Digital Art Masters: V7 - Sample Making Of 'Goblin'

Introduction

After a long time spent on various commercial projects, I decided to enhance my portfolio with something massive that would help test my abilities and skills gained in the CG industry. From the very beginning I knew there would be no animation, so I didn't have to care about rigging and other linked aspects. As a fantasy fan, I decided to create a goblin character. I didn't want to copy anything well known so I decided to create a bloodthirsty pirate boss with epic equipment gained during his journeys overseas. Before any work began I searched the internet for references so that the character would be interesting and have its own history rich in details. Building a character's story is very important to me!

Modeling is where the real fun is, at least for me, so I try to think ahead and make preparations so I don't have any problems with UVs, errors in geometry or units. Where modeling is concerned I have a standard pipeline, which is long proven and very effective at doing what I need.

I began with a basic low poly model equipped with basic UV mapping and a standard setup. The basic mesh was exported into ZBrush where I started to process muscles and the body shape (Fig.01 - 02). Finishing this, I exported the second subdivision set back into 3ds Max and started to prepare the body with low poly meshes of the goblin's equipment, which by the end resulted in 22 subtools.

Fig.01

Fig.01

Fig.02

Fig.02

Before detailing the equipment I prepared all the items in the UV set so they could be textured and easily identified. Every part of the goblin's equipment was processed until I was happy with the result. In the end the model consisted of 78,531,268 polygons.

To create the very precise details and ornaments I used a Photoshop mask system, which turns out to be very good for creating breastplates (Fig.03 - 04b).

Fig.03

Fig.03

Fig.04a

Fig.04a

Fig.04b

Fig.04b

When the goblin model was done I tried a few poses using the transpose tools and picked the best one. Then it was just a case of adjusting and adding all of the other elements (Fig.05).

Fig.05

Fig.05

To get the maximum possible level of detail whilst preventing hardware collapses caused by high numbers of Displacement maps, the Decimation Master was used. The final polycount for rendering in 3ds Max was 8.5 million polygons.

Texturing

Texturing was a really fun part. I always prepare the best maps I can from the geometry. This means that texturing turns into a simple process of coloring followed by adding photo textures for the metal, leather, dirt and scratches. Cavity maps helped me to mark the small details from the ZBrush model and Ambient Occlusion maps combined with Cavity maps were used as a mask for the armor rust and overall dirty look. To achieve the clean texture transitions I used a Solidify plugin by Flaming Pear (Fig.06).

Fig.06

Fig.06

Shading

The time spent on this process was long due to the fact that it was the first time I had used mental ray on such a scale and I had to cope with a huge number of problems because of this. For the skin I used a skin shader by Mr.Zapa, which turned out to be great for getting a good SSS effect and overall organic look. For the rest (metal, leather, etc.,) I used mr Arch & Design shaders. I didn't want to use anything simple, so I took advantage of numerous masks to achieve the material blending. This was used on the breast armor, golden hat ornament and the leather belt decoration (Fig.07).

Fig.07

Fig.07

Hair and Fur

As I wanted the hair and beard of my goblin to be greasy I decided to buy a Hair Farm plugin, which was ideal for my needs.

Lighting and Rendering

For the lighting I chose a standard three-point key light setup, which worked as the main light source. I also used a fill light from the side to add an additional light source. The back light was used to enhance the silhouette. The color of the light helped provide a real world illusion and set the overall mood of the picture. I used a blue key light, an orange fill light and a white back light. In this case I used an environmental HDRI map for reflections and a few black and white planes to enhance some of these (Fig.08).

Fig.08

Fig.08

Mental ray was used for the rendering (Fig.09a - b). I always use a linear workflow with Gamma 2.2. Due to the fact I wanted a large format print I utilized a high Anti-Aliasing setting and set Indirect Illumination to low. I also used an exposure control, which helped me effectively control the output. I always try to get a clean output directly from 3ds Max so I need only do a small amount of post-production. The picture was rendered into separate 16-bit TGA layers to keep the best possible quality. By having separate layers I was able to adjust everything easily.

Fig.09a

Fig.09a

Fig.09b

Fig.09b

Environment

I started to plan an environment that would work with the character. I decided to choose a lost wharf in a swamp-like area with a backdrop of foggy cliffs resembling those in Thailand. The foreground including the webs etc., were produced in 3D with the rest of the scene created in Photoshop similar to a matte painting. For the reference pictures I mainly used Fliker.com and Shutterstock.com.

Conclusion

In the end I was happy with the result. The purpose was to learn about new technology and techniques, and to test my abilities by going through the entire creative process, even those parts I don't really like.

This has certainly helped me to understand a few things, which I plan to use in the future.

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