Henning Kaiju - Intro , File Structure, Asset Assessment

Intro

I spend a large amount of time lurking online, watching amazing art get created by equally amazing artists. Every once and while a particular design, style or character will really peak my interest and I’ll reach out to those artists to see if I could contribute to their project. 

The most recent example of this was Henning Sanden’s Kaiju project, https://x.com/henningsanden , that I saw over on Twitter. Aside from being a really fun design and having a personal soft spot for kaiju, what caught my attention was his regular posts on his progress and dive into creating a game asset. It reminded me of the old CGTalk forum days where threads and forums allowed more long forum showcases and feedback, let alone history that seems lacking in today’s current social media.

So I reached out to Henning and offered to rig and animate the character, and as such, it gives me a great opportunity to continue his approach of showing updates beyond just showcasing final work. So with that in mind, let’s take this from the very start of a project! 

First off, File structure and Asset Assessment! 

File Structure

Nowhere near as sexy of a topic as what will come after this but vital. I’ve been doing personal projects and commercial work for over two decades, so I have my own file structure and templates that have served well over those times. A few key points regardless of your project: 

1. Actually make a project from the start and try to keep things tidy, it’ll help as the project grows or if you come back after a while 
2. Create a ‘AssetFromThem’ folder and inside create folders named the date you received something, ie 20250524. Create a new dated folder every time you receive an asset from the client. You’ll not only have a history of what you received, but the raw version of any content to refer back to. This is also good if you receive updates to existing assets to prevent overriding older versions

Asset Assessment 

Before starting anything, make sure you have what you’re expecting to receive. The model, textures, reference, movies, etc. After unzipping the delivery and opening the provided Maya file, I got this result

So far, so good. Model’s there and some textures where in the associated directory

Multiple Textures using UDIM

Since this model is setup using UDIM's (A type of tiling UV set), you can set up a similar version inside Maya

1. Select the body mesh
2. Open the body material assigned to the mesh
3. Map a 'File' texture to the diffuse
4. In the Texture settings, select 'body_BaseColor.1001.png'
5. Change the UV Tiling Mode to UDIM (Mari)
6. Then click 'Generate Preview'

And we're good to go!  Special thanks to Josh Thornhill ( https://x.com/Halo_VFX ) for the process.  

If however, you're working with a mesh that's not setup properly, or in a different format but still need to assign multiple shaders to a single mesh, you can use the following approach.

Multiple Shaders on a Single Mesh (Manual)

So let’s try to remap what’s possible. Using Maya’s remapper, Maya > Windows > General Editor > File Path Editor. Seems I’ve already remapped what’s possible, but the other textures are missing or not hooked up. Since the texture files aren’t named, it’ll take some trial and error. I know the model is still in progress and I'll likely redo this anyways, so I’m not too concerned. Typically at this stage, I’ll create a new shader and map it to the entire mesh and see the results

Ahh, that makes sense. Since the mesh has multiple textures applied to it, the shader assignment will be a bit more involved. I swap out the texture file for the next one and note what looks correct, 1001 seems to be the head and next, 1002 seems to be the jaw and so on. Once I figure it out, I create five new shaders, based off those names. Then I select a face on the mesh > ctrl + right click > To UV shell. Yep, the model is broken up in such a way. So instead of trying to find all the UV shells. I open the UV editor and select all the shells there, which then select the corresponding faces.

Then I can apply my newly created shaders directly to those faces for each bit.

Repeat this per section and we’re good to go!

The last step I want to cover in this section is verifying the mesh construction and scale to prep for rigging. For scale, Henning and I already discussed that it would be about 15 feet tall and since it’s a game asset, we’ll use the UE5 man as a base

Next for rigging, the main points I look for are:

1. The mesh is facing forward Z 
2. Standing on the Grid 
3. The centerline is at 0 on the X axis (front view) 
4. The model is symmetrical (not posed or oddly rotated from say a model turn table) 

There’s a lot more you can read on prepping a model for rigging from a previous Write Up I did here if you're interested, https://www.3dfiggins.com/writeups/meshPrep/

And that looks like a good place to end for this part. Up next, adding a base rig… stay tuned!