'Maya'


Making Of 'Nightmare Stalker'

by Chris Davis
 


nightmare stalker by chris davis - final render

Software Used :



Maya, ZBrush, & Photoshop

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.


nightmare stalker by chris davis - refrence image concept by todd harris
Fig.01

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).

nightmare stalker by chris davis - low poly model
nightmare stalker by chris davis - low pol model
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.


nightmare stalker by chris davis - uv map
Fig.04

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).


nightmare stalker by chris davis - adding details
Fig.05



Swordmaster


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).

nightmare stalker by chris davis - detailed brush
nightmare stalker by chris davis - detailed brush
nightmare stalker by chris davis - detailed brush
Fig.06
Fig.07
Fig.08

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