Maya Making of Sohrab

Hi everybody; my name is Farzad Dalvand from IRAN. During last decade I have been working in Aria Animation Company (since the company foundation) and I am doing different work in different projects, as a character artist, animator in chief, background artist...

Introduction

The character you seen in the picture is one of the most famous Iranian historical characters named Sohrab and he is the son of Rostam, the greatest Iranian hero.

In the story Rostam (the father) kills sohrab (his son) as an unknown enemy and this is one of the most tragic legends of Iranian culture. The original tragedy belongs to 7000 years ago.

Concept

This character concept artist is my friend and colleague Mr. Farhani, and the concept was used as a good reference and blueprint. For texturing and detailing on armor and belt I used the Old Iranian books and painting as reference.

Modeling

This character has been modeled using polygon method, this is one of the favorite and predominate methods for 3D artists. In this method after constructing half of body pieces on a low poly, I used mirror tool for completing the character body. I used many tools for modeling such as extrude, bridge, bevel, inset edge loop, cut face and fill hole... Polygon modeling in Maya is really wonderful, because there is no limitation for doing anything and each tool has many options for doing good work.

In the next step to add the details, I subdivide the polygons for better results. For this step I increased the number of polygons very carefully, because the character must be animated and very hires character cannot be used in animation.

For modeling the spear I used primitive cylinder and extrude it several times and shaped it to my favorite form, and for blade I used curve and extrude it after that with moving the points and edges I shaped it.

In my idea this step is very important but not interesting for me. For doing the UV I used the UVLayout software, this software is very useful and very easy to use. For body I just divide it to several pieces and then find symmetry for pieces, it is very important to decide which segment must be split in UVLayout.

Texturing and Shading

This is my favorite step, because the Photoshop is unbelievably powerful and empowers your creativity without any limitation. In this step after painting all the details in different layers, I merge all as a diffusion layer and desaturate it for bump and specular layers with some difference.

For armor I used the base metal texture and add dirt on it with alpha channel. I used 2k textures for this character.

Lighting

Because I constructed “Sohrab” for movie project, I also used other persons ideas. For better depicting of the special background of this character which is the burned city, I had to do lighting with a high awareness about the background.

So the orange & blue colors, is mainly used in the lights and the background picture is used as image based lighting. In lighting the scene, a Directional orange light with shadow map is used as a key light and 5 point light in different position and color are used as fill light.

Also for better coordination between background and foreground, image based lighting is used. Practically, to made image based lighting, a hemisphere is made and picture of background, is mapped on it as texture material.

And then, with using final gather and global illumination my favorite picture hammered out.

Directional Light

Point Light

Rendering

Mental ray is my favorite render engine, and all pieces of character must be prepared for mental ray rendering. The render setting is changed several times for getting better result. This picture is rendered in 3 pass (Ambient occlusion, Alpha, shadow).

Background

The 2D background designed by Mr.Farhani, But it must be emphasized that because of too much camera moving in this part of the movie the final background in the movie would be a complete 3D scene.

Concept 2D Background

Final 2D Background

Compositing

The final composite is done in “Aftereffects”, to achieve a good balance between the background and the character, the color and level of picture was repeatedly changed.

I hope you’ve enjoyed and found it helpful. Best regards. With special thanks to CGArena for its great impression on the Digital Arts development in the world.