GRAVEN Dev Blog #5 - Characters Like it's 1998

Very few times do you get a chance to go back and re-do something. I have that opportunity working with 3D Realms and the GRAVEN team. Boomer shooters!

Yep, those long-time-ago-games are still hanging in there! My mission from Fred was to build these characters like I used to build them! After Duke and Half Life, I stayed in the industry still creating characters. I’ve learned a lot! The tools we used back then are gone, replaced with so much more advanced tools it presents a new challenge.

Well, we come back to the part of redoing something you did a long time ago… But this time, I can use my knowledge and modern tools! Can’t tell you how many times I’ve looked at my old models and wished I could rebuild with what I know today.



We’ll use GRAVEN’s Deacon as an example. Awesome character design by Bebeto Daroz, our art director. Look at the detail in him! His silhouette has so many folds and depth, how can we represent that with a low poly look?

For me, I always start with Zbrush! I know, it’s for hi res stuff, but I use it to build and plan the character ahead of time. WIth all the folds and details. I feel this will save me time and allow me to get the silhouette and overall shapes right before I commit to polygons.

So now I’ve made my proxy model in Zbrush, what’s next? Resurface!

We will take this mesh we just quickly comped in Zbrush and take it into our 3D software (I use Maya, use what makes you happy) Once I’m in, I use “Make Surface Live” tool, this allows me to put points on the model and draw out the quad. I do this over the entire model. It’s helpful because I’m using the hi res as a guide. True, I could have done this in Maya just in poly’s, but for me, it just works faster and it also allows me to capture some special texture maps to use later on in texturing.



Here’s our Deacon model on top of it’s resurface proxy. I think it’s super important to get as many details into the model as possible, but you have to balance your poly budget! On the model here, I used the polys to build some of the folds on the arms, these work well in the silhouette!

UV’s are the next step. WIth the pixels being so visible in the final textures, I try to keep my texel density (pixel grid) in a linear direction. If you place a UV section diagonal, it may be very visible up against a section with a different direction.



See the large square on the right? This was for his logo. Had I made it in the same ratio as the rest of the texture there would not be enough detail to see it. I cut this one out, making sure the edge matched with the design and made it separate with more resolution.

Really helps with its visibility.



Now back to Zbrush, this time to polypaint! This is a tool in ZBrush that allows you to paint directly on the model and over seams.

We have great concepts from Bebeto, so I project as much of it as I can onto the model. I want to capture the colors and even the paint strokes of his concept designs.

With most concepts, you only have one angle. Here’s where the brute force comes in and the need to hand paint the rest while in polypaint. It will also be necessary to reproduce things you see in the texture so it will all be cohesive!

The folds in the back must blend with the ones in front as well as any brush strokes or color.

Once I have the entire model polypainted, it’s time to capture the texture and export it. Since we’ve done our UV’s and imported the same mesh into Zbrush, all of our UV’s are there as well as our texture.

I will do one final step now that I have my diffuse map. That’s exporting the model into Substance Painter.



I import my game mesh into Substance painter and the new polypaint diffuse map too.

In Substance, I can adjust any colors. Add more details to create the opacity maps.

I will also use my Zbrush proxy mesh to rip more textures. AO and cavity maps can help add to the look.

One other thing I’ve been doing in Substance is adding a Baked Lighting Stylized node.This will add lighting to the whole character. I will adjust down to 50% sometimes not to overwhelm the texture. It just adds a nice overall even light that really grounds the texture.

I can light the model from all angles and even add color lighting. All this will be non destructive, meaning I can go back and tweak when I want to. I save the hand painting part for last.



So now we reach the final model ready for the game with 256x 256 textures just like in the boomer days!

So many new tools I would have never dreamed of available today. Things change so quickly.

It’s been fun revisiting models built in the spirit of the old ones. I hope they bring as much entertainment as the other games I’ve had the pleasure working on.



Thanks for reading!

Written by Chuck Jones.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1371690/GRAVEN/