For the last couple of weeks I've had my head down modelling and texturing our characters (playable and non-playable) for the game. Both Buck & Dirk were completed many moons ago which has left the final two (for now) playable characters, Gwadys & Ruby, and the level enemies.
The first real stage of development was the concept design. You can find a quick run through of Gwadys here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RTd8SsPeSdo
After that I draw out the character's reference drawings to aid the modelling process before placing them into Maya to start the modelling process. I've been using a box modelling pipeline rather than my normal Z-brush-Retopology pipeline because I feel I can get it closer to the original concept as well as keep the polycount down seeing as though the characters are seen from further away during gameplay.
After finishing with Gwadys' head and moving onto her body modelling I went through the UV process using unfold and layout within the Maya UV tools. I actually really enjoy this stage and its one aspect of the more recent Maya versions I think Autodesk have gotten absolutely correct. UV unwrapping used to take hours in the past. It now takes a fraction of the time, even with a more complex character model. Don't get me wrong it isn't perfect and it can throw you for a loop with some odd quirks but overall these are the best UV tools I have ever worked with. The next stage will be painting Gwadys within Substance Painter.
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