Unreal Engine Batman Arkham #24: Burton Updates, Faces Galore and Owlman

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Hi folks,

I’ve got quite a lot of new stuff to showcase this time, although I did try to keep the video below 20 minutes this time since I feel like it’d really be getting a bit too long otherwise. Nevertheless I can give you more detailed insights and breakdowns in this blogpost as always, and there really are quite a lot of things I’d like to showcase, so let’s get right into it. Also a small change with this post, I’ve setup a simple turnaround scene for my models recently, so I’ll just use that when showcasing new or updated models from now on, since you can see all the details and shapes much better there.

Updated 1989 and 1992 Burton Skins

Being the insatiable perfectionist that I am, I have given my 1989 and 1992 Skins from the Burton movies a generous overhaul. My focus was on the body and the accessories such as belt, gloves and boots this time, given that I had already made pretty good cowl and cape models, although despite that I also gave the 1989 cowl a minor touch-up with some additional details.

One of my main motivations was to give the suits the more layered and practical look of the movie suits, which means that the bodysuits are now separated into the original layers of sculpted rubber/armour elements on top of a fabric undersuit. As you can see by the results this gives the suits a very grounded and practical feel, which is pretty much exactly what I usually go for in terms of art style these days.

In addition to that I am also especially proud on how the belt turned out, since I was experimenting with a weathering effect I recently came up with for the belts on my (Proto-)Asylum and City suits. Its look might not be all that accurate to the original belt material of the movie prop, but I feel like my version of it fits just as well, and is of course a lot better than the reused belt model from the Arkham Knight DLC suit that I’ve been using before.

Last but not least, the boots might not be accurate to the Nike’s used on the movie props but I feel like the ones I came up with at least share some aspects and style with them, given that I’ve tried to make them a bit of a blend between a proper combat-stomper as I’d call them and some slightly more sporty look through the materials used. I also just didn’t feel like making super complex boots in terms of elements for this, since that’d mean a lot of extra work when mixed with the quality expectations I have of myself, and I already have an abundance of that lol.

Naturally I’ve also replaced the boots and gloves on the classic burton suit as well, but since it’s not that significant of a difference in terms of looks I didn’t feel like it’s worth showcasing in the video, although the updates Batman ’89 comic suit definitely is. Since the latter is a mix of elements from both the 1989 and 1992 suits I’ve decided to put together a new version based on the reworked versions of those suits and it’s definitely a significant upgrade over the previous version.

Faces Galore

I’ve spent some more time on improving most of my face models, or rather especially how they looked like in engine, which meant going down the rabbit hole of texture compression and mipmap generation, since both of these have turned out to become a bit of an issue when combined with the rather fine details in my face sculpts. Especially mipmap generation likes to drown out any of those details in the texture bakes from those sculpts, as well as the additional texturing details such as the stubble. One of the main solutions I found was to adjust the texture settings in Unreal to generate sharpened mipmaps (Sharpen5-6 is what I’d recommend for those of you who know what I’m talking about), alongside a small mipmap bias to keep the higher res textures in view for a bit longer.

The result of these shenanigans is that small-scale details on the faces survives through anti-aliasing and over slightly longer view distances now, and that naturally made me add even more detail to my face sculpts :p

Another thing that I was experimenting with were hair meshes, since I really felt like some better hair than the spaghetti-hair of Arkham Knight Bruce would elevate the face models I’ve made, and so I’ve started off with a version of the hair mesh used for Batman in the Suicide Squad game, as that seemed to be the perfect starting point. After some tweaks and some new textures I’ve made I finally got some good results as you can see, although the eyebrows tend to still be a bit of a work in progress as I am still figuring out the right type of textures for the hair cards on these.

These improvements all culminated in the second version of my face for my Burton skins, which now has a lot more similarity with some of Michael Keaton’s distinctive features.

I’ve also done some new face models with these improvements in mind, starting with one based on Val Kilmer for JoeMama’s Sonar suit, although the face turned out to be a bit more alike to a slightly older Kilmer than when he was doing Batman Forever, but in turn this seems to fit the bulky physique of the suit better.

Another somewhat unplanned addition was a face model for Pattinson’s Batman, which mostly just stemmed from me having some spare time and not feeling up to any bigger tasks (given that a face model tends to take me only a few days from start to finish) and Pattinson also turned out to be a nice challenge to improve my skills on, given that he has some fairly distinct visual qualities when looked at up-close. I think the face turned out fairly well in this case, although I’ll definitely have to come up with a more fitting hair mesh in the future, as the one I am using right now is definitely not quite up to what his hair tends to look like.

Owlman by JoeMama

Here we have another stunning addition made by JoeMama, this time his original Owlman Skin that he also released for Arkham Knight a while ago (a criminally underrated mod given its quality). Needless to say that it meshes quite well with the look of my project, especially when it comes to all of its shiny metallic parts. You can find this suit as a mod for Arkham Knight here: Link.

Given that he used a modified version of the Suicide Squad Bruce face model this was also a perfect opportunity for me to experiment with some new runtime animation retargeting setup, since the model has a different facial rig from the generic Arkham Knight Batman rig I use in my project otherwise.

Updated Capes on the Asylum and City Suits

This is a smaller addition I did recently, and one that was on my to-do list for quite some time since I overhauled these skins. It’s nice to finally have some capes that match the quality of the rest of the suits now, given that I’ve made the previous capes back when I wasn’t quite as skilled at 3D modelling and sculpting. I’ve also used this opportunity to come up with updated gliding states for these capes as well, so now they look even better than before.

Improved Textures on the Pattinson Suit by CaptainJack

Since the Pattinson suit stood out like a sore thumb in my project due to the painfully low quality of the original textures I’ve asked CaptainJack about being able to use his textures instead, since those are quite an improvement over the original ones as you can see. While I’m not a big fan of the suit design myself I still figured that it should at least look good when I already include it in my project, so there we go now. I’ve also experimented with the materials as well to go with the upgraded textures.

The Arctic World Level

This was a bit of a random thing I’ve made since I felt like adding some new levels as of late, so I kinda just winged it and grabbed whatever assets I needed from either Arkham Knight’s Burton racetrack DLC or from my own stash of assets. I’ve used the Arkham City Joker thugs as the enemies on this map, given that these seemed to be the ones that fit in the best in terms of style. I might still come up with the sort of “crazy circus” style of enemies that resided there in Batman Returns, but for now these enemies will have to do.

The Updated Intensive Treatment Challenge Map

This was yet another thing I decided to do on a whim one afternoon, since I felt like the intensive treatment environment could use a bit of a visual touch-up and so I went in and added a lot of random clutter and debris to the environment, adjusted its post processing and gave its lighting some gentle touch-ups and I’d say that these changes really brought its quality up by quite a bit. In addition to that I’ve also changed the enemy type on this map to use the “mental patient” as they’re called internally in Arkham Asylum, since it just fits better.

Miscellaneous Changes

There are also quite a lot of smaller changes I’ve done, such as the slightly updated combat impact VFX. I’ve tried to keep it subtle as I prefer in-game VFX that isn’t “in your face”, but I also wanted to give the combat impacts a bit more punch, and so I came up with an effect that consists of a dust cloud, some individual dust particles that are blasted into all directions and last but not least some refractive lines that “explode” away from the impact, although the latter are rather subtle depending on the environment but I think its nonetheless a great but minor addition.

Another small change is just minor post-processing changes across the board as I’ve improved some player camera related things, since I previously had it override some level-specific post processing parameters in favour of some in-game VFX such as for fear takedowns, but I’ve finally compartmentalised that in a way that no longer affects the post processing as configured for the environment.

Closing words

As you can see I’ve accumulated quite a lot of changes of all kinds of significance, hence why I really had to remind myself to finally make a video on them before it ends up being so much that the video would turn out to be far too long again lol. Nonetheless thank you for reading and/or watching and I hope you enjoyed this slightly more extensive update post :)

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