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Creating Realistic Fabric & Clothing for Games

Marvelous Designer & ZBrush Workflow with Erika Lochs

Description

Clothing and how cloth materials are made are an unsung part of character art, though they are just as important as studying human anatomy. Erika Lochs is a principal character artist who uses her real-world experience making clothes, and her love of historical clothing, to enhance the quality of her game characters’ attire. In this 3-hour workshop, she shares her complete workflow for creating a realistic Viking tunic with a hood, going in-depth into the theory of cloth, fibers, how they are made and interact, and how they can be damaged.


You’ll learn the importance of having good references and see how good detail and storytelling will help you achieve the best results — without overcrowding your assets with alphas. Using professional techniques, Erika puts the theory into practice in Marvelous Designer, a software that, in her experience, gives the best results that are ready to take into ZBrush. From there, Erika demonstrates her ZBrush workflow for making adjustments to the assets and adding fine details, such as asymmetry, folds, and damage.


As a bonus, Erika shows her texturing and rendering workflow using Substance Painter and Marmoset 4 to complete this comprehensive workshop.


Project files provided with this workshop include Erika’s fabric samples, Marvelous Designer presets, gathered references, her Marvelous Designer file, and her ZBrush file and render setup details.


Duration: 2h 52m

Format: HD 1920x1080

Erika Lochs

Principal Character Artist at Electric Square

Erika Lochs is a Principle Character Artist at Electric Square. She specializes in making clothes for characters in games. She has worked on titles such as Diablo 4, Far Cry 6, Riders Republic, and many more. She likes to sew her own clothes, which she believes is a very good skill to have when you design and create 3D clothes, particularly as it helps you to understand how things are constructed and how different fabrics are meant to look.


Learn more and follow Erika’s career on LinkedIn


  • Working alongside Erika is a pleasure both artistically and personally. She is a great team player, helping people to elevate their work and make them grow into better artists. Saying that Erika is amazing at making clothing is an understatement since she creates costumes that come with their own personality supporting that of the character wearing it.

    - Calvin Verhoolen
    Principal Character Artist at Ubisoft Berlin

  • Erika is a highly skilled Character Artist with many years of industry experience. She has a thorough knowledge of the character art creation pipeline, complemented by a phenomenal understanding of Marvelous Designer, real-world fabrics, and garment creation. Her friendly character and outstanding communication skills make her a great teacher and a pleasure to work with.

    - Eva Camba Perez
    Lead Character Artist at Electric Square

  • Erika is and has always been a tremendously talented character artist, with a keen eye for visual composition and deep understanding of how cloth design works and real-life experience with it that gives her a unique and deep understanding on how to apply it into the digital realm. I can't recommend her lessons hard enough to anyone who wants to learn and improve their digital clothing skills.

    - Pablo Poliakov
    Lead Character Artist at Bloober Team

  • If you're lucky enough to catch Erika outside of work, you will most likely find her sewing, knitting, designing, or altering her own clothes. Combined with years of experience as a character artist with some of the leading studios and talent in the industry, she has an extensive understanding of how fabric should look, feel, and behave. Students can expect to gain a deeper understanding of how cloth works and how to approach translating these in-game characters.

    - Hrafnhildur Anna Björnsdóttir
    Lead Technical Artist at CCP Games