted to take a closer look at the stylization of Overwatch, with a focus on the second game. The character is based on a concept by https://www.artstation.com/itsberru with some modifications to push the Overwatch feeling.

Amazing exercise, I have learned so much. Model was created with a combination of Maya and Zbrush. Textures were made with a combination of Photoshop and Substance Painter. Made custom brushes as well in Photoshop to mimic the dirt and grunge patterns on Overwatch characters. Flowmap also painted in Substance Painter.

Lots of time spent in Unreal and experimenting with shaders/material creation. The hair is a fake anisotropic shader based on using "sun" light vector, camera view and calculating tangent through the flowmap. This data is then used as a highlight mask that is further controlled with an anisotropic noise texture. These highlights are then colored and layered. A subtle rim light can be added for effect.

Skin shader was also custom made through nodes in Unreals material editor. A three colored fresnel gradient is plugged in as SS color and a colored fresnel mask added on top of albedo texture for an even more stylized effect. Grunge and detail maps are tiled and mapped through the detail mask seen in the post and overlaid on a Spec map to give variation.

While I think the Overwatch engine uses something more akin to a Specular-Glossiness pipeline, this project was created with Unreals Metallic-Roughness PBR pipeline as a base but instead either modifying a shader in the material editor or using NPBR values for the desired stylization effect.

Rig, skinning and posing was done in Maya.