With everything almost in place, I continued with the modelling, going back into ZBrush to work on the arms of the alien. Following this, I imported the geometry of the alien's arms into 3ds Max, with a good subdivision level in order to keep a good level of detail. Of course, if I had intended to do any animation or rigging, then this wouldn't have been the most practical decision because it's not the best choice in a production pipeline with "animation and rigging” on the agenda. Because this was just for an image though, then the decision was okay for me. (Fig.06).


So, at this stage, I just needed to model the mechanical arms of the alien in order to start the next stage: texturing. So, my inspiration for the mechanical arms of the alien was the gasoline hoses of Formula 1 racing cars. To position the arms I used splines and path deform (Fig.07).

Lighting and Texturing

After modelling everything, the next step for me was to block in the light (Fig.08) and create the textures (Fig.09). I used Photoshop and ZBrush to make the textures - nothing too detailed though because the main work gets done in the compositing stage. I used photos and hand painted the textures. The main maps used were Color, Displacement, Reflection, Specular, Bump, Normal and Environment (HDRI).