Welcome adventurers!  In this blog, we ask our Senior Character Artist, Jonathan Nascone, and our Senior VFX Artist, Michael Cavallaro, to let us peak behind the curtain and discover how the new lion art was created. 

Character Process – Jonathan Nascone

When creating the lion model for Neverwinter I wanted to capture a few unique features that would make it really stand out. It was important to make sure the lion felt grounded, and powerful, with strong musculature. I also wanted to achieve a flow and movement to the lion’s mane that would contrast well with the body.

To achieve the powerful body, I referenced lion anatomy and images online. Once I had a nice base sculpt down, the next challenge was finding a good balance of musculature and the overlaying skin and fur. 

By smoothing out some of the finer muscles, adding skin wrinkles and fur texture, I was able to strike a nice balance.

The next thing I wanted to achieve was a dynamic mane that moves and sways with the animations. To achieve this I ended up placing flat cards over the neck and head of the lion which served as a template. 

I then modeled the mane fur in sections over the template.

Once all the fur geo is layered and the template is removed, you end up with a nice volumetric mane.

A really nice thing about creating the card template is that the planes can serve as alpha cards that are baked down for the low poly version. Each of those cards is then skinned to bones which can animate creating the desired movement I set out to achieve.

Visual Effects Process – Michael Cavallaro

The effects for the lion presented a unique challenge for us. The design dictated that when the lion is out of combat it would have a glowing, golden aura around its body and when it entered combat the aura would manifest itself into physical armor.

We decided to tackle this problem by using messages attached to the animations that would play when in the different states. When entering its combat stance, a message would be sent to the effect itself that would manifest the armor and dissipate aura. When exiting combat, a new message creates effects that made the armor dissipate and the aura reappear.

For the aura effect, I wanted the lion to feel like it had pixie dust all over its body along with ethereal “plasma-like” glow emanating from its mane. To keep the armor feeling like it was made up of the aura, I decided to give it a golden glow with the same pixie dust sparkling all over it. When it appears and disappears, I used a smoky texture to control the visibility of the armor so it looks like it is being formed from the same “plasma-like” aura.

To make the lion feel rooted in the world I have pixie dust particles and glowing light rays left behind as it moves around.

All of this work culminates into a fierce, majestic lion that you can now obtain in Neverwinter as a mount or companion!  We hope you enjoyed this peak into a small part of our art development process, and we’ll see you in Neverwinter!

Jonathan Nascone

Senior Character Artist

&

Michael Cavallaro

Senior VFX Artist

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