Making Of 'Haohmaru'
Victor Hugo Sousa uses ZBrush, 3ds Max, Photoshop and his brain to create his homage to Samurai Shodown game character, 'Haohmaru'
Haohmaru is a character from the game series Samurai Shodown and I created this version for the 3D Fan Art Facebook Challenge.
References
As Haohmaru is an iconic character, finding references was not that hard; the most difficult thing was to find the right style for him as I wanted to keep the anime look and yet still make a cinematic character.
Modeling the body
As with most of my projects, I started with a base-mesh – sometimes I use all the loops (although ZRemesher would be great for this still image), and sometimes I use a very simple one. In this case I had a short deadline because of the concept so I tried to get his shape and silhouette down as fast as I could, in order to send it to 3ds Max and model his accessories.
Modeling accessories – bandages
For the bandages I did the following: I extracted areas from the body where there would be bandages, and some meshes from the topology, and sent a single OBJ file to ZBrush where I used the Move Topological brush to place them the way I wanted.
Later I detailed them using Clay Build Up and Dam Standard brushes.
Modeling accessories - hair
The base mesh for the hair was done using the Loft technique from 3ds Max as you can see in the picture here. The rest of the accessories were modeled inside 3ds Max.
Clothes
For the clothes I used Marvelous Designer 2 and divided it into 3 meshes; the upper kimono, lower kimono and his pants. I then exported them to ZBrush and used ZRemesher with default settings to get a nice topology.
Textures
All my textures were done in MARI, using photos and creating tileable textures as bases for the clothes, bandages and body. I also used some dirt maps as multiply to create the used/old appearance.
I unwrapped my entire model using UVLayout for seams (you can use any software you prefer) and then I imported it into ZBrush and used UVMaster with Using Existing Seams option enabled. This is the fastest way that I've found for unwrapping and with a better result.
Light and render passes
For the lighting I used a studio setup and placed the light using the realistic viewport in 3ds Max (very handy!) I used V-Ray with an HDR image for reflections. I also rendered Specular and Reflections from Render Elements and an Occlusion pass.
Composition
I always test which passes I will need for the final composition. In this case I rendered 3 passes – the Beauty pass, Occlusion pass (using V-Ray dirt) and Specular pass from Render Elements and rendered them in TIF 16-bits 300-dpi with a matte background with no Alpha contribution, so I could use it to make my masks.
Blending passes
In Photoshop, I blended all the passes, did some color corrections and got 2 images for the background.
Conclusion
I hope you guys like it and that this help you with your projects. Thanks so much for the support of my wife and friends and thanks a lot to 3dtotal, you guys have been very kind to me.
Related links
Click here for Victor Hugo Sousa's website
Check out Samurai Shodown, Victor's inspiration for this piece
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