Underworld Ascendant - The Evolution of Lizard Men

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Underworld Ascendant's latest update focuses on the evolution of lizard men from look to sound with interviews from the people responsible for both.

The Evolution of the Lizard Men - Part 1: The Look

We recently spoke with character artist Jed (BioShock, Rock Band) Wahl about his current modeling work on Underworld Ascendant's Lizard Men, his early efforts on the BioShock series, and how he got his start.

What originally got you into modeling for games?

I started making digital models at the MIT Media Lab, creating characters for interactive installations designed by graduate students. I got interested in pursuing 3d modeling professionally after participating in some contests held by the late, great Paul Steed at the website Polycount. Paul gave me a lot of encouragement and his book on using 3d Studio Max was a real godsend for me. I really owe that guy a lot.

What was your first game?

My first shipped game was Irrational's Swat 4, working as an environmental modeler. My favorite part about that project was coming up with the theme and decor of the serial killer's lair.

Did we hear correctly that you did all the character models for BioShock? Which was your favorite to work on?

I sculpted the high and lowpoly models for most of the characters, including the Splicers, the Bouncer, Little Sister, Andrew Ryan, Atlas, and the player hands.

My fav is definitely the Bouncer, designed by our own art director Nate Wells. As soon as we saw his ortho design, we felt it could become an iconic character.

My first pro character model ever was an early Splicer concept, also by Nate. This was before programs like Zbrush, so he was done using old-school box modeling methods in 3ds Max.

Something I wish we'd had time to put into the game involved rare Little Sisters dressed in outfits raided from an abandoned costume shop. Their expressions would be modded to suit their pretend identity; a cowgirl Sister could have referred to her Big Daddy as "Sheriff," while a space cadet could call him "Commander," for example. It would have been a fun way to add variety to the Sisters, but there was simply no time in the schedule to make them.

Can you walk us through the process of modeling the Lizard Man for Underworld Ascendant?

Since this was the first sentient character we've designed for the game, there was a lot of iteration and experimentation involved. We also wanted to find a good middle ground between the two major concepts that we'd shown in the backer poll some time ago: a design that was overtly lizard-like while also having the potential to appear intelligent and civilized.

Nate explored concepts via clay and I made a series of quick rough models in Zbrush that explored different proportions and features. A great tool during this process was Adobe's auto rigging tool Mixamo, which it allowed me to take these simple models and quickly get them moving so I could evaluate how their silhouettes looked in a variety of actions. I've included a small sampling of these experiments here, starting with a version inspired by our Blue Lizardman from the poll. From there we explored making him less chameleon and more iguana based, and you can see how he evolves from a more whimsical race to one with a build that can demonstrate equal amounts of strength, agility, and nobility.

Early modeling explorations by Jed

Once Nate was happy with the overall forms of the lizardman, he did a drawover of the model's face to define the kind of scale treatment he was looking for.

From there I refined the hipoly model in Zbrush. This is also one of our first characters done in the "authored style," so there's a lot of experimentation involved at this stage as well.

I generally approach it stylistically as though I'm making a fantasy miniature (which I've sculpted about two hundred of while working for the board game company Greenbrier Games), but still allowing for more detail that I know would end up being lost on a 28mm scale figure.

Low poly renders of the Lizard Man

I created a low poly model from that using the Freeform tool in 3dsMax. His polycount is about 18k, a far cry from the 4-6 thousand used in Bioshock. He was UV mapped in 3dsMax and his normal maps were projected in Knald. From there, I began texturing in Substance Painter.

Next time, we'll show the final pass at the Lizard Man, plus give a new peek at the Mind Crippler. Anything you want to tell fans about it?

The Mind Crippler has been great fun. It's much more bizarre and otherworldly than what I usually get to make. I've always loved/been repulsed by brain-themed creatures... One of my favorite toys as a kid was a cheap PVC figure of a Grell from Dungeons & Dragons. Working on this feels like a fun homage to that thing.
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