In a quick update on Suzy’s progress, you can see in the screenshot that her texturing is moving along. After working on the rigging for so long, a break was required. You can only stare at the bone structure of a character for so long before you just need a change of pace.
The updates to Trello haven’t been as disciplined as they should be. The whole point is to document the process of making this game, so flopping from one thing to another isn’t the best strategy.
As far as Suzy’s texturing is concerned, it is clear why Harrison Moore, one of Epic’s technical artists, states that you need to get work out of Substance Painter and into UE’s editor as quickly as possible. The rendering system of Painter is far different than that of UE4, so getting something up in UE4’s editor quickly is vital. For more information on what I am referring to, you can watch this YouTube video for more information. He can explain this much better than I could.
Using a color-calibrated lighting environment is very important. I was viewing Suzy in the default level for the third-person template, and her facial skin color was way off. Her skin color was much pinker than it appeared in a color calibrated level.
The specular highlights of her skin still needs some work. The skin on her body should not be nearly as shiny as it is, and there is a little bit of tweaking that needs to be done for her facial skin. But, I feel like this part of her development is going well (disregard her hair, that is a work in progress).
By using the approach that was used in Paragon, we can get a level of control that we wouldn’t be able to easily achieve otherwise. For example, the number of pores on her skin. I can very easily dial in more, or less, pores based on the look I need. On top of that, I can control how pronounced the pores are. Should they be deep pores, or fairly shallow? It is just a matter of changing a few numbers to see, in real-time, what the difference between the two are. It is clear why Epic chose this strategy when developing the Paragon characters.
Once the process for creating characters using the Paragon techniques and the new Hair Simulation system is clear, turn-around time for characters should be much, MUCH faster.