Making Of 'Nightmare Stalker'

Introduction

After seeing this concept online (Fig.01), I decided to have a go at re-creating it in 3D. I usually do hard surface objects and not character/organic objects so I fancied the challenge. The character was quite a simple design but I thought I could get a lot out of creating it in 3D.

Fig.

Fig.

Initially I wanted to create the mesh from scratch in ZBrush, using ZSpheres, but after several attempts I wasn't getting the results I wanted and so I decided to do my base mesh in Maya instead (Fig.02 & Fig.03).

Next I created UVs for the character (Fig.04). I tried hard to use as much of the UV window as possible as I knew I was going to be rendering out the image at 4000x4000 pixels and so the detail had to hold up.

Fig.

Fig.

So I took my UV'd base mesh into ZBrush and started sculpting (Fig.05). I subdivided my base mesh eight times, resulting in a 16 million poly mesh. I used mainly the clay brush and the damian standard brush (which is a downloadable brush from the ZBrush website and is a combination of the standard and pinch brushes. This brush is excellent for carving out large areas of detail).

Fig.

Fig.

I continued shaping the mesh and increasing the sub divisions. At about level six onwards, I started using the drag rectangle on a displacement brush with various alpha maps (Fig.06 - Fig.08).

Fig.

Fig.

I ended up on the mesh at level eight, with all the detail that I wanted in there (Fig.09 - Fig.11).

Fig. 11

Fig. 11

For the eyes, teeth, gums and drool, I went back to Maya. The eyes, teeth and drool were made from primitives while the gums were an extraction from the base mesh (Fig.12).

Fig. 12

Fig. 12

Next I did the texturing. I've never quite understood the best way to go about painting textures in ZBrush so the way I ended up doing it might be a bit odd to some who know what they are doing. I polypainted a rough color guide (Fig.13) then converted it to a flat texture, exported that from ZBrush into Photoshop and scaled it up to 8000x8000.

Fig. 13

Fig. 13

I then used textures from my 3D Total Textures library (Fig.14 - Fig.16) to create a higher resolution color map. Once I was happy with the general look and feel of the texture map I exported it back to ZBrush where I could tidy up bits, because as I had painted the majority of it in Photoshop it didn't fit the model 100% (Fig.17) so using the clone and color brushes I corrected any errors in the map (Fig.18).

Fig. 16

Fig. 16

So now I went down to a level three mesh and exported an .OBJ. This resulted in a 14000 polygon mesh. As I was doing a high res still, this was good enough; not too heavy in terms of polygons and not too light as to be reliant on displacement for all the detail. From the same level I exported a normal map (Fig.19) and a displacement map (Fig.20).

Fig. 19

Fig. 19

Fig. 20

Fig. 20

Those maps I also created a specular map (Fig.21) and a reflection map (Fig.22).

Fig. 21

Fig. 21

Fig. 22

Fig. 22

Back in Maya I set up a basic studio and lighting rig (Fig.23 & Fig.24).

This produced a base render for me to start tweaking (Fig.25).

Fig. 25

Fig. 25

I used V-Ray for Maya to render the character because I wanted to use the SSS it has. So I was able to set up a basic V-Ray SSS shader very quickly (Fig.26) and get excellent results in very good render times. The displacement setup was painless; it just worked! This was something I had struggled with in other renderers.

Fig. 26

Fig. 26

So I rendered out six passes. These were: main beauty (Fig.27), ambient occlusion (Fig.28), reflection (Fig.29), hard shadow (Fig.30), refraction (Fig.31) and material ID (Fig.32).

Fig. 27

Fig. 27

Fig. 28

Fig. 28

Fig. 29

Fig. 29

Fig. 30

Fig. 30

Fig. 31

Fig. 31

Fig. 32

Fig. 32

The main beauty render turned out pretty well so I didn't need to use the passes too much, but they just helped to lift the image and give the finishing touches. So with a few curves and a colored grad on the background, I had my final image (Fig.33).

Fig: 33

Thanks!
Chris Davis
 

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