Gilded Caitlyn

QiFeng Lin's LOR concept (B)

Inspired by the Arcane TV show, I wanted to make a piece featuring Caitlyn. After digging around and finding a concept I like, I stumbled upon a concept done by QiFeng Lin for Legends of Runeterra. Instead of just translating a 2D concept to 3D, I wanted to add my own touch to it. By combining her Arcane face with some elements of her original outfit, it blended greatly with her looks from the concept. Her concept was in black and white with little material detail. This gave me some creative freedom on selecting what she would look like with PBR textures.

I am happy how she turned out and it was a fun project to work on. She eventually won Gnomon's 2022 Spring Best of Term for Game Character category!

Sculpting

The beginning to this project is the high-poly sculpting. Her face design was heavily inspired by her look in Arcane. I don't want to do a direct representation of how she appeared from the show but I made sure I captured her distinct features such as her nose bridge, cheeks, and lips.

Modeling

Once the body and head sculpt is complete, it's time to do some modeling. Since this was a stylized piece, her clothing were all modeling and sculpted using Maya and Zbrush. I baked my highpoly details to her lowpoly model using Marmoset Toolbag. Baked details included stitching, wrinkles, and seems. Her rifle was modeled in Maya.

Texturing

I textured her skin in Substance Painter. I did not used any preset skin materials, she was all handed painted with over 30 plus layers. The skin is very complicated and Maya's subsurface materials reflects it. I had to paint the subdermis, dermis, and sun damage layers to give a believable skin texture.

As for clothing, I looked heavily into steampunk designs since that is the overall aesthetic of Piltover. That means there is a lot of gold and leather, hence her concept name, "Gilded Caitlyn." Clothing was textured in Painter as well but after some feedback, the blue of her outfit was done using Vray Falloff. I wanted a satin look to her clothing.

Posing and Xgen

The most challenging and tedious part of the project is posing and hair groom. Her posed was inspired by the Arcane intro. She's an enforcer so she needs to stand tall and proud. I did not use a rig. She was posed in zbrush using masking and the gizmo. As for her hair, I made sure I captured her center part and have one side of her hair resting forward. By adding a few clump and noise modifiers, it makes her hair more realistic.

Compositing

Raw render

Comped Render

Once all the textures have been placed and lights positioned, I rendered out an EXR with all the information for compositing. All the lights were set to white in the raw render so there was more flexibility in adjusting colors and intensity in Nuke. That is the beauty of Nuke compositing. She was rendered in 4K.

Nicholas Tung

Character & Environment Artist