Shin Megami Tensei V (Nintendo Switch) is the latest in the "Shin Megami Tensei" series, which boasts strong popularity among game fans. Released last November, this time we focus in particular on the creation of the characters. From the main character to the demons, we will show you the making of the characters that Atlus is so particular about.

This article is a partial re-edited version of the article in CGWORLD Issue 283 (March 2022). [Original web source]

3D expression that is typical of "Megaten" pushed through with UE4

Shin Megami Tensei V, the latest version of the popular RPG series that has been supported by many fans since the release of the first "Shin Megami Tensei" in 1992, was released last November, UE4 was adopted as the development environment for this title for Nintendo Switch. The goal in creating the characters for this title was to recreate the original character illustrations in 3DCG while maintaining the dark atmosphere typical of the "Shin Megami Tensei" series. By adding the physical-based rendered expressions of 3DCG to the illustration-like expressions, we sought to create expressions appropriate for a game played on the current generation of game consoles. I think UE4 is the best game engine for this kind of expression," said Takumi Yoshihara, lead modeling designer.

The characters were modeled mainly with Maya and ZBrush, and textures were created using Substance 3D Painter and Photoshop. Once the development environment was ready, the look-development process proceeded with a policy of pushing the range of expression on UE4 in order to reproduce the atmosphere of the original illustrations as game characters. In the original illustrations, the designers gave us detailed instructions on materials and details, but if we overdid it, it would become too realistic and not faithful to the original illustrations, so we decided on the look while moderately removing detail information to avoid information overload. Designer Miyuki Hariya successfully combined UE4's PBR and illustrative expressions to create a look that is different from that of typical 3DCG game characters. In this issue, we will introduce the detailed making of this work.

<1> Characters Faithfully Sculpted From the Original Illustrations

The modeling and look-dev process started with the mission of faithfully reproducing the original illustrations on UE4. After completing the models and textures, we poured our heart and soul into the look-dev process by bringing them into UE4.

Character models that pursue the reproduction of the original illustrations

Models and textures adjusted for optimal visibility in UE4

Models and textures for "Aogami." Character models are basically created in Maya or ZBrush, and their outlines and silhouettes are fine-tuned to look optimal in UE4. It is said that about 2 to 3 months are spent on the production of each character model.

<2> Shaders and Textures That Bring Characters to Life

Changes in the look due to angles and motion are the fate of 3D games. Nevertheless, in this work, repeated adjustments were made to maintain the look of the original illustrations, creating a unique "Megaten" look.

Baking shades into the albedo with a shader

Simply assigning PBR shaders to a character with a look similar to the original illustration would result in a doll-like look. As a workaround, shaders are burned into the albedo in advance. The shader uses the Fresnel information obtained from the inner product of the pixel's normal and the camera's vector as a mask to add shading and rim light.

Normal line adjustment to improve the eyes

Angel rings drawn with shaders

The character models in this work have very impressive highlights in the head hair, the so-called angel ring. The hair is not rendered using a dedicated texture, but is drawn with a shader using the normals of the hair mesh. The jagged and uneven angel rings are also not textured, but stripes are generated from the UV information of the mesh. Taking the processing load into consideration, these effects are expressed by shaders as much as possible.

Closed eyelid shading is avoided with textures.

The character's shader is designed to bake shading against albedo. This is very effective for shading on the body and other parts of the body, but it also causes shading to appear in areas where we do not want the shading to appear, for example, when eyelids are closed. Therefore, a mask texture is applied to pinpoint such areas.

Hair strands are normals and corrected

Especially for characters with voluminous hairstyles, it was difficult to express their hair bundles. Simply creating and applying a normal map resulted in a tentacle-like shape. Therefore, instead of using vertex normals in the normal map as in the past, we decided to create spherical normal information in the shader and blend it to express the hair tufts. The hair strands were also blended with a tiling texture of the hair strand pattern to increase the amount of information.

"Kawaii Physics" plugin for natural hair movement

As for the voluminous hair, if it is simply moved using physics simulation, the hair tends to get out of control. Therefore, the pseudo-physical hone shaking plug-in "Kawaii Physics" (github.com/pafuhana1213/), which can be used in UE4 and was developed by Kazuya Okada, a domestic developer, was used to create the hair. This allows the user to add intentional forces based on realistic physics laws, such as applying a diagonal pulling force when moving at a high speed, to freely produce hair movement.

<3> Varied and Unique Demons You Will Want to Be Friends With

Demons, sometimes enemies and sometimes allies, are an important element of this series. We went through a process of trial and error and adjustment to find the optimum solution for each demon's unique form and look.

Demon production flow

The production flow for demon characters is basically the same as for the humanoid characters introduced on the previous pages. However, since demons have many unique and irregular elements, from shape to texture, we spent a lot of time on trial and error to find the optimal shape.

LOD is prepared in one step

High polygon character data is about 40,000 vertices, but partial LOD is also prepared and used.

Expression using demon-specific materials

Due to the wide variety of demons, many materials were prepared specifically for each demon. Shaders are used to represent these materials, and the modelers themselves create these individual shaders with the goal of directly reflecting their ideas upon the characters.

Diving movement is represented by shaders

Mermaid uses a special effect. When she appears on the surface of the water, she sits on a rock, but when she moves, the rock disappears and she dives and swims, displaying a shadow like a fish.

Variety of deaths staged

Eight variations exist for each character's death during battle. A single general-purpose effect is provided, and material functions have been incorporated to allow variations to be set by adjusting the position and color of the beginning of the disappearance.

Expressing attack evasion by Demons

When a demon character suddenly evades an attack, a distinctive effect is displayed.

TEXT＿大河原浩一（ビットプランクス）

EDIT＿海老原朱里 / Akari Ebihara（CGWORLD）、山田桃子 / Momoko Yamada 

English language version edited and formatted by Ishaan Sahdev.