Heroes, in April you designed and voted on a new costume set for Champions Online -- and we're proud to announce that it's coming out very soon!

Cryptic artist extraordinaire Meatiator is going to walk through how we chose the finalists from the contest, and show how the team designs a costume set, from concept art through rigging the costume pieces on the character model. Sit back, relax, and let Meatiator show you how we made the Holoforce Armor set!

-TrailTurtle

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Hello Champions!

I am/have been/will continue to be a character artist here on Champions Online: Free For All. I go by the name MEATIATOR! (My actual name is Charlie.)

Towards the beginning of May I was tasked with creating a costume set based on a winning concept done by one of YOU in the “Design a Costume” contest! We had so many awesome ideas and designs come in that it was rather difficult to pick our favorites. So difficult, in fact, that we bundled some of the submissions together so that that we’d get to include ideas from both of them if that ‘entry’ won. You guys voted and here are your winners:

 

This is the Holoforce Armor Costume Set submitted by eiledon…

 

…and this is Necratech009’s Psionic Dragon Armor Costume Set!

There were many great designs submitted to us here at Champs and I want to thank each of you for submitting your art. I know that can be pretty daunting (especially on the troll-ridden internets).

There are a few reasons why we chose the submissions that we did. It was very hard for us to pick our top five (ish). These are the reasons I personally used when picking my favorites (the whole team voted):

1.  The concept followed the contest guidelines (both visual and written descriptions)
2. The majority or entirety of the costume set is included in the submission
3. The pieces included in the submission work within existing Champions Online armor piece groups (chest piece, tights, belt, shoulder pads, etc.)
4. We saw something new in the design that hasn’t previously been available to players in a full set before (translucent armor, which has great potential for the future).

 

We decided to bundle eiledon and Necratech009’s designs together because they used the same central idea: holographic armor. The pieces don’t really merge together as one set though, so we are going to make them separately. The first costume set that will be released is the Holoforce Armor Set.  The Psionic Dragon Armor will be coming later this year.

Eiledon included a ton of parts in his concept, including several wing variants. We decided to include two of those in the Holoforce armor set (the fixed wings and the blade wings), and we’re going to borrow some of the other wing ideas for the Psionic Dragon Armor. The concept also included an awesome idea for a spider leg back piece with custom animations. Sadly that just wasn’t possible for us to do with this set.

 

Creating the Costume

A lot goes into each new armor set including: concepting, modelling, texturing and finally importing and applying a unique material in-engine to each and every piece of the new costume.

 

CONCEPTING

The first stage in the creation of any new costume set is the concept, which we use as a reference when we’re sculpting later on. The concepts are sometimes done by other artists, but in this case, I did it myself.

This part was quite a bit easier for me than it usually is, due to a great concept by Eiledon. With the amount of detail and very thorough design specs in the submission, though, there were things that needed to be tweaked in order for the armor to work within the world of Champions Online. Things like character model breakpoints had to be taken into account and some parts needed to be moved around to accommodate the large amount of customization available for each character. So… my job was to make the armor work within the game while also pleasing the original creator and all of you!

This is what I came up with:

Eiledon’s original submission included a lot of detail about the origins of this Holoforce Set (kudos for referencing the source material)! The U-FFB, or UNTIL Force Field Belt, is described in the UNTIL source book as a belt with a button that produces a hard-light armor over the wearer. The belt was created using recovered Gadroon and existing UNTIL technology. It’s made up of damage-resistant hard-light projections, but can also be used for stealth or spy missions, as it has the capability to emulate civilian clothing as well. The Holoforce set is the “next generation” of this: the U-HBAS (UNTIL Holoforce Battle Augmented Suit). I absolutely LOVE little details like these and let them determine my path while creating a costume part.  Looking at every piece, I tried to capture the feel of the original design as a whole while updating it to fit with current UNTIL aesthetics, in order to make it look and feel like this set is meant to belong in the Champions Online universe. In every aspect of the concepting phase I looked at the original player submission for motif and design inspiration.

Once I was done with the concept and the team had signed off on it, I moved on to the next stage…

 

SCULPTING/MODELLING

Each new costume set starts with the exact same base model.

All armor pieces are modelled and rigged in 3DS Max. If tights are called for in the costume set design I head over to Zbrush to sculpt them directly onto the base you see above.

Here is a basic progression of the sculpt I did for the Holoforce tights in the Holoforce Set. I start with necessary anatomical sculpting then layout the piping on the suit, and then finally work on the hexagonal patterns called for in the original concept submission.

Once the sculpting is done I begin work on the armor modelling back in 3DS Max. Each set is modelled in the same way- one piece at a time!

I start with a primitive shape like a box or a sphere (1) and add subdivisions in order to shape the piece the way it needs to be shaped (2, 3). If there is a symmetrical piece (such as the shoulder pad) it can be duplicated and then mirrored automatically to create the opposite piece. Working around the base character model, the armor set slowly starts to come together until it’s time to unwrap and paint the pieces! This is primarily done in 3D Coat… so let’s jump there!

 

UNWRAPPING AND PAINTING THE MASKS 

“Unwrapping” is the process in which you take a 3D object, cut it into pieces, and then flatten it in 2D space so that it can be painted in a digital painting program. Luckily we have kind of an all-in-one program called 3D Coat.

                 

Once in 3D Coat the model is cut along its polygonal lines, and seams are created to make what are called “shells” or “islands”. The shells are then relaxed to create a flat area in order to paint on. It’s actually very similar to skinning an animal and creating a rug, just in digital space. Once the unwrap is completed the model is painted. This is called a texture map. If there are multiple pieces to the model, I separate them in order to get into all the small areas.

Painting a piece for Champions is a bit different from the usual process of painting an asset for a game. Since the colors of every piece are completely customizable by you guys it’s more like painting the guidelines. Each piece can have up to 4 colors on it with a glow option on select colors. The painted colors (black, red, green, blue) are set up as individual channels that all the in-game colors correspond with.

After the mask is painted there are two more texture maps used to create the final material used in the game engine: a color or “diffuse” map (which is grayscale in this case so as not to change the colors chosen in game) and a normal map for sculpted details. Here’s the Holoforce tights chest section for example:

 

RIGGING

In order for the armor to move correctly in game it is first attached to the base character model in 3DS Max. This allows for each piece to not only move with the character model but to scale along with it so that the piece can be used with all the custom Champions you guys have made!

Once the pieces are all in-engine it’s just a matter of creating the materials for each piece and testing the rig for clipping issues and other random bugs that can occur.

FINALLY! We come to the end of the process and here is the result. Eiledon’s Holoforce Armor Costume Set!

Materials make a big difference in how the costume will look. This is the “Glass” material asked for in the submission. There are five more materials on available for this set: The usual leather/cloth/metal as well as Psi and Holo Hex.

The female set is pretty much identical in both process and look to the male set. Most of the time there is just some resizing and a little redesigning done to some of the armor pieces to match the female form instead of the male.

Again, thank you all very much for participating in this costume contest! This was too much fun to work on and I hope we get to do more contests like this one in the future. Eiledon’s Holoforce Armor costume set is on PTS now, and stay tuned for Necratech009’s Psionic Dragon Armor Costume Set coming later this year!

-Meatiator