Posing / ZBrushing

Okay so at this point I had a good base for the character. Before moving on to posing, I unwrapped the UVs (Fig.04). The body/face was separate from the other elements, the same as the accessories. As I wasn't going to use the final image for animation, I decided to separate the parts to have the best quality rendering possible.


For the posing I used a script in Maya: AbAutorig. It's very easy to use and the posing is done in one afternoon, with a classic skinning. I broke the setup when the posing was definitive and I refined small parts of the model (Fig.05).




This character gave me the opportunity to discover ZBrush. I wanted to add more details to the pants and jacket, and ZBrush was the best solution to get the little creases. I didn't want a realistic effect, but just enough to give more consistency. I exported the ZBrushing in a .TIFF file, for use as a displacement map. The maps were 4096 resolution and I exported the low poly mesh from ZBrush to get a mesh more suitable for displacement. The modifier Displace from Max worked perfectly for this job (Fig.06).

Texturing

Now I had the principal elements, I began texturing. Because the character wasn't going to be used in an animation, I was able to use big, multiple textures and get some great details. I separated the body (Fig.07), the pants (Fig.08), the jacket (Fig.09), the glasses and the other elements like buttons, pockets and the belt. I baked the parts of my character with the Render to Texture option. It is very useful for providing details in the textures. For this I baked an Occlusion, which I then added to my .PSD files. This gives the indications of shadows and the distance between elements.