ZBrushCentral

Sea of Thieves - Character Art

Thought I’d post up some of the work that me and the Character Art team here at Rare have been working on for Sea of Thieves.

As a bit of background, all characters in Sea of Thieves are created using a system we developed internally called the Infinite Pirate Generator. This is a system I spearheaded along with the Tech Art and the Character Art team to allowing us to deliver on the initial Character brief for Sea of Thieves - “Be the Pirate you want to Be”…no small feat!

The system allows completely automatically generated characters to be generated with a button click and customized from there- vastly cutting down production time and allowing for some creative effects on the Characters in this vibrant, magical world! This was a necessity for the tiny size of the Character Team (no more than 4 on Sea of Thieves at a time, and sometimes down to 1) and the release route the game has taken, for continuous delivery.

SamChester_SeaofThives_NPCsA.jpg
A selection of NPCs generated from the IPG. You can see the diversity and personality of the generated characters really shine here. All work by the Character Art team at Rare.

SamChester_SeaofThives_NPCsB.jpg
A selection of NPCs generated from the IPG. You can see the diversity and personality of the generated characters really shine here. All work by the Character Art team at Rare.

SamChester_SeaofThives_IPG_D.jpg
IPG - Randomised Heads: Randomised gender, ethnicity, body shape, facial features, facial accessories

SamChester_SeaofThives_IPG_C.jpg
IPG - Randomised Bodies: Randomised ethnicity, body shape, facial features, facial accessories

SamChester_SeaofThives_IPG_B.jpg
IPG - Randomised Bodies: Randomised body shape, facial features, facial accessories

SamChester_SeaofThives_IPG_A.jpg
IPG - Base Bodies: A range of body shapes

SamChester_SeaofThives_IPG_DevB.jpg
IPG - Very early Maya side IPG tests. Fully automatically generated heads. Randomised body Shape, wonkiness and age

SamChester_SeaofThives_IPG_DevA.jpg
IPG - Very early Maya side IPG tests. Fully automatically generated heads.

Attachments

SamChester_SeaofThives_NPCsB.jpg

SamChester_SeaofThives_NPCsA.jpg

SamChester_SeaofThives_IPG_DevB.jpg

SamChester_SeaofThives_IPG_DevA.jpg

SamChester_SeaofThives_IPG_D.jpg

SamChester_SeaofThives_IPG_C.jpg

SamChester_SeaofThives_IPG_B.jpg

SamChester_SeaofThives_IPG_A.jpg

Also thought I’d post up some work that shows my involvement in the development of the Character Art style on Sea of Thieves.

It’s great to see how the style evolved and progressed, from the initial concepts, through different proportional, shape and sculpting styles, to the finished end result you see today. It’s always nice to see a bit of the background process of projects too, so here’s my take on that.

SamChester_SeaofThives_IPG_DevI.jpg

SamChester_SeaofThives_IPG_DevF.jpg

SamChester_SeaofThives_IPG_DevE.jpg

SamChester_SeaofThives_IPG_DevG.jpg

SamChester_SeaofThives_IPG_DevH.jpg

SamChester_SeaofThives_IPG_DevC.jpg

SamChester_SeaofThives_IPG_DevD.jpg

Attachments

SamChester_SeaofThives_IPG_DevC.jpg

SamChester_SeaofThives_IPG_DevD.jpg

SamChester_SeaofThives_IPG_DevE.jpg

SamChester_SeaofThives_IPG_DevF.jpg

SamChester_SeaofThives_IPG_DevG.jpg

SamChester_SeaofThives_IPG_DevH.jpg

SamChester_SeaofThives_IPG_DevI.jpg

Really nice stuff! Thanks for sharing; been enjoying the game! :slight_smile:

-Joseph

Must be enlarged to mad scientists, geeks, dancers, singers, cowboys, athletes etc… :wink:

An intrigueing blend of 2d and 3d style.
Great job on carrying the style through all the characters - love the way that the stylistic texturing has been used to influence the surfaces:+1:

those are some great characters. I love how you did the hair!

Wow - I’m glad you guys are enjoying these so much :slight_smile: Thanks for the Top Row as well - an AMAZING reward for me and the team!

@ Piggyson - Thanks! :slight_smile:

@Frenchy Pilou - Haha - you KNOW the cast of characters is only going to increase from here on out! :wink:

@boozy floozie - Thanks :slight_smile: It was great to be able to dabble a bit in 2D as well as 3D on this project for sure… 2D always makes me feel like I’m a REAL artist!

@Intervain - Thanks - that means a lot! Yeah cracking the style and modelling technique of the hair was a real eureka moment for sure. The style developed a bit from the examples seen here but the rough outline of the technique can be seen here at least!

wow I love those shapes, and no symmetry for a game is really nice!

Thanks for sharing these AWESOMELY inspiring sculpts.

I love the angular sharp edges that you created on areas like the chest, arms, and some on the faces. For some reason, I’m enjoying these types of sculpts more than realistic or hyper realistic.
Great job!

Sean

Thanks guys!

Yeah, I agree- I tend to be drawn towards more stylised sculpting myself too these days. It seems like it would be simpler to achieve, but, in reality there’s nowhere to hide with this sort of style. no grunge overlays or pore detail so you HAVE to make sure that every edge is in the right place and ALL of the forms are smooth and polished. It can look amazing when pulled off well though :slight_smile:

You are quite correct in the fact that stylized “seems” simple, however that can be misleading as you said. It also requires a much smoother, clean surface that can’t be covered with, as we always said in the set building biz, “cover it with some splatter.” LOL
Thanks again for your most inspiring work. I almost want to print it off and hang on my wall to keep me focused!

Great stuff.
I was wondering about - “Fully automatically generated heads”. How did you did them? Is that one mesh with different morphs?
Also did you manually retopo the hair strands? What is the polycount per character?
Thx in advance.

I liked their original shape. Keep us posted!

Lovely silhouettes, great work :smiley: