Making Of 'Hoggle'

The following images illustrate the basic work flow I used to create the character Hoggle's head.

These are the programs that I used:
Modo
Silo
Lightwave
ZBrush
Maya
Photoshop

Why so many different programs? I look at programs as tools in a tool chest. Even when it comes to modelling, I'll work with the best, or my favorite, features of each.

Whenever you are recreating a character or person that has, or does exist in some form (even as a puppet), it's important to collect as much reference material and images as you can. While the Internet yielded some decent pictures of Hoggle, the best images came from viewing the "Labyrinth" DVD and taking screen captures. I tried to find good front and side views to use the orthogonal windows of the modelling program.

Below is a collage of reference images I used.





Instead of launching immediately into creating a full blown animation mesh, I like to create a digital maquette first. This allows me to work out all the details, proportions without worrying about topology, which would slow down the process. First, I made a low resolution mesh in Modo. I didn't even get into any specific precise details of the eyes and mouth since I didn't want to be influenced by the topology at this stage.

From here, the model is brought into ZBrush. This is where the digital maquette comes to life and most design issues are worked out. I could have kept adding detail, but this level was more than enough for this stage.



Now that I had worked out the look of the model, it was time to get technical. I went down a few levels of detail in ZBrush on the model (as you increase the polygon count in ZBrush, you can step up or down in those levels) I was going to work out the polygon layout for the animation version, and didn't need the extra detail. While still in ZBrush, I created a texture map for the model and drew out my poly layout with a paintbrush tool. This allowed me to work all that out beforehand with a simple brush, before attempting it with actual polygons.

I cut the model in half, and exported it and the texture map out and went into the program, Silo. It has a cool tool called the topology brush, which allows you to draw, in a pen-like fashion, lines on your mesh that will be turned into polygons when you exit the tool. In this case, I just traced my polygon layout map. Below is the topology brush portion in progress. Although I did the model In one shot with this feature, I've since taken up the practice of creating this topology in sections, since it took over an hour to calculate the mesh.

Once the mesh was generated, it was further tweaked (point pulling) and adjusted in Silo. The hat was also made starting with the topology brush. From here, it was back out to Modo, where the teeth, tongue and eyes were created. The reason for this is Modo has object layers, which allowed me to fit and align the pieces easily.

Now it was time for the UV creation. I felt that Maya had better UV tool thanany of the other programs at my disposal. Although the model was "just a head", it posed some challenges for the UVs. A simple cylindrical or spherical map didn't work well, since Hoggle had such unusually shaped head and bulbous nose. Texture stretching was inevitable in the most seen places, even with liberal "UV relax" commands used. This was worked out by creating a number of planar maps, carefully aligning and stitching them. I managed to push most of the texture distortion to the back of the head, where it would be hidden under hair and the hat.



Having worked out the UVs, it was time to have some fun again and paint texture maps. I started with the displacement. The base mesh was exported back into ZBrush, and the polygon levels increased. I didn't go too high, since I knew that the rendering program I was using (Lightwave) couldn't handle high levels of displacement. Finer details would be done with bump maps. (there are numerous tutorials and suggestions for the displacement step at ZBrush central)

After this, the color, bump and specular maps where painted in ZBrush, with some adjustments done in Photoshop.





Hoggle's facial expressions were made in Lightwave. I like the way this program stores the morph targets within the model itself and it's morph airbrush tool, which allows you to "paint" parts of one morph into another. It makes it easy to quickly make new shapes.

The hair was done with the plugin Sasquatch from Worley labs. G2, another Worley creation, was also used to help with the skin.

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