Making of 'Female Zombie'

This making of shouldn't be seen as a step-by-step as I'll only gloss over some of the processes used.  The steps below are only an outline of the some of the techniques used in the creation of this piece:

  • Conceptualising
  • Modelling and Unwrapping
  • Texturing
  • Hair (modelling and texturing)
  • Sculpting
  • Morph Targets and Rigging
  • Base
  • Lighting
  • Rendering

Conceptualising

As far as creating an initial concept for this character goes, I started off with a basic idea in my head.  I never actually made any rough drawings or anything like that; the idea I had was reasonably clear so I decided to leave it at that.
I ultimately wanted to create a creepy character, sort of along the lines of that spooky girl from The Ring, except of course gorier and less ghost like.  I also wanted her to still be relatively attractive and fresh and not too decayed and old.

I started out with a normal female character model that I textured in a very clean and alive state, and then set out building the zombie over her.  I did this to create the person she used to be.

Fig.

Fig.

Modelling and Unwrapping

I first set out creating a low poly quad base mesh in 3D Studio Max which I could later import into ZBrush.  Whilst doing this I got the basic anatomy and proportions of the figure down and also captured any basic likeness to the references I was using.  The next step was then to unwrap and texture her so that when imported I could use the texture I created as a guide to model with.

Her nightdress was also done separately in the same fashion as her body.  I took digital photos of one of my wife's nightdresses to be used as the base texture.

For both the body and nightdress, I first unwrapped each mesh then projected the actual base photo reference onto the mesh, instead of trying to fit the UVs to the texture.

Texturing

As stated above, I started off by projecting the actual photo reference onto the mesh and then baked the textures out onto the UV layout I initially created.  This way I had way more control over how the texture fitted to the unwrap, instead of trying to get the UVs to awkwardly fit to the texture.  The actual texture might look a bit stretched in some areas but on the model it looks perfect!

Once I'd created my base nude texture (by projection mapping my photo reference onto my UV layout), I began cleaning up any messy areas and changing areas that I didn't like.

Once the cleanup was basically done I could start "zombifying" the texture.  First I started by building up the dead skin - this I usually do by discolouring the base skin to give it more of a dead feel.  I then started to build up layers of hand-painted veins.  I then started applying subtle layers of colour to create the effect of bruising.

Fig.

Fig.

On top of all this I slowly added the hand-painted blood, sores, scratches...

Fig.

Fig.

...and bruises.

Fig.

Fig.

I then opened up the normal maps that I created in ZBrush (there'll be more on creating these in the Sculpting section).  The base normal maps were quite flat as I chose not to create the fine porous detail in ZBrush, for I took my base skin texture and desaturated it and then adjusted the brightness and contrast levels till I was happy (some areas might need to be fixed by hand!).  I then applied the NVidia NormalMapFilter in Photoshop to create a normal map of the fine porous detail of the skin.  This normal layer was then placed over the base normal map which I then set to Overlay mode so that the normal map below was made visible.  In a similar fashion I brought across any additional details, like the blood and veins, from the diffuse and applied the NormalMapFilter to them.  If I find that the details are perhaps too strong I simply adjust the opacity of the layers, as needed.

I then created the specular map from a greyscale image of the diffuse skin.  Here, again, I adjusted the brightness and contrast considerably and painted in any other detail I needed.  I also sharpened the specular considerably so that the porous detail was emphasised.  I then brought across any additional details, like the blood, and made that considerably whiter than the skin (which is almost black in comparison) as it has more gloss and shine to it.

The nightdress was done in a similar way to the above examples.

Once I had finished texturing everything (body, hair, nightdress, eyes, etc.) I could bake all the separate textures onto one final 2048 x 2048 texture map.

Optimisation note: Once I've finished modelling and texturing the character I optimise certain areas, like under the nightdress for example; I remove most of her mid-section as this area wouldn't be visible at all!

Hair (Modelling and Texturing)

I started out by creating the geometry for the base clump of hair that would be used to cover the back half and front sides of the head.  This was used as the underlying layer of hair that would fill in most of the hair and hide any of the optimised areas of the head that were deleted.

Fig.

Fig.

These were then unwrapped to be prepared for texturing.  Like the rest of my base texturing done for the body and nightdress, I projected a photo reference of hair onto the already unwrapped meshes and then baked the results out.  For this character I actually used blonde hair that ended up being changed into black.

On top of these base clumps of hair I slowly started adding extra strands for added depth and volume.  These were also unwrapped and textured as I went along.  At the end of the day I ended up with a head of hair that weighed in at 1127 triangles!

Fig.

Fig.

I then hand painted all of the alpha for the hair, which can take some time.  Here I like to draw over the top of the diffuse hair texture as a guide.  I don't stick to the underlying reference 100% though.

Fig.

Fig.

Sculpting

For the body, nightdress and hair I worked on separate models (as I was using ZBrush 2 there where no Subtools!).  The steps for each the body, nightdress and hair were pretty much the same, so for this step I'll use just the body as an example.

First off I imported the quadded mesh I created in Max into ZBrush, and then applied the base nude texture (without all the "zombified" additions).  The reason I applied the texture was so that I had a bit of a guide to work with when sculpting.  Next up I captured the morph target then subdivided the body once, stepped back down to the lowest subdivision and then applied the captured morph target.  The reason I do this is so that the mesh doesn't become too smoothed out and lose too much of the original shape that was created in Max.

Once I start sculpting I'll only start on the second or third subdivisions.  I do this to flesh out the base detail and volumes of the figure.  As I start increasing the subdivisions I start refining the mesh and adding in all the finer details.  I'll never head straight into the highest subdivision and start sculpting as this will always result in a mess!  I also start working purely symmetrically which helps block out the bulk of the definition.  Later on I'll add in all the asymmetrical detail.

Fig.

Fig.

I used Zmapper, which is a plug-in for ZBrush used to create the normal maps, which will later be imported into Photoshop to be fixed up.

For the hair I used the same technique as above, but I never went as far as to actually sculpt in any fine hair detail, like the strands.  All I did here was create clumps of hair for volume and bulk which added to the shape for the normal maps.

Morph Targets and Rigging

I also created 7 morph targets that were going to be used for a small bit of animation that I never finalised.  I did however use them for the final facial expression.

For the rig and skinning I simply used a standard Biped and the Skin Modifier.  I then posed her and collapsed the mesh, and then cleaned up one or two small areas for the final render.  I still kept a copy of her rigged and skinned just in case I want to go back and animate her.

Fig.

Fig.

Base

For the base I created 5 different rough concepts in ZBrush.

Fig. 10

Fig. 10

From these I could then choose the one I thought the most appropriate.  The final one turned out a bit different to the actual concept.

Fig. 11

Fig. 11

Lighting

The lighting I used was quite simple.  For this I started out with a very simple three point light setup made up of standard Max Target Directional Lights: two in the front (one strong light on the right and one softer light on the left), and one strong back light (also known as rim light) at the back to give a bit of depth. This also helped push the character out and defined the silhouette.

I then added in three extra omni fill lights. Two of them were placed close to the figure (set to affect only the specular of the figure), and the final to add some atmospheric light to the base.

All shadows were set to standard Shadow Map type.

Fig. 12

Fig. 12

Rendering

Again the rending was nothing fancy: a simple one pass Scan line render.  For Antialiasing I selected Catmull-Rom from the drop-down list, which produces a slight pronounced edge effect when rendering so that the image doesn't look blurred.  The materials I used were also standard Max shaders.  I considered using DirectX real-time shaders, but at the time I couldn't find any that suited what I needed.

Fig. 1_large

Fig. 1_large

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