Rogue Attack Animation - 3D Character & Environment

Hi! My name is Matthew Leung and im a 3D Animation student located in NYC! I specialize in 3D character creation and love seeing my characters come to life in animations. Here is my process on how I made this 9-second animation sequence and how you could make one yourself!

Drawing Software - (Procreate, Photoshop, Krita, etc.)

Modeling Software - (Autodesk Maya, Blender, Cinema 4D, etc.)

Sculpting Software - (Mudbox, ZBrush, Blender, Nomad Sculpt, etc.)

Texturing Software - (Substance Painter, Mari, 3D Coat, etc.)

Rendering Software - (Autodesk Maya, Blender, Unreal Engine 5, etc.)

Compositing Software - (Nuke, After Effects, Davinci Resolve, etc.)

The first and most important step of this entire process is to find a reference!

For this specific project, I used this reference by , Toart-Studio, on Artstation. You could also design your own character but it is always recommended to have a 2D concept to reference before the sculpting stage.

I first went into my sculpting program, Zbrush to sculpt out my reference. This step is all about making it look as good as possible so there is no need to worry about poly count.

After you finish your high poly sculpt, we must retopolize it in a low poly mesh to begin animating and texturing.

I used Autodesk Maya for this step.

Once you have your lowpoly and UVs done, you can now go onto texturing!

Import your new low-poly model into Substance Painter and bake the high poly on top to extract all of the details. I separated each object so it could be baked much cleaner. After that, everything is up to your creative freedom! Give it some beautiful textures and then export!

I used a free maya script called Advanced Skeleton to help rig my model. I also used NgSkin Tools, also free, to weight paint my rig.

Once your character is finished its time to move onto the environment. I made a quick concept of what I wanted for my environment. I repeated the all of the same steps used for the character but this time for my environment.

Now that you have your environment, you can now begin animating. I filmed myself for reference and used it to animate the scene.

Your almost done! With almost everything completed it is now time to light your scene.

I imported everything into Blender for this step. After setting up all of your lights and hitting render, you can go grab a snack and wait for your render to complete!

After a long time of rendering... Your done! Give yourself a pat on the back because this was a long journey. Share it with your friends and keep practicing!