Introduction

Character models in games can be daunting. And if you’re a beginner to characters, or to Unreal, you may wonder where to even get started.

I wrote up this introduction to help de-mystify the processes for newcomers, and give some general advice about characters.

Humans Characters Aren’t Special, You Don’t Need Fancy Tools

If you’re a beginner, you may be intimidated by the prospect of building character assets, particular human or humanoid characters. As if you’re crossing a threshold, and you can’t start making humans without special tools and knowledge.

• Do I need to know what a Metahuman is?
• Do I have to learn about motion mapping, and other new tools Unreal has?
• Do I need so many animations that I can’t author them myself?

Good news: the answer to all of these is no. Whether your character is a box, a cartoon mascot, or a photo-real human: it’s just vertices, bones, and animations. Sure, humans are complex creatures, but don’t feel gate-kept or intimidated.

Epic has a habit of shouting their brand-new features from the rooftops and telling you that you need them. Are there teams in the industry using highly complex stuff like motion matching to produce awesome characters? Yes, and that’s great! But that’s not the norm. There are even more teams using basic techniques (with great assets) to produce awesome characters.

When you’re starting, keep it simple, and focus on learning a typical pipeline between 3D Packages and Unreal. Later on you (might) branch out to the fancy stuff.

Remember the Fundamentals

A good character model is a magic trick – we create the illusion of a living breathing character on the screen. But behind the curtain, the ingredients are simple.

I would argue that the fundamentals of this illusion are:

• good art direction
• good deformation
• good animations

Fundamentals Don’t Change

The thing about fundamentals is that they are timeless.

Whether we look at Resident Evil 4 in 2005 or 2023, Leon is a successful character. He feels alive, with tons of personality, and some great motion-captured performances. In 2023 the rendering techniques are newer, but he shines in both games.

It doesn’t really matter than Leon’s 2005 model has shadows painted into the textures, and his 2023 model simulates subsurface scattering. He’s brought to life because Capcom knows their fundamentals.

Fundamentals Overshadow Technical Fidelity

Even without fancy bells and whistles, we can still make a world-class game with the bare essentials.

Persona 5 Royal’s character models are dead-simple. But simple does not mean bad; Atlas’ artists produced characters that move well, hit strong poses, and tell a story. They resonate strongly because Atlas knows their fundamentals.

Practice the Fundamentals

The takeaway here is that you will succeed with good fundamentals, and fail with bad fundamentals. And no amount of cutting-edge features will save bad fundamentals.

Getting good at art fundamentals takes time and practice. You can spend your entire career getting better at building good meshes and placing bones properly.

A Character Pipeline

It follows that we need a character pipeline that enable us to execute on the things that matter most.

A strong character pipeline allows you to iterate and practice the fundamentals, and is flexible enough to accomodate high fidelity and new features.

This compendium’s goal is to help you make that pipeline, and equip you with the knowledge to build off of it in the future.