Niki’s portfolio Excerpt
The Duchess
This is the Duchess for an unannounced project for Streamline Games.
This was our bid to make the most realistic and believable character that we could make for AAA Video games.
This was running in realtime in Unreal Engine 4.
Highpoly, Lowpoly and lighting are by Korosh Ghanbarzadeh,
Textures are by Mohamad Rezazadeh
I was responsible for Shaders & Materials on the entire, model notable are:
- Realistic skin shading, with accurate dual lobed specular and automatic screen spaced curvature shading
- Spline based hair rendering. with accurate reflections.
- Parallax Occlusion Shader with anisotropy for the Hat.
- Anisotripic velvet and satin shaders for the clothing.
- Vellus Hairs.
Cini
This is The Void Elf named Cini.
The music is a snippet from the track Telogrus Rift of the Battle for Azeroth OST.
She’s rendered in Unreal Engine 4, with Nvidia RTX for Reflections, Shadows, Global Illumination and Ambient Occlusion. this particular video was not rendered in 4k realtime as not even a screaming 2080ti can currently render all of these features at once, However it does run at about 30 fps with all of those bells and whistles turned on at 1080p.
She also has a full facial expression system that allow for detailed wrinkles and blends and uses the advanced material layer workflow for her garb.
Lastly, but certainly not insignificantly she has a full transformation sequence where the void courses through her. and uses UE’s Layer system to give much more detail.
WIP:
Jakra
Another D&D character, this one a lot more modern. On this project I will be making a concentrated effort to have the shoulderblades move realistically while muscles flex and move. Also remaining fairly stylized to keep the texture resolution required for this to look visually appealing less obscene.
Maybe i’l make more in this series.
Jessamin Krothnal:
Another D&D project, this is far shorter, this character is played by one of my own players.
This character was going to follow the Paragon Art-pipeline in UE4, and I consider this my own test wether or not I can work on the level, refining my anatomy skills and realistic rendering exponentially since the Crusher Project. this was discontinued as I had a lot to learn.
Except:
Crusher:
Using the Layered Material workflow first presented in the Infiltrator demo, Crusher is a Troll from the Shadowrun Universe, with an intelligence no higher than a smart dog’s, to such a degree he is incapable of speaking.
He compensates for his lacking intelligence in brute force, using his brutal mechanical arms to crush and/or dismember any who stand in his way. He is allergic to Iron and weak to magic. but his trollish hide gives him extraordinary resilience. The Character is originally from a twitch streamer named itmeJP, who plays D&D live in a podcast format, including shadowrun as an offshoot from this. One of my favorite passtimes.
the Target of this character is as fully integrated mod in UT, and thusly, I’ve gone through every stage and done everything in my power so far to get him there, currently slogged down due to lack of programming knowledge.
Shown here, but not in the final product: nvidia Hairworks.
Aiko:
In the grim dystopian future of 2054, Megacorporations have taken over the world and Cybernetics are not only common, but almost required. Corporations like Militech (Cyberpunk 2020), Ares Macrotechnology (Shadowrun), Sarif Industries (Deus Ex) and of course Tyrell Corporation (Blade Runner) rule Cyberpunk universes with their own private armies, security and sometimes even their own arcologies and countries.
Cyberpunk is a genre I very much love. It’s probably my favorite to read, play or watch and thusly this was a perfect fit for me to make.
My goals for this character were very clear from the start, and thusly it went quite expediently.
- Learn to Layer materials fully and completely within Quixel
- Figure out how materials work in Marmoset Toolbag 2
- Make (somewhat) realistic character including realistic skin and metals.
- Practice anatomy as hard as I can
Realtime Preview (on Chrome, Mozilla or Safari)
Tech Specs
Textures:
Body & Head: 4k, Specular Workflow
Hair: 1k, Anisotropic Specular (strips)
Eye: 512px, Dual layered eyes
Magnum: 2k, Metalness Workflow
Mini Diorama: 2k, Adv Metalness workflow (UE4)
Polycounts
Aiko: 53,858
Magnum: 8,848
Hunter:
In the far future of the dark appocalypse this bounty hunter tracks his prey. Using stealth and guile he traverses worlds with horrors unspoken.
The Hunter was created with a few goals in mind, of course.
- Learning how to handpaint textures while retaining some Material Definition
- Investigate how to create PBR materials
- Teach myself to use the Unreal 4 Engine and it’s Material Editor properly, with layered, customizable materials among which, Skin, hair and cloth shading.
- Focussing on Design, take a particular style and apply it to everything. I’ve been told by my friends that the character is Overdesigned, To which I say hurray.
The inspiration for the character was derived mainly from Darksiders with it’s particular style. It started off as “Strife” from Joe Mad’s art, but I quickly realized I didn’t wanna do exactly that at the time. (Though I might in the future because he’s so damn cool)
TechSpecs
- 60k Poly including weapons and accesories
- 2k (body) / 2k (weapons) / 512 (arm) /128 (Bullets) Textures
- Sculpt with handpainted Textures
3D Print Bust
A gift for my sister for her Wedding day, it it was an experiment to make a more expressionate character that fits with a 3D print. something completely and totally different, from what I usually do, but it shows what I can do in a day of sculpting.
The model was created in Zbrush in about 2 days, then printed by shapeways at a size of 14cm tall, before beeing recast in cold-casted iron to make the iron model you see below.
The Dream
So you’ve made it to the bottom of the page. Hopefully with watching all that’s above, you’ve been convinced to give me a shot. Or at least an art test. If not, well, i’l have to get better.
If you think the art test will be too difficult, or too high level for what I can seemingly do, send it over anyway. I might, Will surprise you.
There are more pieces of art around on the website, or on my trimmed down artstation.
High regards,
Niki de Bakker
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