skate. - Short Coily and 4C Hairstyles

On skate I was responsible for the look development and pipeline creation for all of the different hair types that you see inside of the game.

One of the biggest things I wanted to make sure we tackled on skate. was ensuring we provided proper, authentic representation to a variety of hair types in the game, especially as we explored and pursued a more stylized look. One of the earliest pieplines that I developed for the game was how to quickly capture dense, coily hair types in a satisfying but performant way.

In order to do this I created a series of tiling, sculpted curl patterns that we then transferred into a smart material that we could use inside of Substance Painter. To make sure we weren't just using the tiled texture, though, and in order to make sure each hairstyle felt unique, we would do a base "silhouette and form" sculpt that would help to influence the underlying form of the hair. Then, to make sure we were staying true to the porosity often seen in this hairtype, without utilizing many excess polys, I created an additional tiling shell layer to give that fly-away appearance on top of the base hair models.

This work then went on to be used as a stylistic reference for every coily/4C short hair you see in the game today, as well as a final in-game model.