Víctor Masó

3D MODELLING - RIGGING - TEXTURING - 3D ANIMATION - UI

Víctor Masó Garcia

ARTIST

free web creation software

Project overview

Hi! I'm Víctor Masó and I've been one of the three artists in this project. Due to the small size of the art team (3 artists) I've been involved in almost all of the art related areas of the project. This includes 3D modelling, rigging, texturing, 3D animation & UI.

Software

Autodesk Maya 2018

- 3D Modelling
- Unwrapping
- Texturing
- Rigging
- 3D Animation

Autodesk Mudbox 2019

- Texturing

Photoshop CC

- Texturing
- UI

Concept Discovery

In the first phase of the project I was in charge of defining the overall art style of the game as well as the look of Alita and the technical guidelines of the art department.

------------------------------------------------------------

If you take almost any screenshot of the game you should look at it and clearly recognize the Alita’s world in it.

JAPANESE CYBERPUNK
GORE
EXAGGERATION & DISPROPORTION

Alita character

3D MODEL

~9.000 tris

Retaining topology

Different meshes

Exaggerated pieces & Glove-shaped hands

Problems

01

TOPOLOGY

At the beginning, the inner thigh of Alita and her belly didn't have a nice topology for animating the mesh later on.

This part had to redone from scratch in order to ensure a good line flow to prevent skinning problems from arising in the animation phase.

$Mobirise$

RIGGING

IKs & Pole Vectors

Reverse Foot Rig (with foot roll)

Hand spaces

3D ANIMATION

I've done 5 animations for Alita: basic combo attack, prominence attack, dead, stun & dash. Some of these attacks have been thought / designed by David Valdivia and we took the manga as a base reference too.
I've also use retargeting in Maya to transfer some Alita animations from the first rig in the prototype and make some new ones like the kick attack from the combo in order to save time.

BASIC COMBO ATTACK

PROMINENCE ATTACK

DEAD

STUN

DASH

BASIC KICK (RETARGETING)

Scrapyard level props

This level was designed by Joan Valiente.

BUILDINGS

CITY PROPS

Taxi reference by Gadget-Bot Productions

GROUND AND DECALS

Sewer level props

I was in charge of the whole art of this level from start to finish. I also received help from David Lozano and David Valdivia was in charge of the illumination and the overall look and feel of the level.

This level was designed by Alfonso Sánchez & David Valdivia.

TERRAINS & BUILDINGS

WALKABLE AREA DISTINGUISHABLE FROM WALLS TO GUIDE THE PLAYER
LOW POLY FOR PERFORMANCE
SEWER AESTHETHIC AS A TRIBUTE TO THE MANGA

For the sewer level, I changed the pipeline and used Mudbox in order to paint the base color and a Photoshop pass for the black outline and other details.
I tried making high-res versions of the terrain to sculpt some cavities and irregularities in Mudbox for then bake the ambient occlusion maps but the shadows were merely noticeable so, in the end, I chose not to do it.

Low poly model in Maya

Texturing in Mudbox

Final result (with Photoshop pass)

UI

In this area I worked closely with Alfonso Sánchez-Cortés and Julià Mauri who were in charge of the UI from the design and programming side respectively.

The art style of the UI is minimalist for higher readability and has a sci-fi to feel to it to match the cyberpunk atmosphere of Alita's world.

SCREENS

HUD & WINDOWS

Based on the previous groundwork that Ricardo Gutiérrez laid down I redesigned the passive tree and the inventory so they matched the palette color of the UI and I made them more readable. It took me a few iterations in the passive tree to get it just right.

What I've learned

GIVING & RECEIVING FEEDBACK - I've learned the importance of feedback. As we were just 3 artists it was easy for us to give feedback to another member's work. I've received a lot of feedback and I've learned that it can be hard sometimes and you have to take it easy and embrace it as an essential part of your workflow.
COMMUNICATION SKILLS - being almost 20 people we've struggled a lot when it came to communicate things to one another. Throughout the project I've improved my communication skills when talking to others as well as when giving a presentation of my work.
DEPENDENCIES - dependencies with other team members within the scrum have been really difficult to manage so I've learned to plan my tasks based on the finishing dates of the tasks of other people.

THE DEFINITION OF DONE - something is not done until it's fully working in build. That's a sentence I will never forget. It sounds simple but it's something that we all struggled to understand. And that lead to a lot missed milestones because tasks were not really done.

Alita Unbreakable Warrior