Knights in Tight Spaces

3D Modelling and Texturing

The key challenge for the 3D team was balancing Ground Shatter’s technical requirements with their distinctive sketchbook-inspired art style, while keeping meshes optimised for rigging and gameplay. Each character followed a standard pipeline of high-poly, low-poly, UVs, and texturing, with strict controls to reduce clipping and maintain visual clarity.

Geometry and clipping

Each character was built from two main meshes – one for the body and one for large cloth sections – which were then simulated in Unity. We avoided multiple overlapping layers of geometry to prevent clipping during animation, ensured meshes did not have unnecessary thickness (especially for armour pieces), and deleted non-visible faces to optimise performance. Spacing was carefully managed to guarantee strong deformation and avoid camera clipping.

Weapons

Weapons required a separate material and texture set, and were exported as standalone files with customised pivot points to ensure correct alignment and functionality in-game.

UV Shell Alignment

UV shells were aligned top-to-bottom to allow procedural materials during texturing. Most models remained symmetrical, with asymmetry introduced during texturing. This required unique, non-mirrored shells to preserve texel density and maximise resolution on 2K maps.

Character Poses

Characters were first sculpted in A-pose to streamline reviews and keep concept art alignment. Once approved, they were shifted into T-pose using mannequin rigs, with custom mannequins created for larger characters to maintain skeleton consistency.

Level of Detail (LOD) for Shadow Casting:

A final step introduced shadow-caster LOD meshes, created by decimating the original geometry in ZBrush and manually reducing certain areas. These meshes were skinned and tested to ensure strong deformation while optimising performance.

Rigging

The rigging phase required extensive R&D between Maya and Unity to ensure all characters could share a single skeleton despite varying body proportions. Documentation and support assets were created for the modelling team, reducing errors and making the workflow scalable across 40+ characters.

Height Adjustments

The team used Ground Shatter’s height charts to adjust proportions before rigging began, reducing downstream rework and ensuring accuracy.

Unity Implementation

Rigs were built for use with Unity’s Humanoid system. The standard rig provided by Ground Shatter was strictly followed, with naming conventions and hierarchies preserved to guarantee compatibility.

Twist Bones Challenge

Because Unity Humanoid does not support twist bones, smooth limb rotations were instead achieved through per-character skinning solutions.

Bone Display Layers

Display layers were applied to make skeleton parts easily identifiable during review and QA.

Skirts and Additional Bones

For skirted characters, a standardised bone structure was added on top of the main skeleton, preventing clipping while keeping bone counts low for performance.

Weapon Pivot Position

Pivot positions were checked and corrected before Unity export. Each prop was zeroed out and reset to world origin, with axes oriented consistently (Z+ along the shaft, Y+ across the primary blade edge).

Skeleton Repositioning

The skeleton was manually repositioned for each character, ensuring articulation points produced the best deformation for the given design and proportions.

Skinning Process

Skinning passed through three QA stages, including stress tests in Maya and Unity. These ensured zero clipping and deformation issues across both internal and in-game animations.

Final Integration and QA

After rigging, final passes were run to guarantee Unity-ready delivery. Shadow-caster LOD meshes were generated in ZBrush, transferred with skinning intact, and retested with animations.

Unity implementation was handled directly by the Rigging Lead, who finalised skeleton definitions in line with Ground Shatter’s documentation. Each of the 40+ characters was exported as a Unity package – fully configured, visually consistent, and ready to drop into production without risk.