BY:Olavo Oliveira
Other works by 3D generalist Olavo Oliveira
introduce
Taking inspiration from some 3D characters, 3D generalist Olavo Oliveira created a wizard apprentice using ZBrush, Maya, Arnold, Substance Painter and Photoshop.
As a 3D generalist with zero drawing skills, there are times when I want to create something entirely based on my imagination, but it’s hard to find proper references. So in this project, I will explain in detail how to turn ideas into 3D projects and use displacement mapping to tackle some of the most difficult problems in the ZBrush/Arnold workflow.
Collect ideas
First, I listed some requirements to shorten the production process:
1. I want to tell a story
2. There is no fixed position
3. I want to ignore the scene or background or skip this step as much as possible
4. Fly or move in a special vehicle
Finally, I decided to create a young student who was going to be late for school. After some thought, I chose two key words to create the atmosphere of the scene: “Hurry” and “careless”. When looking for reference materials, I looked for Harry Potter, The Lord of the Rings and some Disney cartoons, and combined them with modern styles. To show the element of lateness, I decided to have him ride a skateboard, a modern object related to his age, and he was late for school.
To prepare
Here, I spent two days of preparation, trying to hone some ideas and brainstorming in a more aggressive way, and keeping the model as few sides as possible and focusing on the main concept and styling. But with the exception of the human face, I added enough faces to keep the expression lively and atmosphere.
I spent two hours the first day thinking slowly and implementing the idea. The second day I spent all day trying to figure out the direction of the character.
Self-review and strategy
The first model I made before seemed to lack the sense of “hurry” and “carelessness”, looking for him to look relaxed and comfortable, and the scene felt static. After that, I had to start all over again, and he was holding on to the skates, holding his hat (I’d forgotten the wind would blow it away), trying to get faster and find the right direction. I changed the GPS concept for headphones. GPS makes it hard to understand visually, and headphones are instant visual code for music. In addition, cables can be an additional element to build shapes that point to our character’s face, adding more energy and compositional focus.
Witches and wizards often accompany animals, such as owls, frogs and cats. So I made a bird to help him.
3 d modeling
As a basic suggestion to simplify all my modeling phases and future processes, I will always use polygroups, such as nose, chin, ears, separated fingers, cape sleeves, and inner/outer cape.
Some of the decisions I made for this project:
1. I didn’t bother to use symmetric modeling for clothes and body parts. Because my entire scene is asymmetrical, sometimes modeling with forced symmetry is a good exercise. I almost always twist, squeeze and stretch to my liking. Then I got more vibrancy, better curves/shapes and more flavor of the scene.
2. The effect of wind on headphones, shoelaces, hair and clothing is important, not only to focus on what can be seen from the camera, but to focus on all elements of detail.
3. I would let his clothes float up, giving the impression of being blown backwards by the wind. An empty space was created between the cloak and backpack to enhance the recognisability of the silhouette.
Modify grouping, distortion, and asymmetry; Hats, hair, earphone cords, ties, shoelaces were bent by the wind; New silhouette.
Set scenes from ZBrush to Maya/Arnold
After I imported it into Maya, ADDITIONAL adjustments were required for better environment and lighting. Using the same camera frame and depth in ZBrush and Maya was the basis of the production.
1. To do this, I will carefully set up Maya’s camera and try to copy my main working view from ZBrush, then export it as an FBX file and import it into ZBrush, selecting “Import Camera Only”. My camera view can be accessed in ZBrush Draw>Channels.
2. Use Set Project in Maya to keep the Project’s directory (File>Project >Project Window). All files will be stored in the appropriate folders: Textures, renders, XGen files, etc.
3. For lighting, I only used two lights to check the model and used skyDomeLight “Overclouds” HDRI texture to set the current atmosphere.
ZBrush to Maya/Arnold Displacement main workflow
Then I went back to ZBrush and worked on the main parts. I copied the required model, accessed the low-polygon version using Zremesher, then generated a temporary UV map using the ZBrush plugin UV Master and split it, projecting the details of the previous mesh horizontally onto the split mesh and following the displacement map. I used a perfect tutorial to make this part. From now on, I’ll put all models (even rough ones) in a view with better lighting Settings and proper shadows.
Modify iteration
During this process, I tweaked and iterated back and forth between Modeling – texturing – coloring in ZBrush, Maya and Substance Painter for a while, but some principles remained:
1. Think big to small
2. Self-examination of the work
3. Think strategically and choose changes based on criteria
In order to avoid repeated meaningless changes, here are some tips I follow:
1. Prioritize important or larger models
2. In production, manually improve UV mapping in Maya if necessary
3. Temporarily avoid using brushes in Substance
I did a lot of render testing. It is important to keep rendering samples low/medium to avoid long wait times for rendering. Since we haven’t checked the other widgets yet, the resolution is at most 1K.
further
Now I can easily adjust a few small things, complete the UV split (bag, shoes and skates), and refine some textures by hand. In addition, some more specific steps have been taken:
1. I split the eye model and shader from an old project and used it on the owl.
2. The character’s hair is even more questionable than the hair of some cartoon characters. I decided to keep it because it looked good with the whip and would add some feel to the character. In addition, I made a small key chain that hangs in a bag to add contrast to the effect of the earphone cable.
Check small parts
Now we will drill down from the large/medium check to the small check. I increased the render sample and resolution to 2K to check the texture for the adjustments I wanted to test:
Reduce (depth and scale) fabric normal map
Improve dirt and add some to the silver band
Fix normal map
Adjust the wood grain ratio
The color at the crease is too dark
Post production: Hair and masks
When I do hair with a grid, I like to render a bald version first (just part of it, not the whole scene again) and a hair layer that allows me to make more hair adjustments in Photoshop. The bald version is on the bottom layer, with the normal hair layer on top. In the layer below, I used a soft brush to hide some of the hard shadows and then revealed some of the skin underneath. It’s such a detail, sometimes it’s hard to even see.
To create the perfect mask in the displacement workflow, I enabled the “Mask” option on all Arnold textures and set the opacity to 1 (Properties TAB, scroll down). Then specify the hair material as white and the other components as black. This approach can be used to control any aspect and any asset in Photoshop.
Post production: Final
I like to use Photoshop for lighting adjustments because it’s easier, faster, and I don’t overcharge my PC for light intensity/position. In addition, I can quickly block out unwanted parts, giving me more control. So, I copied the final render, tweaked the level/contrast/exposure slightly, and tweaked only a few areas to get the final result.
