ANIM - 715 | harlanq1990

Prosess Paper

for Charactor Development

- the Load of Inferno

Part One: Introduction

The Load of Inferno, who comes from a under world, is a powerful leader of hundreds of creature. Going through countless wars, he lives for fighting, protecting the order of his world.

Age:

He has been living over 1000 years, but still looks like a 45 year old muscle man.

Inspiration:

a combination of Four famous creature- Cerberus (Three head dog); Centaur; Minotaur; Red Bull. He used to be a three head bull. the central head gets extre power, and evolves into a humanlike body.

Living place:

underworld, forrest of hell, red jungle.

Personality:

calm, decisive, brave, strong, ruthless.

Status:

the king of underworld. the head of bull warriors army.

Weapon:

sickle(connected with his arm cuff through iron chain that can be throw it out and back), javelin, shield.

Armor:

Shoulder armor - stone material, leather belt connected;

Arm armor - cuff, iron chain rounded, metalline bull mask;

Belt - a combination of stone, leather, metal;

Necklace of bull head - the same as body belt;

Back armor - metal net, bull head shape decoration;

Rope - connect the loop of shoulder armor with bull head's nose rings;

Iron chains added in several parts of armors.

Consept sketch: the original concept has a more bulllike head, and a extra harmer weapon. Then I drop these idea during sculpting process.

Material reference:

Stone

Rough metal

Shiny metal

Fabric

Bone

Fur

Leather

Skin (little fur, wax)

Eye

Shading list based on each object

1. Bullbody - skin (fur, wax)

2. Hornfoot - picture reference

3. Lefthead - fur

4. Righthead - fur

5. Stonebelt - leather

6. Upbody - skin (fabric, fur, wax)

7. Shoulderarmor - stone

8. Bullheadarmor - rough metal

9. Cuff - fabric

10. Hole - rough metal

11. Backarmorblack - rough metal

12. Centerbelt- leather

13. Beltgold - shiny metal

14. Bullbeltshine - shiny metal

15. Rope - fabric

16. Eyes - eye

17. Beltshinegold - shiny metal

18. Weaponarrow - shiny metal

19. Beard - fur

20. Backarmor - rough metal

21. Weaponbone - bone

22. Bullbeltleather - leather

23. Weaponmetalmid - rough metal

24. Weaponhead - shiny metal

25. Weaponpurple - rough metal

26. Iron Chain - rough metal

27. Backchain - shiny metal

Rendering style:

realistic

Technical challenge:

1. Fur. I will try nHair in Maya to creat realistic fur effect.

2. Displacement map used and render time. All single object has displacement map, and the basic poly count is up to 1 millions, which is a big problem for render time.

Part Two: Shading and Texture

The steps:

1. Analysis/reference choose;

2. UV layout;

3. Create details with normal and displacement map;

4. Create skin shading;

5. Create skin texture;

6. Eyeball modeling, shading and texturing;

7. Camera set and rendering;

8. After Effect compositing.

1.Analysis/reference:

Based on realistic skin painting, I create the shading and texture of my creature as a half human, half animal surface. I take image reference from the character in Warcraft, and the famous Asian myth character - the Monkey King.

Simillar to a monkey, his body skin can be seperater into two major pieces: the front body is smooth, shiny, brighter, less and short fur; on the contrary, the back is rough, dark, brown, more and long fur.

2.UV layout:

I use both UV layout and Maya to create and organize UV maps for both upbody and bull head.

3. Create details with normal and displacement map

Import obj files into Zbrush 4R7 to sculpt details.

Here are the brushs and Alpha I used:

Brushs

Alpha

After sculpture is done, create both normal and displacement map, and export as a 8192X8192 tiff image.

White shader

Grid texture

With Normal and Dis maps on

4. Create skin shader

To create realistic human skin, I use mental ray miss_fast_skin_maya shader for my skin. I adjust Diffuse/ Epidermal/ Subdermal/ Back Scatter/ Specularity one by one, then composite them one upon one gradually to get my basic shader right.

Back Scatter

Subdermal Scatter

Epidermal Scatter

Diffuse

Specularity (I use weight maps to control specular in different area, I will explain them later)

Composite all different layers

4. Create skin texture

Using both Zbrush polypaint, Mari and Photoshop to paint different texture maps. Works with alphas that I used to sculpt the model.

Diffuse color

More brown tone color.

Epicdermal scatter color

Based on diffuse color map, desaturate it a little bit. Adjust the color levers and contrast in Photoshop. Also, I blur some detail like veins, wrinkle on face.

Subdermal scatter color

Multiply red or blue tone upon diffuse color map, adjust the opacity. Then add little detail on face with alpha brush.

Cavity map

Generate it from Zbrush, then put in on Secondary specular weight to narrow down sharper specular, better control it with different weight.

Specular map

I overlay desaturated diffuse color map with cavity map to get this. Then put it on overall weight. As you can see, the body back area and the horn have less value compare with the front.

The result

6. Eyeball modeling, shading and texturing

Model and sculpt detail of eyeball in Zbrush, then

export the maps.

Edit subdermal color map in Mari.

Add more veins with different color tone.

Displacement / Normal map.

Model the outside layer of eyeball, give it a Blinn shader with 1 transparency.

The result

7. Different Camera set render

8. Video

Part Two: Shading and Texture

Part Three: Armor and Fur

In this part, I started from creating the armor of bullhead, and then the rest of all armors, weapon, shield and decoration. At last, the most important thing - fur.

Armor - The build up of belt

Stone

Blinn shader

Leather

Blinn shader

Copper

Mia_material

Chain

Blinn shader

Armor - The build up of shield

Stone

Blinn shader

Metal

Mia_metallic_paint

Metal

Mia_material

Leather

Blinn

Armor - The build up of Weapon

Bone&Leather

Mia_fast_skin_shader&Blinn

Metal

Mia_material

Metal

Mia_Metallic_paint

Armor - The build up of BackArmor

Metal

Mia_Metallic_paint

Metal

Blinn

Metal

Blinn

Metal

Blinn

Maya Fur

It is my first time using Maya fur system. I need to creat 4 different fur for my character- upbody, bullhead, bullbody and beard.

Different fur has different lenth, color, clumping. I need to paint several maps using fur paint tools.

Upbody fur

I started from generating basic fur, adjusting some attribute like lenth, inclination, roll, polar, base width, tip width. It is not necessary to be exactly correct cause I will paint every attribute with fur paint tool later. Just get a first quick result.

When first editting, I worked in a low density like 50000 for responsing quickly.

*Go to FurFeedbackShape node, increase both U and V samples for more controlable fur amount.

Color correct the Upbody color map to generate base color and tip color map for fur.

More red tone for the base; and brighter and desaturated for tip.

Paint fur.

Start from direction to get basic fur direction due to anatomy and gravity.

It depends if the symmetry turn on or off.

Sometimes I need to export value map, and import it into Photoshop changing value. It help me get accurate result. For example, Baldness value map. It is hard to get right in details for that. In Photoshop, layover the map with color map of unbody, compare with it. Then I know where I need to make it bald or not.