Master Koi - real time

Master Koi is an elder samurai living in the Edo Period in feudal Japan. He runs an elite sword fighting school just east of Mount Tsukuba in the Yatabe domain.

For a full breakdown of this project, check out a blog post I wrote here: https://www.artstation.com/blogs/colinnitta/EnyA/the-making-of-master-koi-part-1

I was inspired by the excellent concept art by Silviu Sadoschi, https://www.artstation.com/artwork/Ln9KA , as well as a wonderful sculpt by Maria Panfilova https://www.artstation.com/artwork/d838yw

I really enjoyed the process in creating this character and imagining the long, hard life he's led. I decided to name him Master Koi because his beard reminded me of the whiskers of a koi fish and the work grew from there :)

Polycount

108,819 tris total

Breakdown

Head: 4,876 tris
Hair: 27,648 tris
Hands: 5,816 tris
Feet, sandals: 13,006 tris
Coat, shirt: 12,421 tris
Pants, belt: 6,355 tris
Swords: 38,697 tris

Rendered in Unreal Engine 5, post processing in Premiere and Photoshop. Skin textures from Texturing XYZ. Hair textures created with Maya's XGen, hair cards created with the Hair Tool plugin for Blender. Environment composed with trees, grasses, rocks and stairs from Quixel Megascans. The gateways and lanterns are my own. Eyes are from the UE4 Content Example pack.

Modeled in ZBrush and Marvelous Designer, retopology and UV's in Blender, bake and textures in Substance Painter, rigged in Maya. Four 4k texture sets plus hair. Video background music by Almusic34. Many thanks to my fellow artists that offered guidance and support!