3D Creative December 2015

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December 2015 Issue 124

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• Designing for videogames • Versatile ZBrush sketching • Creating textures for sci-fi spacecraft • Designing a fantasy character • Mastering displacement details • and much more!

We take a look at the fun and striking artwork of freelance artist Dmitry Cheremisin

3 D C R E AT I V E : 2 0 0 5 – 2 0 1 5 It’s with heavy hearts that we’re announcing the end of 3dcreative magazine. From 2005 to the present, 3dcreative has aimed to deliver affordable, high quality resources and inspiration for 3D artists of all kinds – but with so many great 3D resources readily available online, and inevitable piracy to contend with, we’ve decided it’s time to draw 3dcreative to a close.

We’re very grateful to all the artists and readers who’ve supported the magazine, whether you’ve just discovered it or have been following from the early days. It’s been a great privilege for us to work with the hundreds of artists who’ve featured in 3dcreative over the last ten years. It wouldn’t have been possible without your kindness and contributions.

Subscriptions to 3dcreative are now no longer available to buy.

2015 will be our last complete year of twelve issues, and we’ll release a final free issue in January 2016. You’ll still be able to find back issues in the 3dtotal shop, as well as our huge collection of eBooks and printed books, and we’ll continue to bring you brilliant 3D content and tutorials for free via the 3dtotal website. Our sister magazine, 2dartist, is still available for anyone interested in 2D art and digital painting. With the door closing on one project, we’ll use our time to bring you bigger, better content with a renewed energy.

Thank you again to everyone who’s supported 3dcreative, whether by buying it or being in it, and we hope you continue to support us as we go forward into exciting new projects. Stay creative!

The 3dcreative team

3dtotal presents the new issue of 2dartist magazine, a downloadable monthly magazine for digital artists for only ₤2.99 (approx. $4.79/€3.69).

Visit www.2dartistmag.com to see a full preview of the latest issue, subscription offers, and to purchase back issues.

119 Issue 119 | November 2015

Create a dynamic exosuit scene Learn how to create a sci-fi mech and pilot character

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• 10 of the best digital images • Embellished anatomy • Painting an experimental scene • and much more!

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KEEP UP TO DATE WITH 3DTOTAL!

Editor’s letter

Welcome to 3dcreative issue 124!

Welcome to our last issue of 2015, and our second to last issue ever! 3dcreative has enjoyed a brilliant 10-year run – thank you to every artist and reader who made that possible.

MARISA LEWIS Junior Editor

This month brings you great interviews with the likes of Dmitry Cheremisin and Matthias Develtere, tons of tutorials covering modeling, texturing and rendering, and more besides! Whether you’re in the mood for characters, objects or vehicles, fantasy or sci-fi, we hope there’s something here to tickle your fancy.

Keep on creating, and join us again in the New Year for 3dcreative’s final outing!

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Contributors MATTHIAS DEVELTERE Matthias Develtere is a young new artist in this industry, with a burning passion to make unique and interesting designs, currently employed by MachineGames as a junior 3D artist.

VICTORIA PASSARIELLO Victoria Passariello creates hard-surface models because she loves robots and 3D. She works at Perihelion Interactive making ships for sci-fi videogame The Mandate.

DMITRY CHEREMISIN Dmitry Cheremisin is a freelance 3D artist from Ukraine, with an interest in character art. An architect by education, he was attracted to computer graphics as a hobby which later became his profession.

RUBEN ALVAREZ Ruben Alvarez is a Spanish concept artist working for the film and videogame industry, currently based in The Netherlands. He has worked for companies including Gameloft, Sidhe Interactive and Activision.

RORY BJÖRKMAN With a background in traditional art and sculpture, Rory Björkman is currently studying Media at the National College of Art and Design in Dublin, with a focus on digital arts.

ROUMEN FILIPOV Roumen Filipov is a 3D generalist born in Bulgaria, currently living in Brazil. His specialty is making 3D characters for film and the advertising agency. Here, he sculpts a fun sci-fi character.

ANDREW FINCH Andrew Finch is a principle environment artist for Microsoft’s Rare Studio. He has eight years’ industry experience and is now working on his tenth professional game.

TANVIR ISLAM Tanvir Islam is a self-taught CG generalist from Dhaka, Bangladesh. He is the founder of Incubator Effects Studios, a group of CG generalists working on a variety of versatile projects.

Junior Editor Marisa Lewis marisa@3dtotal.com Sub-editor Adam Smith Graphic Designers Matthew Lewis Aryan Pishneshin Advertising Manager Kinnor Wroughton kinnor@3dtotal.com Studio Manager Simon Morse simon@3dtotal.com Managing Director Tom Greenway Advertising Media pack and rates are available upon request.

Contact Kinnor Wroughton : kinnor@3dtotal.com International Translation opportunities and international licenses are available. Contact Melanie Smith: melanie@3dtotal.com Distribution 3dcreative is an e-magazine distributed as a downloadable PDF and on digital newsstands.

Disclaimer All artwork, unless otherwise stated, is copyright ©2015 3dtotal.com Ltd. Artwork that is not copyright 3dtotal.com Ltd is marked accordingly.

Every effort has been made to locate the copyright holders of materials included in this issue of 3dcreative magazine in order to obtain permissions to publish them.

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If you’re having problems viewing the double-page spreads that we feature within this magazine, then follow this handy little guide on how to set up your PDF reader!

Top tips for viewing

For optimum viewing of the magazine, it is recommended that you have the latest version of Adobe Acrobat Reader installed. You can download it for free here: To view the many double-page spreads featured in 3dcreative magazine, you can set the reader to display “two-up”, which will show double-page spreads as one large landscape image: 1. Open the magazine in Reader; 2. Go to the View menu, then Page Display; 3. Select Two Page Scrolling, making sure that Show Cover Page in Two Page View is also selected.

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Special thanks to 3DHype, Hiperia 3D and Veegraph for supporting 3dcreative with banners. Contact Kinnor Wroughton if you would also like to show your support: kinnor@3dtotal.com

3dcreative magazine is available as a downloadable PDF magazine. If you have an iPad or iPhone, you can drag your magazine into your iTunes library – it will automatically add the PDF to your bookshelf in your iBooks app!

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Contents Issue 124 008_ Art Gallery

10 of the most inspiring 3D images from the world of CG, hand-picked just for you!

022_ Designing for videogames

Matthias Develtere talks vehicles, environments and modeling techniques

034_ Mastering stylized characters

Dmitry Cheremisin shares his amazing work, inspirations and tips

042_ Versatile ZBrush sketching

Ruben Alvarez reveals his ZBrush works in progress with this peek into his sketchbook

052_ Mastering displacement details

Learn character detailing techniques from expert Roumen Filipov

058_ Texturing sci-fi ships with MARI

Rory Björkman shares his process for texturing a steampunk airship

068_ Creating textures for sci-fi spacecraft

Learn how Victoria Passariello textures a sci-fi cargo ship with Photoshop and Substance Painter

078_ Texturing assets with Substance Painter Andrew Finch walks us through his Substance Painter texturing process

086_ Presenting assets in Marmoset Viewer Improve your real-time presentation with Andrew Finch’s help

096_ Designing a fantasy character

Discover Tanvir Islam’s in-depth character creation process for his image, Khlotharius

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Each issue the 3dcreative team selects 10 of the best digital images from around the world. Enjoy!

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Submit your images! Simply email: marisa@3dtotal.com

JetSpeeder Concept Piers Coe Year created: 2014 Software used: Maya, MODO, Photoshop Web: pierscoe.com

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Mr Fang Diego Sain Year created: 2015 Software used: ZBrush, KeyShot, Photoshop Web: iusalab.com

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Rooster Dream Cristiano Rinaldi Year created: 2015 Software used: MODO, ZBrush, Photoshop Web: simultan.it

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Alien Type X Shaun Sherman Year created: 2015 Software used: Photoshop, ZBrush, KeyShot Web: shaunsherman.com

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Mecha design Jonathan Renaux Year created: 2013 Software used: ZBrush, V-Ray Web: jonathan-renaux.wix.com/jonathan-renaux

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Lobster JongJik Kim Year created: 2014 Software used: Maya, ZBrush, NUKE, After Effects, Photoshop, mental ray Web: kimjj.net

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Meteora Security Guard Mark Chang Year created: 2015 Software used: CINEMA 4D, ZBrush, Octane Render Web: artstation.com/artist/equinoz

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Dark Mermaid Ashleigh Foo Chong Year created: 2015 Software used: ZBrush, KeyShot, Photoshop

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Letting Machines Do All the Thinking [A Bad Idea] Robert J. Tiess Year created: 2015 | Software used: Blender Web: artofinterpretation.com

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African Elephant Stavros Fylladitis Year created: 2015 Software used: ZBrush, Maya, V-Ray, Photoshop Web: stavrosfyl.artstation.com

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3DCREATIVE MAGAZINE | Designing for videogames

Designing for

videogames We catch up with MachineGames’ talented Matthias Develtere about his latest projects and best creative advice

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The Artist

Matthias Develtere

3D artist at MachineGames, Sweden develterematthias.wordpress.com Interviewed by: Marisa Lewis Matthias Develtere is a young new artist in this industry, with a burning passion to make unique and interesting designs.

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3DCREATIVE MAGAZINE | Designing for videogames

Matthias Develtere is a 3D artist currently working for MachineGames in Sweden, with credits including the acclaimed videogame prequel Wolfenstein: The Old Blood.

3dcreative: Hi Matthias, thanks for talking to us! Please introduce yourself with who you are, where you’re based, and what you do.

Matthias Develtere: So, my name is Matthias Develtere. I originally come from a very small city in Belgium that nobody’s heard of. From the age of 17 I was completely sure I wanted to become an artist.

My first thought was to go for concept artist, but I discovered 3D and found it much more interesting to make and design on the fly – by the

time I make a 2D design I can have a decent 3D model already. So the decision was quickly made.

So yes, I work and live in Sweden now, and work for the amazing talented studio MachineGames.

Being 22 and working for such an amazing company is a dream come true.

3dc: What’s your creative background and education like?

MD: I went to a small digital entertainment and art school in Belgium, but that was the worst decision ever. They just wanted to rush out artists with as many skills as possible and that’s not how it should be. It’s way better to focus on one specific area, become an expert in it, and learn new stuff later. Of course it’s not a bad idea to try out different area’s to find your fitting expertise.

A 3D model Matthias made for this magazine! Check out issues 113 and 114 to see how he made it © 3dtotal

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So I just left and focused myself for six months on nothing else but making videogame art.

3dc: What inspired you to get into 3D? What inspires you today?

MD: I got inspired by two amazing artists: Laurens Corijn and Tor Frick. Laurens Corijn was my 3D teacher and he had so much love for vehicles that I got interested in them. I became interested in Tor’s work just because of the artistic look of it.

The most important thing was not to copy or mimic their styles, but to come up with my own unique style, and still to this day, this is what inspires me to become a better artist. Coming up with my own style and learning from the best artists in the industry.

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An Allied vehicle Matthias made for his sci-fi WW2 universe

A Soviet Union vehicle Matthias made for his sci-fi WW2 universe

3dc: What software do you use for your artwork, and why? Are there any plugins, techniques or underrated tools that you’d recommend?

MD: I use a lot of different softwares. I don’t like to be pinned down to only one software package. I don’t believe that a software package makes you

a better artist – it’s all about the artist and how much/how hard you work.

office we are using MODO, so I am trying to fit both into my pipeline.

The softwares I use are MODO, 3ds Max, Quixel SUITE, Substance Painter, Photoshop, KeyShot, and more. Before I worked in the industry I only used 3ds Max as a modeling package, but at the

3dc: Tell us more about your typical 3D workflow.

MD: I don’t really have a specific perfect workflow, but it always starts with the same thing: searching

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An Allied vehicle Matthias made for his sci-fi WW2 universe © ZeniMax Media and MachineGames

An Allied vehicle Matthias made for his sci-fi WW2 universe © ZeniMax Media and MachineGames

for reference for hours and hours, just to make sure I have everything figured out, so that in the middle of the project I don’t need to go back or remake pieces.

the details being there.” After that I really do a lot in post, for example: removing floating parts, fixing color schemes, adding AO, adding texture information, and so on.

Next to all of this, I am too lazy to make blockouts – not for professional nor free-time projects. Yes, this is a bad thing, but it just doesn’t work for me.

I see concept art as a sort of blockout, and then you have to make that design better.

3dc: Vehicle designs are a huge part of your portfolio and something you really enjoy. What makes vehicles especially interesting to you?

To comfort myself I always start working on a really interesting area of a vehicle, a detailed part, and that way I’m pumped to keep working on it and can figure out the style I’m going for. So I start on one specific area of a vehicle and make that one as alpha as possible.

Then I can bring my design over to the team and show them my vision of the vehicle, instead of having to say, “This is just a blockout, just imagine 3DCREATIVEMAG.COM

MD: I didn’t start making vehicles just because I liked them or anything like that, but because I was told it was the hardest thing in the hardsurface field. So I just went for it. When I told people I was working as a 3D artist, they were super enthusiastic until I told them that I was making vehicles! Then I always got the reply, “Oh, just vehicles.” So that became my goal: making unique and interesting vehicles.

To me, making vehicles in this breathtaking industry is the best job in the world. I always start

with the same thought in mind: “This needs to be more than just a vehicle. Every flow and line has to be elegant and done with a lot of care. It might sound silly but I could be tweaking a couple of polygons for hours just to make sure they catch the light in the right way.

Every line, every surface is designed with a purpose, and nothing is done without a reason. If an artist takes a minute to check out my vehicle then I’ve accomplished my goal.

3dc: What do you think is the key to creating a strong vehicle?

MD: Personally, I see vehicles as storytellers. Just think about it: the main character fills up just 20% of the screen, so the rest is the environment, and it doesn’t matter what sort of game you like to play, there will always be some sort of vehicle in there somewhere.

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An Allied vehicle Matthias made for his sci-fi WW2 universe © ZeniMax Media and MachineGames

But what really comes up a lot is that most games copy the same vehicles all over the game and just give them different color textures, so it doesn’t look like you’re coming across the same vehicle over and over again.

But vehicles should tell stories as well, just like characters, weapons and environments do.

They can be so much more than just pathblockers or pieces of cover. They should give the player an insight into what is happening in the environment. The key to this is making them unique. You want to tell a story with them.

Okay, maybe it’s not always easy to find unique ideas, but a good idea is to search for vehicle dioramas. Miniature model hobbyists put a lot of work into making their pieces memorable.

Anybody can go to a store and buy a vehicle assembly box, but making it stand out is something different.

Artist history Matthias Develtere’s career up to this point...

Sep 2013: Made the decision to start learning/making a portfolio on his own Jan 2014: Finished his first portfolio piece and began making something new every month Sep 2014: Started working for MachineGames Jan 2015: First time working for a magazine – 3dcreative, of course!

May 2015: Release of the first game Matthias worked on May 2015: Announced as a new artist for VERTEX3 magazine Jun 2015: Started working on his own sci-fi universe Sep 2015: Made the decision to move on from vehicles to environments

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TOP TIP Guide for beginners If you want to start getting into vehicles, don’t rush. Start with understanding flow and elegance. You don’t even have to start with SubD models, not at all. Just make some fast studies every day, just car bodies. Aim for 2500 triangles and try to catch the characteristics from that vehicle, because that’s something a lot of people miss. Start with this and it’ll get you further than working on a high-poly car for several months. Here’s an example of some of my old studies from three years ago.

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Here are some vehicles Matthias made back in 2013

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A vehicle made and designed for Wolfenstein: The Old Blood © ZeniMax Media and MachineGames

The main chapter Matthias worked on during the production of Wolfenstein: The Old Blood was Chapter 6 © ZeniMax Media and MachineGames

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3dc: You recently worked on Wolfenstein: The Old Blood at MachineGames. Could you tell us more about that experience and what you took away from it?

MD: This was the first professional game I worked on, so it was pretty interesting. I never thought These environments were team efforts. On this environment, Matthias’ job was to dress up the existing architecture © ZeniMax Media and MachineGames

A hero asset Matthias made during the production of Wolfenstein: The Old Blood and learned a lot from © ZeniMax Media and MachineGames

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there was so much communication going on between all the different departments! For example, if you want to place a box for cover, you have to talk to a scripter, an environment artist, a combat scripter, and so on. Making a game is a team event. There’s nothing more breathtaking than seeing things grow, from a sketch to a

blockout, an architectural pass, a detail pass, a final pass. It’s just amazing seeing all these different iterations coming together.

3dc: What are your goals and plans for the near future? Any new skills you want to learn, or new projects we should watch out for?

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The main chapter Matthias worked on during the production of Wolfenstein: The Old Blood was Chapter 6 © ZeniMax Media and MachineGames

TOP TIP Start with overpaints I search for some big images to see how the light reacts on them. Overpaints are super handy to do before starting modeling. They can help you get the flow correct, which works for low-poly and SubD but is super important for high-poly. Just observe how the flow of the vehicle goes, and that way you know how your loops are suppose to go. These days I don’t bother myself doing those on paper or in Photoshop, but I still do it in my head, without even noticing it.

It’s the best way to start on your vehicle.

You don’t want to notice in the middle of your project that the flow of the vehicle doesn’t match the ref and you have to restart. You can learn by drawing them over real vehicles, but that’s less safe of course.

MD: In fact, yes, I’m going to put my vehicle work aside and start exploring some other areas, like environments. I just don’t want to get stuck only doing the things that I am comfortable with, so it’s time to move on now to something that is completely new. But hey, every environment needs vehicles, right?

Of course, keep an eye on the project we’re cooking up at MachineGames, and the newly announced indie game Astroneer.

Never rush into it, start with a plan

3dc: Finally, and most importantly: what do you like to do in your spare time?

MD: No problem, thanks a lot for the opportunity!

I love working with you guys.

MD: Apart from creating digital art, my interests go out to all kinds of technology. I always enjoy reading up on that – you can never learn enough and it can always be handy for later projects. Next to all this, I of course love to make personal work.

The Artist Matthias Develtere

develterematthias.wordpress.com

3dc: Thank you very much for speaking to 3dcreative today!

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3 D T O TA L ’ S A N AT O M I C A L C O L L E C T I O N : NEW FIGURES COMING SOON Affordable anatomical reference figures for traditional and digital artists, including male and female planar models and the impressive biosuit figure designed by Alessandro Baldasseroni!

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3DCREATIVE MAGAZINE | Mastering stylized characters

The Artist

Dmitry Cheremisin Freelance

artstation.com/artist/d33m0n Interviewed by: Marisa Lewis Dmitry Cheremisin is a freelance 3D artist from Ukraine, with an interest in character art.

Mastering stylized

characters We take a closer look at the fun and striking artwork of freelance artist Dmitry Cheremisin

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Dmitry Cheremisin is instantly recognizable for his carefully crafted, stylized character designs. As well as freelancing, he’s been a judge at Blizzardfest and was a conference speaker at the NODE Forum for Digital Arts earlier this year.

A model made just for fun

3dcreative: Hi Dmitry, thanks for talking to 3dcreative! Please introduce yourself to our readers with a bit about who you are, where you’re based, and what you do: Dmitry Cheremisin: Hello everyone! My name is Dmitry. I am 32 years old and I live in Kiev, Ukraine. I’ve worked in the gaming industry for seven years, but I’m currently a freelancer, as well as working on my own projects in my spare time.

3dc: What was your artistic education like? How did you come to learn 3D? DC: I’m an architect by education. However, I was always more attracted to computer graphics and video games. It was my hobby which later became my profession. I’m self-taught in 3D. 3dc: Who or what would you say are your biggest creative inspirations?

DC: I’m inspired by videogames and anime for new projects. I like bright, colorful, memorable characters that don’t leave me indifferent. When I’m creating my own projects, I try to give the same qualities to my characters. It’s really very important to me. I like to convey the character’s personality, work on their accent details, and pay attention to detail. I set for myself several criteria for the final image and try to stick to them.

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This was Dmitry’s contribution to a Facebook contest by Serge Birault, the original concept artist

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3DCREATIVE MAGAZINE | Mastering stylized characters

3dc: Tell us about the software or tools that feature in your typical 3D workflow.

DC: 3ds Max, ZBrush and Photoshop are my main tools for work. For rendering, I prefer to use V-Ray. Depending on the task, this list can be changed and expanded. For example, I really like MARI for texturing. I prefer to use headus UVLayout for making UVs. Marvelous Designer is a great program for realistic simulation of clothing.

Usually I use xNormal for baking textures, and finally NUKE for compositing.

3dc: Skin and hair are always difficult to get right, but you do a great job on both. Could you offer any advice please for artists hoping to improve on these areas?

DC: References are the key to success. I try to split complex tasks (for example, skin shaders) into more simple components and work on them separately. When I’m working on hair, I do the same thing – I break hair into separate strands and work on each separately. This approach allows me to work more quickly and efficiently.

3dc: What do you think are the advantages and disadvantages of being a freelance artist?

DC: Advantage: for me, it’s the freedom of choice.

Disadvantage: lack of a team to work with. Live communication and exchanging experiences are very important elements of creative and professional growth.

3dc: What do you feel is your biggest achievement so far?

DC: I think I just figured out what I wanted to do in life and what I’d like to give a huge amount of time to. I think this is the most important thing: to find something for everyone and then work in that direction.

TOP TIP Study your references images Here is a simple large-sized photo. I’ve added Photoshop’s High Pass filter to this image and made some simple adjustments.

This helps me to see much more information than before, including a clear view of the pores and wrinkles’ structure.

Now this image can be used as a stencil for sculpting or as base for custom brushes.

You can always find more information in a reference image which might not be visible at first sight.

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This is one of Dmitry’s earliest personal projects

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Dmitry made this model very quickly in his spare time

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3DCREATIVE MAGAZINE | Mastering stylized characters

3dc: What are you currently working on? Are there any new projects we should look out for soon?

DC: Currently, I’m working on a new project. I want to learn a software that’s new to me, such as Substance Designer and Substance Painter.

TOP TIP Split complex things into simple ones This is my method for making skin shaders.

A skin shader is a complex thing, so it’s better to split it into several simpler components and work on them separately.

As you can see, I start from one element (subsurface scattering) and then step by step I add the other elements (specular, single scattering). By the end, I’ve achieved a very complex shader, but it was easy to do because I didn’t try to set up everything at once.

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My goal is to create a believable character using game development technology (e.g. Unreal Engine 4). I hope I will finish it soon.

3dc: Finally, what do you like to do in your spare time (if you have any)?

DC: I pay attention to new technologies in the gaming industry; it’s important to be aware of new products. If possible, I play games too. I’d like to use new technology in my own work to improve its quality, and I spend a lot of time studying tutorials and learning new programs.

An elf girl, Dmitry’s latest project

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Sketchbook of Damir G Martin

The Artist

The sketchbook of

Ruben Alvarez Concept artist Ruben Alvarez shares a behind-the-scenes look at his ZBrush sculpts ag.com 3DCreativem

Ruben Alvarez rubenalba.com

Software used: ZBrush Ruben Alvarez is a Spanish concept artist working for the film and videogame industry, currently based in The Netherlands. He has worked for companies including Gameloft, Sidhe Interactive and Activision.

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Find some sculpting inspiration in this month’s ZBrush Sketchbook…

Ruben’s idea for Electric Lord was to create a character with rubber and metal armor to generate electric waves

I am relatively new to using ZBrush as a tool to sketch and polish my designs. I knew about this software a long time ago but I never had the chance to give it a try. Soon I realized that ZBrush could be a key tool in my design process and I began to be more and more interested in knowing about it. It was a great surprise to find that introducing this software into my workflow was complementary to other concept art techniques that I use, like silhouette exploration, grayscale detailing and photo-bashing. It is a truly artistic software that merges computer graphics and traditional art, with the unique power of making your imagination and time fly!

Inspiration and ideas Most of my inspiration comes from films, music, family, personal experiences, traveling… I think being a concept artist is a way of life. Your brain is always working and you spend a lot of time looking for a spark that switches on your inspiration. ZBrush helps you to relax in front of the computer and transform these sparks of inspiration into quick sketches that feed your design process.

Mask detail using kitbashing and Insert Meshes

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3DCREATIVE MAGAZINE | The sketchbook of Ruben Alvarez

ZBrush is not just used for creatures – you can also sketch environments with it

Ruben mixed ZBrush and Marvelous Designer to create this fairy character’s clothing

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Ruben masked and extracted meshes from the body of the ogre to create armor plates and clothes

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3DCREATIVE MAGAZINE | The sketchbook of Ruben Alvarez

Toolkit I don’t use a lot of tools in ZBrush during the sketching process. The most important brushes for me are the Move, Clay Buildup and Dam Standard brushes. DynaMesh is also a great feature that allows you to ‘generate’ geometry without losing mesh density. Sometimes I sketch using the kit-bashing method, by creating Insert Mesh brush libraries. With this special feature I can drag and drop previously-created geometry, adding richness to the sketch in a very simple and fast way.

Sketching workflow Most of the time I begin with a Sphere and DynaMesh option activated. I sometimes use a human or animal base mesh to speed up the process if I’m designing a creature. The Move brush is perfect to look for new shapes and proportions. Once I am happy with the proportions I jump into adding some detail with Clay Buildup for major areas and Dam Standard for detail. I usually wait until the last moment to break Symmetry and add different details on certain parts.

To finish my sketch I pose it really quickly and sometimes Polypaint it just to have a quick idea of the colors on the design.

A different close-up pose for the snake dragon

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Sketch of a snake dragon with feathers instead of scales

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The first creature Ruben designed with ZBrush

Ruben used kitbashing techniques to mix organic and hard-surface shapes in this design

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3DCREATIVE MAGAZINE | The sketchbook of Ruben Alvarez

Ruben played around with organic shapes to create this deep-sea creature

Anatomy practice, trying to find a nice and simple dynamic pose. Ruben wanted to create a more humanoid werewolf with less monster-like features

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We look forward to hearing from you!

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3DCREATIVE MAGAZINE | Mastering displacement details

The Artist

Roumen Filipov roumenfilipov.com Software Used: 3ds Max Roumen Filipov is a 3D generalist born in Bulgaria, currently living in Brazil.

His specialty is making 3D characters for film and the advertising agency.

Mastering displacement details

by Roumen Filipov

Roumen Filipov shows us how to add fine skin and clothing details to a character model, from skin pores to fabric stitches, using ZBrush and 3ds Max 3DCREATIVEMAG.COM

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See how Roumen Filipov brings a character to life with small details…

This is the third of a series of four tutorials covering the production of a stylized 3D character of a steampunk pest exterminator girl using ZBrush and 3ds Max, from the initial blocking to the final render and postproduction. In this third phase, we will sculpt the displacement details like pores and cloth wrinkles, then finish the texturing process using Photoshop, with some composite and mask blending tricks in 3ds Max. During the process, I’ll be showing how to reproduce fine details in ZBrush, then I’ll show how to correctly set up and export displacement and normal maps to reproduce the same information on a low-poly mesh in 3ds Max. This tutorial will also show you how to quickly create textures and other maps like specular, bump and dirt masks in order to set up semi-realistic materials in V-Ray.

Creating skin pores and wrinkles in ZBrush

Now let’s have some fun!

01

Sculpting the skin details: Now that we have our model fully retopologized and with proper UVs, it’s time to send it back to ZBrush for some displacement detailing. I always start with the skin since it’s the most tricky and delicate surface to work with. At first, you should look out for imperfections left from the sculpting process and even re-sculpt some detail that has been lost in the new topology.

Multi Map Exporter setup and differences between displacement bit depth Detailed cloth in ZBrush and stitch alphas

As soon as I have my model subdivided and ready, I start to sculpt the most delicate wrinkles around the eyes, mouth, hands and neck. Finally, I use the Standard brush with the stroke on DragRect to spread some pores and very fine wrinkle alphas all over the body. It’s important to look very carefully at how you distribute the size and direction of pores. One thing that’s good to remember during this whole process is that every detail needs to be twice as strong as the other surfaces, because SSS (subsurface scattering) kind of ‘eats’ a large part of it, even with good reflections in the shader.

production-friendly, so I keep with sculpting the old way. The secret for me is to always observe what places in the body inflict more tension on the cloth and try to sculpt all the folds coming from those spots. The result is always some kind of generic but believable fabric behavior over the body. If the character’s clothes are too loose and hanging from the body, I usually pose the base mesh first and then sculpt the folds according to the pose, but in this case, the generic cloth over the body will work fine, even in more extreme poses. The stitches are all made using the stitch brush with the alphas shown in the picture.

02

03

Detailing cloth in ZBrush: Clothes are usually tricky to make. You’ll see a lot of artists using different workflows nowadays in order to avoid having to sculpt folds and wrinkles, but not all of them are very practical and

Exporting Maps from ZBrush: I see a lot of people discussing correct displacement map exporting in ZBrush, and I’ll show you what I’ve found to be the best workflow regarding quality and rendering speed.

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3DCREATIVE MAGAZINE | Mastering displacement details

Setup of VRayDisplacement in 3ds Max

Before anything, the final result in 3ds Max will depend directly on how your mesh behaves.

If you have many stars in your topology and some odd distribution of polygons, this may screw up the displacement. That’s why I always export two types of maps in TIFF format: 32-bit displacements with mid 0, and 16-bit with mid 0.5 setup. The first is obviously much more accurate and I use it with VRayDisplacement modifier, but the second is for using a non-scale-dependent workflow with the displace modifier in 3ds Max. I also use the 16-bit version to help add details to the texture. In the image you can see my setup for exporting the maps and mesh.

04

Using VRayDisplacement in 3ds Max: Now that our displacement maps are properly exported and our new meshes are imported in 3ds Max, it’s time to reproduce the sculpted details directly in the render. First you should check if all the vertices are split using the Unwrap UVW modifier – this method helps to avoid wrong distribution of details after subdividing the mesh. After this, add the VRayDisplacement modifier and follow the settings shown in the image. It’s important to apply the displacement map using a VRayHDRI shader, since it’s made especially for handling 32-bit images, and make sure you set the Color

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Skin Polypainting in ZBrush

Space option to ‘None’. Another important setting is to set the Texmap min and max to -1 and 1, in order to tell the displacement to add negative and positive deformation to the mesh.

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Painting the skin colors: I usually paint most of the textures directly in Photoshop, but for the skin I use a mixed workflow of Polypaint in ZBrush with some

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blending of detail maps in Photoshop. Start by going to the last subdivision of the body model in ZBrush and, with a very smooth Standard brush, start painting the basic color regions of the skin. When you’re finished, export the texture generated from Polypaint, reset the color and generate a surface noise using a slightly darker color. This noise will be added later in order to create an irregularity effect over the overall skin tone; you can even play with different hues, like more green and blue in some regions. This is more important to me than any of the detail painting because it removes the flatness of the skin, which can ruin even the most detailed and realistic models.

“We need more than a good texture to reproduce a believable skin shader in any renderer”

06

Maps used to create the skin shader

Finishing the skin texture: We need more than a good texture to reproduce a believable skin shader in any renderer. In the image, you can see that I use an additional normal map and a grayscale bump to make the pores pop again after the light scatter, followed by specular map to control the shininess of the skin in certain areas. To finish the skin texture, I usually add the bump map along with the 16-bit displacement over the basic colors in order to force the pores and other sculpted details to come out. Since it’s a young girl, you don’t need to do a very contrasting texture – even a really smooth result still works in most cases. I’ll share the skin shader settings at the end of this tutorial.

07

Texturing the eyes : Eyes are usually the biggest challenge there is when it comes to making cartoon characters. There are some things that I usually care about in order to achieve an organic and alive look when creating the eye texture:

Maps used to create the eyes shader

1. The iris border needs to be darker and with a smooth transition. Sharp and perfectly round always kills the look.

2. You can try out higher IOR values in the external sphere material; sometimes this reinforces the depth of the character’s look.

3. The sclera of the eye is never fully white. I always make a gradient of a bright yellow to a darker pink in the borders.

4. I always make the specular map very saturated. More vivid reflections in the base of the iris help to bring the character’s gaze to life.

5. Always use SSS for the eyes, since they’re an organic part too.

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3DCREATIVE MAGAZINE | Mastering displacement details

Fabric textures used in the cloth shaders

08

Texturing the clothes: The secret to making good cloth shaders, for me, is to choose a nice fabric texture as a base to create the bump and diffuse maps. I rarely add reflections to cloth, only if it’s really visible in the type of fabric I want to mimic. I usually run away from very flat and realistic cloth – I really try to give a quick and exaggerated look to the fabric, and also try to make the stitch texture not too tiled. I use many images to make the dirt in the clothes, but also some texture brushes in Photoshop with scatter and hue variations. For all the pockets and leather materials I use a similar workflow, but with a blurry reflection using the unsaturated texture as specular map.

09

Texturing the spray tank models: I’ve developed a very quick shader workflow for scratched and worn-out metal. I know that I have to replicate the same shader with little differences through all the metallic objects, but if I had to paint all the diffuse, specular and bump textures for each one separately, it would take a lot of time. So I create a blend of two shaders: painted metal and rusted metal. For each slot, I create a composite shader with a base color using VRayColor, then tile metal textures with different opacity values on top of it. I use a normal map of random noise surface over the metal bump to make it look more irregular. To blend the two materials, I paint masks in Photoshop for each object, and then, if I want to apply the same shader to another object, I just change the mask and it works fine.

Metal shader workflow of the spray tank

10

Basic shader setup: These are some examples of how I set up some of my shaders mentioned before. The red one is my skin material; it’s basically a VRayBlendMtl composed of an SSS2 shader for the skin itself and a VRayMtl with black diffuse in additive mode for realistic reflections. I always use the GGX BRDF option in all of the shaders – this new V-Ray feature makes the specular more accurate and detailed.

The blue material is the basic metal shader I use for all metallic objects. The last one is the

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Setup of the main shaders I used

cloth shader with a falloff shader applied in the diffuse slot. I use the falloff between the texture and a brighter version of the same in order to

mimic the roughness of the surface caused by the microfibers in the cloth, usually not present in leather shaders.

The Artist

Roumen Filipov roumenfilipov.com

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TOP TIP

UV Master solution Sometimes, even with the correct setup, distortions may occur in some areas when you apply the maps in 3ds Max. A workaround for this is to always unwrap the mesh again in UV Master, checking the ‘Use Existing UV seams’. This correctly recalculates the distance between the edges for displacement generation.

NEXT ISSUE Roumen finishes the character with posing and rendering 57

3DCREATIVE MAGAZINE | Texturing sci-fi ships with MARI

Texture files

Texturing sci-fi ships with MARI

by Rory Björkman Discover Rory Björkman’s sci-fi vehicle texturing techniques in this detailed MARI tutorial 3DCREATIVEMAG.COM

3DCREATIVE MAGAZINE | ISSUE 124

The Artist

Rory Bjรถrkman

artstation.com/artist/bjorkman Software Used: Maya, MARI With a background in traditional art and sculpture, Rory Bjรถrkman is currently studying Media at the National College of Art and Design in Dublin, with a focus on digital arts.

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3DCREATIVE MAGAZINE | Texturing sci-fi ships with MARI

Explore MARI texturing with Rory Björkman…

An overview of the MARI UI and palettes we’ll be using

In this section of the tutorial, we’ll be looking at how to texture a sci-fi airship model using MARI.

01

Overview of the MARI workspace: Before we begin, here’s a brief overview of the MARI workspace. You can click between the 3D painting view under the Ortho tab, and flat UV mode under UV tab depending on the need. If you cannot remember a button function, just let your cursor hover over the button for a few seconds and it will reveal its purpose in a small pop-up tab. In the top-left is the save button – remember to save often.

Now let’s get texturing!

02

Ambient occlusion: After importing the geometry, the first step for texturing our airship is generating ambient occlusion (AO). Select all of the mesh, and under the Objects menu, select Ambient Occlusion. Then under your Procedural tab in the main shader, select Geometry and then Ambient Occlusion.

The AO may have hard edges which can be smoothened using the Blur tool.

First right-click on your AO procedural layer, then ‘Convert to Paintable’ and use the Blur tool to soften any edges that are jagged. Be sure to save your project as you go.

03

Texturing crevices: Now the AO is complete we need to go over the ship with the Brush tool. By pressing the ‘K’ key, you can access the brush sets. I find the Velvet Touch brush (under Organic Brushes) is good for soft organic build-up. To reduce the brush size, press the ‘R’ key and left-click, Creating the model’s ambient occlusion (AO)

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then push up and down or left and right according to the size and fall-off. For the brush opacity, press the ‘O’ key and left-click, and slide left and right. Use these tools to softly build up darkness in all the crevices on the ship.

Using brushes to add texture to the ship’s crevices

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Making and adding the ship’s specular map

04

Specular map: As we go we can create and add to our specular map. Firstly, under the Channel menu, create a new channel with the name ‘Specular’.

your Diffuse stack and duplicate our painted AO layer, then drag this layer across to the Specular stack. When you click the Specular shader again you will see what’s contained within it.

Open this channel stack and drag it across to the left of the screen. Keeping this open, return to

Next, to increase the specular difference between objects, create a layer within the Specular stack,

fill the entire surface with black and reduce the layer opacity to 50%. Next we need to create a mask stack to this layer.

By painting on this layer with black or white paint, we can remove or add the black layer. Think of it as “the lighter it is, the more specular it is.”

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3DCREATIVE MAGAZINE | Texturing sci-fi ships with MARI

05

Texturing bronze parts: Now let’s bring some color into this ship. I have supplied all the textures used in this project in the downloads.

Import the Bronze 2k texture with the image manager. Select individual components, create a new layer in our Diffuse channel and fill in the objects with the bronze texture.

06

Making a rivet texture: For our ship to look as if it’s made of large steel plates, using a rivet or bolt texture along the seams will help to give the impression of material type and scale. Firstly, import the blue bold picture provided into Photoshop, and use the Select Color Range tool to select the blue parts. You can adjust the fuzziness to leave only the shadows from the bolts. Then right-click, Select Inverse and delete the blue.

Next we can desaturate the color and place a small gray disc behind where the bolts were to fill them back in. Creating a small gray disc is easily done by making a circular selection and filling it with mid-gray paint. Then export this as a PNG to retain the transparency.

07

Placing the rivet texture: Before we place the rivet texture created in Photoshop, we first need to apply the base metal texture. Import the ‘Plain Metal’ texture provided into the image manager, and on a new layer, use it to texture the main body of the ship. When this is complete, make another new layer and apply the rivet texture in such a way to create the effect of panels where you feel they fit best. You can adjust the size of a texture in the buffer window by holding Shift+Ctrl and left-clicking while dragging left to right. You can also change the color or tone of the texture being painted by changing the color in the swatch in the top menu.

08

Additional metals: To create a variation of metal types, I think we should apply a lighter type of metal to the sides and front of the body, as well as more bronze on some of the smaller details. We can achieve Creating a rivet texture with Photoshop

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Picking out the ship’s bronze detailing

Applying the rivet texture to a base metal texture

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Brightening some of the metal parts to add variety

Adding more details to break up the plain metal texture

this using the plain metal material again, making another layer, then adding an adjustment stack to that layer and selecting HSV. When you select HSV a new window will open and you can use the V slider to brighten the value of the metal.

09

Detailing some more welds and bolts: To break up the plain areas a bit, and add some more detail to the ship in general, we can start to add some more bolt textures to the front of the ship and the fin. We can also

start to apply some welded textures using the ‘weld’ texture provided. Make sure to apply these textures on separate layers so that we can blend them later if it is necessary to, or use them for some specular masking.

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3DCREATIVE MAGAZINE | Texturing sci-fi ships with MARI

Transferring textures to the specular channel

Adding textures to the ship’s engine

10

Texturing the engine: Now we need to start filling in some of these white parts on the engine. I’ve supplied a texture called ‘old polished metal’ in the texture downloads to use on the main part of the engine and for the propeller strut. For the piping we can apply the copper texture supplied.

By applying textures in separate layers and using an adjustment stack we can tune the lightness or hue of metals to slightly differentiate them if desired.

11

Updating the specular map: Using the textures we have already painted from the diffuse channel, we can now duplicate them and drag them across into the specular channel stack. Then we need to apply an adjustment stack and desaturate the color, then depending on what the material is we can change its opacity to be darker or lighter in the specular channel. By using an adjustment stack on each layer, we can darken or lighten parts using the HSV value slider. Remember: the whiter, the shinier.

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Filling in the window textures

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Texturing the propellers and side engine

Adding a wood paneling effect to the nose of the ship

12

Painting the windows: Using the provided texture ‘dull window’, we can now start to fill in those windows. After importing the texture using the image manager we can fill in the window panes. If the texture looks a bit too dull or dark, we can boost the lightness by using an adjustment stack on the layer with the window texture.

13

Wooden texturing: In keeping with the vintage theme and in the interest of variety of texture and materials, we can paint a nice section of wood paneling on the nose section. Using the wood texture, first paint the front’s side panels, before moving or baking the texture. Select the Spline Warper tool on the top and drag a rectangle around the shape. Using the frame that appears, drag the texture to fit the general shape of the nose by pushing and pulling on the frame edges. Then hit ‘B’ to bake the texture in place.

use an adjustment stack to desaturate it to be almost gray, and darken it just a little as well. Next, for the side engine section, we can paint the inside of it using the ‘mesh’ texture. At this point we may fill in the rest of the side engine using the ‘plain metal’ texture. We can update our specular map with these textures as before.

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The propeller and side engine: Using the texture ‘round metal’, we can paint the propellers now. As this texture is very brown, I will

Adding dirt and grime build-up gives the textures more depth

Adding dirt and grime: As a finishing touch it’s always good to add some wear and tear to a vehicle like this. First make a new layer 65

3DCREATIVE MAGAZINE | Texturing sci-fi ships with MARI

using the grime textures provided, and go around the ship and paint the leak stains and dirt buildup in places where you would expect to find it.

The key to this is not to overdo the dirt unless that is the look you are going for.

16

Adding dirt to the specular channel: Before merging our diffuse textures we must first duplicate and drag our dirt and grime textures into the specular channel. We want these textures to be dull and non-reflective, so we must apply an adjustment stack and by using the HSV adjustment we can reduce the value until the grime texture is almost black. At this point it’s safe to select all of the layers and export them to your desktop. I would recommend renaming them.

TOP TIPS Selecting individual parts To select the individual parts of a piece of geometry, first set the Selection mode to Face and also enable the Smart Selection mode.

This is very useful for masking.

Once you have a piece of geometry selected this way, you can right-click to access a menu which will enable the option to Hide Unselected and isolate the piece of geometry.

Using Smart Selection mode

UI tips When you open a channel stack, you can either drag the window near the edges of the workspace and a slot will automatically open, or you can simply click the little pin tab on the top-right of the box to temporarily tack the window anywhere within your workspace.

Adding our dirt textures to the specular channel

Try using the pinning function

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Making normal maps: We can make our normal maps by using the diffuse textures. First we need to create a new channel for the normal map, then duplicate the diffuse textures and drag them into the normal channel.

As the diffuse textures are all separate, we will

need to select them all and merge them into one. Then by adding an adjustment stack and selecting ‘Height to Normal’, we can right-click and export this layer to the desktop and rename it accordingly. Now the texturing is done and the model is ready for rendering.

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NEXT ISSUE

Finishing off the texturing process with normal maps

Rory Bjรถrkman shares his mental ray rendering workflow

The Artist

Rory Bjรถrkman

artstation.com/artist/bjorkman

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3DCREATIVE MAGAZINE | Creating textures for sci-fi spacecraft

Texture files & UVs

Creating textures for sci-fi spacecraft

by Victoria Passariello

Victoria Passariello shares a range of techniques for creating textures with Photoshop and Substance Designer 3DCREATIVEMAG.COM

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The Artist

Victoria Passariello vitrux3d.com

Software Used: 3ds Max Victoria Passariello creates hard-surface models because she loves robots and 3D. She works at Perihelion Interactive making ships for sci-fi videogame The Mandate.

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3DCREATIVE MAGAZINE | Creating textures for sci-fi spacecraft

Discover new Photoshop texturing techniques from Victoria Passariello…

Hide the seams between panels and try to not make cuts in visible areas

In this second part of my tutorial series, I will show you the texturing process I usually use in my projects. I will show step by step how I cover the different stages in creating the textures of a model, starting by establishing the colors, followed by adding damage and weathering, and finally adding some dirtiness.

I will also share the hand-painting techniques I use in Photoshop, as well as how to obtain certain effects using texture maps. I will also cover a very basic explanation of how to use the Metal Weathering filter in Substance Designer to make dust.

I approach this process using the PBR system’s Metalness/Roughness workflow. I am going to explain the very basic principles of PBR, but if you want to read the full theory, you can download the free Comprehensive PBR Guide from Allegorithmic.

I hope you find my techniques and methods useful to use in your own projects.

01

Making UVs: To make the UVs I use UVLayout. I’ve been using it for about six years now, as it gives me the necessary tools to makes UVs easy and quick. Feel free to use the software of your choice to make the UVs – the important thing to take into account in this process is to hide the seams as much as possible.

Try to make cuts between panels and inside grooves. Try not to make them in the middle of a visible area unless you don’t have any other choice; in that case, you will need to work that area in detail in the texture to cover up the seam as much as possible.

02

Using checker maps: Another important thing to take into account when packing the UVs is to keep all the islands totally vertical or horizontal, because it will make the texturing process easier when painting or using tile maps of panels and straight lines.

Always avoid any oblique islands. You can check by using a checkered map on the object.

03

Texture sheets: Feel free to make two or three texture sheets for the ship. You can divide it as you want, for example, one texture sheet for the front section and one for the rear section. For the purposes of this tutorial and to keep things easy, I keep the whole ship in a single 4096 x 4096 texture sheet and the cables in one 1024 x 1024 texture sheet.

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Make sure to keep all the islands in the UVs 90 degrees straight

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Victoria creates one texture sheet for the ship and one texture sheet for the cables

Rendering the UV template, mask and AO map

04

Rendering out the maps: Before starting to paint the textures, I render out all the maps I’m going to need. The first one is a template for the UVs, which I’ll use in Screen blending mode in Photoshop as a reference for the different objects’ placement.

Inside 3ds Max, apply an ‘Unwrap UVW’ modifier to the object and open the UV editor, then under Tools > Render UV Template, a new window will appear with the options for your render. Just put the correct size of the map and click Render.

The second one I always make is a mask map, which I use in Photoshop’s alpha channel to make quick and easy selections of the areas I need. I’ve got this map in the same window as the UV template, but this time I change some parameters to get the black-and-white image and save it as a TGA file.

Finally for the ambient occlusion (AO) map I use Faogen, a software that make AO maps very quickly and accurately. Feel free to use the software of your choice to make AO maps – the important thing is to have the occlusions very visible in the map.

05

BPR Metalness/Roughness workflow: For this project I’m using PBR rendering with a Metalness/Roughness Workflow. I need three maps for this: 1. Albedo map, where the colors represent the albedo for non-metallic materials and reflectance values for metals.

2. Metallic map, where white represents metal and the black represents non-metal.

3. Roughness map, where white represents rough surfaces and black represents smooth surfaces.

To learn more about the characteristics of each of the maps and take a deeper look at the PBR workflow, you can look at the Comprehensive PBR Guide by Allegorithmic.

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3DCREATIVE MAGAZINE | Creating textures for sci-fi spacecraft

Keeping that knowledge in mind, I start to build all the maps simultaneously in Photoshop, adding details, damage, dirt, and so on, step by step in different layers while constantly checking the process in Marmoset Toolbag 2.

06

Establish the different colors: To start the texturing process, I first establish all the colors of the ship. I create a base layer of solid color that is the base color of the ship (in this case, blue). On top of this one, I start to create more solid color layers with all the different colors, and mask the desired pieces of the ship (I use the mask map I previously made in 3ds Max to help me select the areas and mask them). I basically make variations of blue, some black pieces and some different tones of gray.

The colors in this case represent the paint on the metal, so the roughness map should be the same in all the colors, even though I prefer to add some variation to break the homogeneity.

To learn about the PBR Metalness/Roughness workflow in depth, look up Allegorithmic’s comprehensive documentation

Establish the different colors of the ship and add some variations in the roughness map

The metal map is all black for now since I haven’t established any raw metal yet.

07

Add metal textures: Once I set up all the colors, I move on to add the metal textures. I choose one metal map from www. textures.com as my base metal and duplicate it to fill the whole canvas. I use it in Overlay blending mode to get a very subtle effect.

On top of this, I add a scratch map (also found in www.textures.com, and modified by me) at 60% opacity so the scratches are not very strong and evident in the render.

In the roughness map, I desaturate the metal texture and use it in Multiply mode. I also move the arrows inside the Blending Mode option window so only the darker tones remain visible.

I want the metal texture to be dark here, so these areas look shinier. For the scratch map, I invert the colors so they become black and use it in Multiply mode.

I use a similar process for the metalness map to make it white (suggesting the metal underneath is the paint colors) and I duplicate the scratch map several times in Screen mode to get them very white.

08

Adding the panels map: To add even more variation to the different colors, I add a panel texture from Total Textures v7: Scifi. I use it in Overlay with a very low opacity and modify the Levels to add more contrast. I only use this map in some blue areas, so I make a mask to specify it.

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For the roughness map, I desaturate the map and use it at very low opacity, tweaking Levels for more contrast. The metalness map remains unaffected by the panels. I also convert the desaturated map into a normal map to create more distinctions in the render.

At this point you should feel that the ship is made of metal and has been painted, and the damage

should look natural. If it doesn’t, go back and play a bit with the albedo, roughness and metalness maps, changing the values and balance of colors, and so on. In this tutorial I’m showing you the final result, my final colors and roughness values, but they took me a lot of time and testing until they looked good and natural. Feel free to change them as much as necessary until they give you a great result.

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Add metal textures and scratches. Darker in the Roughness map to suggest a smooth material and Lighter in the Metalness map to suggest the metal underneath the paint colors

Add an extra panel map to get more variations in color and roughness/smoothness

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3DCREATIVE MAGAZINE | Creating textures for sci-fi spacecraft

Paint some areas of glow to add more visual interest to the model

Paint the peeling on the borders of the panels and in other exposed areas

3DCREATIVEMAG.COM

3DCREATIVE MAGAZINE | ISSUE 124

Create a solid color and mask the areas of the decals. Play with the blending options to get a nice wear effect

09

Making the emissive map: Once I’ve got all the colors, panels, metal and scratches, the ship’s starting to take shape in terms of shaders/materials. It looks metallic and a bit damaged.

Before I continue adding the peeling, dust and rust, I’ll first create the emissive map. The emissive map always adds that extra layer of detail and visual interest to the model, creating areas that emit light. I always like to add some lines and dots here and there, and it also looks good to paint the windows and engines and make them glow.

To make the emissive map, I create a black solid color as the base layer, and on top of this one I add the emissive color layer (in this case, blue).

This blue layer has a mask where I start to paint all the areas I wanted to glow. (I use the UV template in Screen mode as a guide to paint.)

10

Adding peeling to the borders: Finally, the peeling, my favorite part. I need to be

extra careful when making the peeling because I always add too much and then the model starts to look super destroyed; I end up deleting a lot of what I had already painted. (In any case, my models always look destroyed!) So whatever the goal you want for your model, whether you want it to look old and damaged or only have a bit of peeling damage, this is a very fun step.

Nowadays there are some techniques to obtain this effect quickly: for example, using curvature maps or Substance Designer. However, I’m still a big fan of painting by hand because I like to have full control of what I want to do and where exactly I want to do it. Using one technique or another will alway depends on your time constraints. In this tutorial I will share how I do this completely by hand.

For the albedo map, I create a dark-gray solid color layer and use a dry brush to start masking the borders of the panels. Remember that the value of gray determines the reflectance of the metal in the metalness map. I want the peeling to

look bright, but not much, so I test some different gray values until I get the result I want.

In the roughness map, I use a very dark-gray because I want the surface to look smooth, since it’s the raw metal that’s been revealed underneath the paint. Finally, for the metalness map, I use a very light-gray, almost white.

Even if I use PBR and start using real material values, I change them a bit to fit my own tastes.

11

Decals: After the hard work of painting all the peeling, let’s take a rest to add some decals, like the yellow bands on the sides and some logos. As usual, I create a solid color layer (yellow this time) and mask in the areas where I want the bands and logos to be. To give the worn feeling of the yellow paint, I modify some blending options in the Layer Style window.

In the roughness map, I use a light-gray to get a rough result. As I said before, it needs to be tested several times to get the desired result. The metalness map remains unaffected.

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Make different adjustments to a texture to use it as rust

12

Adding rust: For the rust effect, I want to add some orange/reddish patches around the model, but I don’t want to paint them by hand, so for this one I use a burnt texture from Total Textures v19: Destroyed & Damaged. At first glance, the chosen map doesn’t have the characteristics I want, but with a bit of manipulation in Photoshop I obtained exactly what I’m looking for.

I first copy the map around all the canvas, then put it in Color blending mode and play with the blending options inside the Layer Style window.

At this point I’ve got the reddish patches I want, but they’re missing contrast, so I make some Levels adjustments and it’s done. I copy the same layer with all its blending adjustments (without the Levels adjustment) to the roughness map, but I need it to be white so I desaturate the map and set it to Color Dodge mode.

For the metalness map, I again copy the layer with its blending adjustments, but this time I use it in Subtract mode to have it in black. It is almost invisible to the eyes if you look at the metalness map, but the rust texture is there doing its job.

13

Dirt pass: I don’t paint the dirt by hand, and I don’t use any texture for it either.

On this occasion, I use Substance Designer to generate the dirt. In Substance Designer, I first create a Metalness/Roughness Graph. I add a

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Generate a dirt map in Substance Designer using the Metal Weathering Filter

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Use the dirt map generated in Substance Designer in Multiply mode for the albedo and inverted in Screen mode for the roughness

Metal Weathering filter and only choose the Base Color input. I link a white color to the Base Color input and link the ship’s ambient occlusion map in the Ambient Occlusion input. That’s all I need here to generate the dirt, so, in the Effect rollout of the Weathering filter, I play with the Dirtiness parameter until I’ve achieved a nice result. I export the Base Color output here and am ready to start working in Photoshop once again. (See image 13a.)

Now I’m back in Photoshop with the new dirt map. It looks nice in Multiply mode, but the dirt wouldn’t be black, so to add some color to the new map I apply an orange/brownish solid

color to it. I also add it in Multiply mode to the metalness map.

For the roughness map, I need to invert the colors of the map, so the black dirt becomes white and I use it in Screen blending mode. (See image 13b.)

The Artist

NEXT ISSUE

Victoria Passariello renders the ship in Marmoset Toolbag 2

Victoria Passariello vitrux3d.com

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3DCREATIVE MAGAZINE | Texturing assets with Substance Painter

Model file Texture files

The Artist

Andrew Finch

andrewfinch.carbonmade.com Software Used: 3ds Max, ZBrush, Photoshop, Substance Painter, Marmoset Toolbag 2 Andrew Finch is a principle environment artist for Microsoft’s Rare Studio. He has nine years’ industry experience and is currently working on his eleventh title.

Texturing assets with Substance Painter

by Andrew Finch

Learn how Andrew Finch uses the powerful texturing software Substance Painter to add realism to this battle-worn Viking shield asset 3DCREATIVEMAG.COM

3DCREATIVE MAGAZINE | ISSUE 124

Discover Substance Painter with Andrew Finch…

In this tutorial I will guide you through the process of creating a Viking shield inspired by the TV show Vikings. In the last tutorial we UV mapped a low resolution mesh of the shield and baked the high resolution data to a normal map. We also set up the Substance Painter project ready for us to begin texturing.

In this tutorial we will use Substance Painter to texture the Viking shield to almost completion using a lot of the powerful tools it has to offer, such as the Substance materials to generate wear and tear. We will also explore painting the PBR textures and adjusting an already existing normal map. At the end of this fourpart tutorial series all the assets we create will be imported in Marmoset Toolbag 2 and set up in a quick scene to show off our model; but instead of rendering out still images for your portfolio, I will show you how to use the new Marmoset Viewer tool to create an interactive portfolio piece, which is a new very impressive way to display your artwork to potential employers, giving them the ability to examine your asset interactively.

The base layer is an already existing diffuse texture from Photoshop

01

Updated base layer: In the previous chapter I showed you how to import an already existing texture to use as our base layer. I thought this texture was a little too plain-looking and so I decided to add some detail and color; most Viking shields have a pattern on them, so I added a red background and a white outline to the wooden cross shape. I think this looks much better and traditional. All of the other elements that make up the shield will be textured using Substance materials. These materials utilize texture maps to define how they behave and are very powerful and quick at producing realistic seamless textures.

Substance Painter’s intelligent masking tools easily mask out unwanted areas

02

Geometry Decal tool: We will be using the masking tools a lot during the texturing phase and Substance Painter’s Geometry Decal tool makes creating masks very easy. You have many options for selecting areas to mask in or out such as UV islands, elements or polygons. You can drag and select elements in the 3D viewport or 2D viewport, and press F1, F2 and F3 to switch viewport modes. If you’re working on a complex shape that’s hard to select, use the 2D UV window to easily select the UV islands.

You are also given a grayscale slider to pick the color of your masked areas; the same rules apply as any other mask texture, where black is removed and white is drawn.

Baking out textures to take full advantage of the Smart Material capabilities

03

Baking new texture: Smart Materials are a group of folders and layers used to create advanced effects for your textures. In order for these materials to work correctly they require certain textures; AO maps are used to tell the material where dirt can build up, for example. A

new texture which you can bake out in Substance Painter is the curvature map, which gives curved edge information to the material. This is good for wear and tear – areas that will be subject to weathering and general use. Under the TextureSet Settings, click Bake Textures and you’re presented 79

3DCREATIVE MAGAZINE | Texturing assets with Substance Painter

with a new window to choose what new textures you want to bake. Make sure ‘Curvature’, ‘World space normal’ and ‘Ambient occlusion’ are ticked.

After pressing Bake Textures your project will be updated with these new textures. The normal map will have changed to use the new normal map, so make sure you re-apply your baked-out normal map from 3ds Max.

04

Smart Materials: Substance Painter’s Smart Material library has some very useful materials for us to use to begin our texturing. These materials not only paint the diffuse color, but they affect the PBR and normal maps, making sure they full integrate with your model’s textures. These materials are fully customizable, allowing us to produce unique tileable textures. To apply a Smart Material, just select Smart Material in the layers tab. The library is then visible for you to select the appropriate one; in this case, I’m texturing the metal hand guard, so I use the ‘Steel Scratched’ material as this has a nice metal surface with plenty of scratches and dents which fit this element.

Substance Painter’s default library of Smart Materials is a useful starting point

05

Smart Material properties: To access the properties of a Smart Material, look for a mask with a red line under it, which indicates it has layer options. Click the layer and the generator is now visible, where you can adjust dirt level, dirt contrast, and grunge. Each Smart Material has different setups and generators so feel free to play around with them to get used to what they do. Note the Image Inputs contain an AO map and a curvature map to generate the details such as scratches and dirt.

Exposed Smart Material properties for customization of the textures

Remember to use the masking tools to remove unwanted areas the new material is affecting. By default all of your model will be textured using the new material until told not to.

06

Gold ring: The texturing process can really now start to speed up by using the mask tools and the Smart Materials. Just quickly dragging and dropping the materials into the layer stack quickly applies excellent textures to the asset. Here I drag the Gold Armor material for use on the ring that holds the leather together.

This spot of color and reflective highlight will really stand out among the darker wood and leather. I adjust the settings slightly just to make sure that I had something unique compared to the default settings. We can paint an extra layer of dirt onto these areas at a later stage.

07

Leather straps: I use the Smart Material ‘Leather Rough’ to use as a base for the texture. To get a good worn-edge look I use a ‘MG Metal Edge Wear’ filter – I find this gives me

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Texturing different elements now becomes a quick process

the best results for edge wear using both the curvature and AO maps. This is a good base but I feel it could be improved more, so I paint in more edge wear using a white noisy brush in the mask layer to paint in areas that would be worn away

with heavy use. I’m not heavy with the default color of the leather, so to make it look more natural I edit the base color and edge damages color. I use a lighter beige color to help it stand out from the wooden panels behind it.

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The heavily worn leather strap using curvature map and hand painting

The thick protective leather surrounding used the same techniques as the straps

08

Outer leather surrounding: I will use the same techniques here as we did with the leather straps, to texture the leather outer surrounding. I use the leather Smart Material

with the ‘MG Metal Edge Wear’ filter applied, with slightly different settings which are shown in the image above. I tweak the colors again now to something that is more suitable for the

shield. The curvature map plays an important part here to really get the worn texture down, so that it matches the ZBrushed creases and curves featured in the material.

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3DCREATIVE MAGAZINE | Texturing assets with Substance Painter

09

Varying the wood color: The wooden parts of the shield are looking a bit too samey, so to fix this I use Photoshop to edit the base wood texture we originally brought in as our starting layer. I make the texture lighter in color. Back in Substance Painter, I import the new texture and apply it as a new fill layer to my stack. I then apply a black mask layer to make it invisible. I can now use a white noisy brush to gently draw in some highlights to the wood. As this is a fairly noisy surface you would expect a lot of variations in color and dirt.

10

Hand-painted dirt: Now all of our Smart Materials are placed, we need to start to bed them in more so they look more natural. We do this by painting in details such as weathering and dirt. So on a new empty layer, I use a black noisy brush and lightly paint in dirt build-up behind the nails and in the creases.

Don’t be scared to add too much, because if it looks too heavy when we are done we can always reduce the opacity of the layer or use a mask layer to soften the effect.

Using a second pre-made texture to add variations to the wood texture

11

Painting dirt build-up: On a new layer I continue to build up the layers of dirt, painting in all of the corners and crevices. I keep certain areas more clean, for example where the shoulders or forearm would be continually rubbing the surface. I like to keep each element’s painted dirt on separate layers, so I can use the layers’ opacity to tone the effect down if it’s too heavy without affecting the whole shield.

12

Coloring the dirt: Doing the same process as above, I paint some dirt detail on the metal hand guard areas, particularly around the nails. As this is a metal surface, I can add some color to the dirt layer to represent rusting. I keep the color dull so it doesn’t stand out too much from the rest of the shield. I also add some larger patches of rust color on the spherical surface just to vary the diffuse coloring.

Hand-painted dirt and grime to really weather and age this asset

13

Stitching mask: I feel it would be an easier process to paint the stitching in Photoshop rather than in Substance Painter, where I’ll have more control over such a finicky process. Using the UV texture and the normal map texture as a guide, I use the normal map texture to show where the height data is for each stitch so the textures line up correctly. I paint a black-and-white mask of stitching, making sure the stitches are untidy to look more natural. I save the texture out.

14

Imported layer mask: Import the newly created mask texture into Substance Painter and select it in the Textures tab of the

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Continual build-up of painted dirt layers on the wooden panels

3DCREATIVE MAGAZINE | ISSUE 124

Metal dirt layer with an element of rusting

Stitching detail for the leather straps will add a focus area of detail to the shield

Using an imported texture as a layer mask

Dirtying up the stitching to match the dirt on the leather straps

Shelf. Create a new fill layer and add a black mask, then right-click on the mask and select ‘Use texture as mask’. Select the stitches mask we just imported. You should now see the stitching appear on the leather straps as intended. Adjust the layers color and PBR values to look natural with the rest of the shield.

CHECKOUT CHAPTER 04 ON PAGE 086 Andrew Finch renders the final shield asset…

15

Dirty stitching: The stitching stands out too much from the leather strapping because it is too clean. The stitches need to be dirtied up to match the weathering and wear on the leather straps. On another new layer, paint in some dirt but try to match the patches that are on the straps so it looks consistent. The straps really add something different to the shield with their organic shapes and details. I want to add more details to the rest of the shield to finish off and get the asset into Marmoset Toolbag 2, which I will cover in the next chapter.

The Artist

Andrew Finch

andrewfinch.carbonmade.com 83

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3DCREATIVE MAGAZINE | Presenting assets in Marmoset Viewer

Alphas and maps

The Artist

Andrew Finch

andrewfinch.carbonmade.com Software Used: 3ds Max, ZBrush, Photoshop, Substance Painter, Marmoset Toolbag 2 Andrew Finch is a principle environment artist for Microsoft’s Rare Studio. He has nine years’ industry experience and is currently working on his eleventh title.

Presenting assets in Marmoset Viewer

by Andrew Finch

Andrew Finch demonstrates how to render a real-time asset from Marmoset Toolbag 2 to the interactive Marmoset Viewer 3DCREATIVEMAG.COM

3DCREATIVE MAGAZINE | ISSUE 124

Take your asset presentation to the next level…

In this tutorial I will guide you through the process of creating a Viking shield inspired by the TV show Vikings. In the previous tutorial we textured the shield using Substance Painter and some of its powerful tools. We looked at not only hand-painting details but using Smart Materials and importing custom textures to aid in the texturing process. Not only was the diffuse texture created, but the Substance Painter helped create the PBR textures.

In this final chapter we will export all of the assets from Substance Painter and import them into Marmoset Toolbag 2. We will create a small scene in Marmoset to display our work and also explore the new feature Marmoset Viewer. This will enable us to export an interactive display of our artwork that can be uploaded to galleries. This new way of presenting your work is becoming really popular and would definitely make your work stand out from the crowd.

Painting blood detail onto the shield using a stencil mask

01

Stencil masks: No well-used Viking shield should be without some blood stains, old and fresh. To get a realistic blood stain would be quite difficult to do by hand-painting, especially for this art style, so we’ll use decals or stencils as masks to paint the details. I use the www.textures.com texture library as they have some very good blood splatter decals.

Once I have a few variations I’m happy with, I turn them into black-and-white masks and make sure they are square textures as they work better in Substance Painter. Import the blood splatter decals and select them in the Texture tab. Drag this stencil texture to the stencil section of the brush properties and it will now be overlaid over the viewports.

Dried blood splatter painted onto the shield

02

Dried blood splatter: I prefer to use the 2D viewport for this as it gives better precision when painting. I’m starting with dried old blood so it’s darker in color. It also has no shine to it, so its roughness value should be quite high. I add a levels modifier to the layer and change it to affect roughness only; this gives me better control and can be easily adjusted later on. I also add a second levels modifier that only affects the base color to give me better control over the color of the dried blood later on if it doesn’t quite look right.

03

Fresh blood splatter: On a second layer and using a different stencil, I add some fresh blood to the shield using the same techniques as above. As I want some blood on the leather corners, I paint this in the 3D viewport.

Fresh blood splatter to contrast with the dried blood

I also add two more levels modifiers to give the blood a more vibrant red color, and also a lower roughness value so it’s more reflective, making it

look fresh. Continue to paint the blood around the shield but don’t go too overboard with it, or it’ll hide the other nice details in the shield.

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3DCREATIVE MAGAZINE | Presenting assets in Marmoset Viewer

04

Filling in the cracks: The painted-on stencils can look a little flat and fake.

This is because the normal map detail from the wood is showing through the blood decal too much; as blood is quite thick, you would expect it to fill in the cracks more, so to fix this we need to adjust the imported normal map. Substance Painter uses height maps to add to the normal map but this wont allow us to remove details from the normal map that we imported at the start. In order to paint into the normal map itself you need to add the normal map to the material. In the TextureSet settings next to the channel section, click the ‘+’ sign to get a lot more channels that we can add to our material. Select normal map. You will now notice a Base Normal has been added to the layer and a ‘nrm’ tab has appeared on the material. Now we can make edits to the actual normal map and subtract the detail away.

Filling in the wood detail with blood to stop the ‘painted-on’ effect

05

Normal map wood damage: At the top of the layer section, select normal from the drop-down list so that we can only paint in the normal channel and not affect the other channels accidentally. Create a new layer and turn off all except the height channel. Now when you paint on the model you will notice you can add or subtract height data from the normal map.

I feel the damaged part of the handle is a little flat, so I paint in some random brushstrokes to carve away at the wood. You can add scratches or blend out any detail you feel is too heavy around the asset.

06

Completed texturing of shield: This now completes the methods I use to texture the shield. You can keep painting in details where you feel it is needed. This image shows the back view of the shield, which I think is quite successful at showing a damaged, weathered and well-used Viking shield. The gold ring and stitched leather really add a nice hint of detail. These assets are now ready to be exported to Marmoset Toolbag 2.

Painting in new normal map details into the wood damage

07

Exporting the textures: The export process in Substance Painter is very simple. Select File > Export Textures and you will be presented with the export window. Here you can say where the files will be saved to; the size of the exported texture maps and the format of the textures. I use TGA for my format and a resolution of 2,948.

There is also a list of all the textures that will be exported: Base color, Height, Roughness, Metallic and Normal. Hit export and Substance Painter will export the textures quickly. We can now move on to presenting our work in Marmoset Toolbag 2.

3DCREATIVEMAG.COM

Completed model in Substance Painter, ready for export

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Exporting the textures out of Substance Painter ready for Marmoset

Importing the shield mesh and normal map into Marmoset Toolbag 2

08

Mesh and normal in Marmoset: The first thing to do in Marmoset Toolbag 2 is import the shield mesh, which should be the same FBX file you used in Substance Painter.

I then drag the normal map into the surface/ normal map slot of the material. I like to do this first as it will show up any problems. Sometimes the normal map can be flipped if you notice any

issues. Select one of the Flip options to correct the map – in this case I flip the normal map on the Y axis. Now it looks as it did before in Substance Painter.

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3DCREATIVE MAGAZINE | Presenting assets in Marmoset Viewer

09

Importing the metallic map: Next up in the material is the Metallic map. I like to leave the diffuse (base color) until last as I don’t want it to distract from any of the other textures.

Drag the metallic map into the Reflectivity slot and change the type from Specular to Metalness.

This is setting up the material to use the PBR textures we exported from Substance Painter.

10

Importing the roughness map: Drag the roughness map into the microsurface/gloss map slot. You may notice that it looks a little odd or dark and patchy. This is because Marmoset Toolbag 2and Substance Painter use these maps a little differently. To get to the same result, each engine has their own way of dealing with textures, so it’s something you have to get used to in the games industry.

The simple fix for this is to invert the texture (Marmoset have kindly added an ‘Invert’ check box to do this). Another important step to make sure this material is working at its best is to change the Reflection type to GGX, as this gives much better results to the final image.

Adding the metallic map to the material

11

Importing the diffuse texture: Now that the PBR side of the material is set up and working correctly, we can drag the diffuse (base_color) into the albedo map slot. Now we have our completed textured shield in Marmoset Toolbag 2 looking just like it did when we exported it from Substance Painter. Now we can edit the scene to get the best possible results for our presentation.

12

Adding a sky light: It is important to select the right sky light background, not only for looks but because the asset’s lighting comes from these HDR backgrounds. We need to make sure we select a background that lights the shield correctly but also isn’t too distracting from our artwork. Marmoset Toolbag 2 comes with a free library of backgrounds to choose from, so go through them all and see what differences they make. For this image I choose ‘Castle Sunset’.

Now that we have a backdrop selected, I click on the image where I would like the main light source to come from. I pick a central position which emits an orangey sunset light. I also turn the brightness down to 0.5 and increase the Child-Light Brightness to 5.0 so the orange light is more dominant.

Adding the roughness map to the material

13

Placing point lights: Even though Marmoset Viewer allows the user to rotate the lighting, this isn’t always obvious, so to make sure that no area of the mesh is in darkness we will add some extra lighting. It won’t be too bright as that would look strange, but just enough to illuminate the detail. Click Scene > Add New

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Adding the diffuse (base color) to the material

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A suitable sky that shows off the asset in the right light

Placing point lights to add fill and rim lighting to ensure there are no dark spots on the mesh

Light and a point light will be placed in the center of the viewport. We can now move this light into position behind the shield and slightly to the side.

I give it a dull reddish color to match the sunset light, with a low brightness of 12 (just enough to

highlight the surface) but this also depends on how far away you place the light from the shield.

I add a second point light, this time at the front of the shield, and with a blueish color to contrast the red.

14

Curve editor: Only some of the effects can be seen in the Marmoset Viewer for performance reasons, but one of the effects that can be used is the Curve Editor to colorcorrect and balance the scene. To do this I first 91

3DCREATIVE MAGAZINE | Presenting assets in Marmoset Viewer

change the background to black so I don’t get affected by the background image. Select the Main Camera in the scene viewer, and under Post Effects/Color, select ‘Curves’. This opens the Curve Editor window, which works the same as Levels in Photoshop. I adjust the red, green and blue channels individually to get the desired effect: I add more red in the highlights and less in the shadows, and do the opposite in the blue channel, leaving the green roughly as default.

This helps push the reds in the blood and paint and the blues in the metal and darker areas.

15

Final scene: To finish off the scene, I switch the background image back on but give it a slight blur. I feel the black is too simple and I like the subtle colors coming through, which really help make it look more photorealistic. Blurring the background keeps the viewer’s eye on the asset and our artwork. In the Render tab I enable Ambient Occlusion and set it to maximum, and make sure Local Reflection, High-Res Shadow and Front Face Shadows are all enabled. These settings won’t make it through to Marmoset Viewer but will make our rendered images look higher quality. Before we export, position the camera the way you want the viewer to be first presented, with the shield as shown in the image.

Using the Curve Editor to color correct the scene

16

Exporting to Marmoset Viewer: Now the scene is complete, click File > Viewer Export and you are presented with the Marmoset Viewer export window. Fill in all the fields to make sure your artwork is presented professionally, then browse to the location you want the export to go to. I keep all settings as default but make sure Auto Play is enabled and click Export.

Marmoset will now package up the scene and export two files ready to be uploaded to the internet. Here is the official link to guide you through presenting your viewer work on websites.

Final view before exporting to Marmoset Viewer

The share section is most helpful, showing you how to add it to portfolio galleries such as ArtStation. You can also get the embedded code to link to your uploads. You can view the finished asset in Marmoset Viewer here, or visit my profile to see the asset and more single images.

This now concludes my tutorial on making a Viking shield and exporting it to the new Marmoset Viewer. I hope you have found it useful, exploring the new software now available to us artists. Substance Painter really does make texturing easy, and the Marmoset Viewer is a great way to quickly and professionally present your work in a real-time engine.

Exporting the finished scene to the Marmoset Viewer

3DCREATIVEMAG.COM

3DCREATIVE MAGAZINE | ISSUE 124

YOU CAN VIEW THE FINISHED ASSET IN MARMOSET VIEWER

BY CLICKING HERE

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The Artist

3DCREATIVE MAGAZINE | Presenting assets in Marmoset Viewer

Andrew Finch

andrewfinch.carbonmade.com

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3DCREATIVE MAGAZINE | Designing a fantasy character

The Artist

Tanvir Islam

incubatorfx.com facebook.com/tanvirmni Software Used: ZBrush, Mantra Tanvir Islam is a selftaught CG generalist from Dhaka, Bangladesh. He is the founder of Incubator Effects Studios, a group of CG generalists working on versatile projects.

Designing a fantasy character Tanvir Islam shares the ZBrush modeling and Houdini rendering techniques behind his epic character design, Khlotharius 3DCREATIVEMAG.COM

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Get an insight into Zeno Pelgrims’ workflow…

Designing some early motifs

The purpose of making Khlotharius involved a few things, including testing my character rigging pipeline and transferring the whole light and shade pipeline from Maya to Houdini’s Mantra renderer. In this tutorial I will try to explain how I started in ZBrush and ended up rendering in Mantra.

01

Concept: Blizzard Entertainment’s characters have always inspired me, and I’m a big fan of all The Lord of the Rings films, so whenever I plan a character these kinds of detailed ideas pop out from the back of my head.

Keeping that in mind, plus collecting some shape references and design motifs of ‘elements’ such as wind and fire, I created these motifs. They’ll be used to design the armor details later. For the character himself, I collected some anatomy references from the internet, using Google and Pinterest. I tend to use my memory for anatomy sculpting for a little stylization, but whenever I get confused I turn to references.

02

Starting from a sphere: If it’s a personal project I always start from a DynaMesh sphere in ZBrush. Using the Standard, Move, Snake Hook, Inflate and Smooth brushes, I create the basic form of the figure, as pictured.

Building a base mesh up from a sphere

03

Further sculpting: In order to build up secondary forms, I love to use the Clay Buildup brush in combination with Alpha06. By

using this technique, I create all the necessary secondary forms, like bony landmarks and muscle fibers.

Adding more form with Clay Buildup

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The sculpted mesh so far

04

Retopology: Now it’s time to do the topology. For topology I primarily use ZBrush’s ZRemesher for the body, then take the mesh into Maya. But before exporting, under the ‘Export’ section of the Tools menu, deselect ‘Grp’.

Retopologizing the mesh with ZRemesher

05

Setting the scale in Maya: Now I’m importing into Maya, one of the most important steps to do is setting the scale of the mesh. If the figure is six feet tall, then we should scale it to that measurement. I usually set the unit of measurement to feet and scale the figure to match the height I’m looking for. If I don’t do this step now, I’ll have trouble getting perfect displacement effects, lighting and rigging later.

06

Making polygroups: Now I bring the retopologized mesh back into ZBrush and assign some polygroups for later use of the hide/show function and UV mapping. Make sure you also store the Morph Target. The model is now ready for adding micro details like skin wrinkles and pores!

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Making sure we set the correct scale in Maya

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The model split into polygroups

Add surface noise to the skin before beginning to sculpt details

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Adding surface noise: Before going into some of the finer details, I distort the model a little bit with some surface noise. I start with the higher noise scale and the lower strength. Each time that I apply the surface noise

Some of the brush settings used for sculpting details

to the mesh, I lower the noise scale and increase the noise strength.

It’s best to start with a lower subdivision and increase it each time you add more noise, but

this might inflate the model. So, in some places, I make use of the Morph brush and masked areas.

To break up the secondary forms more, I use the Inflate brush with Alpha63 and Depth Gravity Strength set to 60.

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The custom brushes used for

The finished skin details

The model’s UVs in Maya

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Sculpting skin details: For skin pores, wrinkles and cross-hatching detail, I use the Dam Standard and Pen A brushes with ZSub on, and the Standard brush with Color Spray settings using various alphas. With the help of the brushes pictured, and some custom alphas, I create all the skin details.

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Exporting UVs into Maya: For the UVs, I have the help of ZBrush’s UV Master plug-in. Under the UV Master settings, I turn on the polygroups which I created before. This gives

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me a decent UV. I export the low resolution mesh into Maya, making sure to deselect ‘Grp’ under the Export menu, as I did previously in step 4. If you don’t do this, the model will be exported in chunks. In Maya, I arrange it into four UDIMs (UV tiles) with some UV changes.

After this, I export the model back into ZBrush. As there are no changes made to the mesh, keeping the tool open in ZBrush at its lowest subdivision and simply importing the UV modified mesh into ZBrush will do just fine.

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Sculpting the armor: There are a few awesome techniques for creating hardsurface accessories, which wouldn’t be possible or efficient without ZBrush. I’ll try to explain a few of them. To start with, we need a base, which can be extracted from the body as follows.

First we need to duplicate the SubTool and mask the area to extract the mesh from. Use Ctrl+W to assign a polygroup. Now we need to smooth the jagged line of the polygroup border. For this I use the Smooth Groups brush from the

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Modeling and detailing an armor piece

Adding some motif details to the armor

Smooth brush collection in the Lightbox. Draw around the jagged polygroup border and hide the other polygroups. Under Tools > Geometry > Modify Topology, press ‘Delete hidden’, but before applying this remove or freeze all the subdivision levels. Now use ZRemesher with its default setting. Next, choose the ‘Half’ preset under ZRemesher and press it several times to get the polycount you think is suitable. Adjust it according to your needs.

From the Stroke menu, under Curve function, select ‘Border only’ and press Frame Mesh. This

will give us a guide curve at the border. Select the Curve Tube brush, click on the existing guide curve and apply DynaMesh. Smooth the jagged polygroup border and apply DynaMesh as we did above. Unwrap using UV Master, and now we have a clean base to which we can add detail. I select a white color and fillObject.

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Detailing the armor: No we can Polypaint the mesh using the Surface Noise function, with custom image along with UV enabled. We are going to use Surface Noise just to extract color from a custom image. Set the

Strength to 0, Mix Basic Noise to 0, Color Blend to 1 and the color to black. Now apply the noise to the mesh.

I apply a mask based on color intensity and hit Ctrl+W to make a polygroup. I duplicate the SubTool, hide the other polygroups, and then press delete hidden. I use ZRemesher with its default setting and extrude with ZModeler. Now I’ve got something with much better topology.

I use Crease Polygroup, subdivide twice, then Uncrease All. Finally, I subdivide again to get a cleaner edge.

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Creating a stitch using a torus

Creating a cloth with stitch detailing

With the help of this technique, I create all the armor pieces.

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Making a stitch: First we need to create a Curve Insert brush with stitch mesh.

Start with a poly converted torus and shape it into the letter ‘C’. Align it in a way that looks like the letter ‘I’, or based on your needs. If it’s lying on a surface, then align it that way. From the Brush menu, select ‘Create InsertMesh’. From the Stroke menu, choose Curve Mode. Now we have a stitch that can be applied to the character’s clothes.

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Creating cloth: Now I’ll create some fabric. First I do the ‘Group by normals’ to separate the facing surface by polygroup. I divide

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it and hide the other groups, then shrink the visibility. I use the Curve function’s ‘Frame Mesh

by Border’.

This way I get the guide curve a little inside the surface, which is the perfect area to place the stitches. Later it will be used to create stitches with the Curve Insert brush. With the Insert brush, click on the guide curve. Under the Brush menu, use the ‘Imbed’ slider to set the height of the Insert Mesh placement. Use the ‘CurveStep’ slider to set the distance in between each stitch.

Now with more work we can bring out a nice stitch detail. Under Curve Function, you can use Smooth to remove distortion on the guide curve.

If any weird result appears after changing the CurveStep value, try pressing Smooth once and then click on the guide curve using the Insert brush. You have to be careful because it also changes the placement of the guide curve just a little bit.

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Final accessories: The belts are created using the CurveStrapSnap brush, and the chain accessories are created with the help of various Insert brushes. The hood and clothes are created using Maya’s nCloth, then brought back into ZBrush for detailing. I use the Surface Noise function with a custom alpha image. To UV map all the belts, strips, armors and cloth, I follow the same procedure I used for the body.

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The model with final details added

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Exporting displacement maps

Moving into Houdini

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Setting up shaders in Houdini

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Displacement output: This character has four UDIMs so we have to follow a special workflow to output any map from ZBrush.

We have to create polygroups based on these UDIMs. From the Polygroups rollout, press ‘UV Groups’. Now every time we output any map, we have to show only one of these polygroups at a time. At this point I am more concerned about displacement. I output all the displacement maps using the settings shown.

“I assign Houdini’s mantraSurface shader to the body and make a special network to use the four UDIMs’ displacement maps with the shader. For this we will have to double-click on the mantraSurface to get deep into the shader and find the displacement section”

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Exporting into Houdini: With the help of a special workflow for UDIM in ZBrush, I output all the maps. I want to check if all my displacement details have came along nicely in Houdini, so I export all the meshes into it. I create some basic lighting to check the displacement and also create a Mantra PBR.

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Houdini shaders: I assign Houdini’s mantraSurface shader to the body and make a special network to use the four UDIMs’ displacement maps with the shader. For this we will have to double-click on the mantraSurface to get deep into the shader and find the displacement section.

I create the five nodes shown in the image, and connect them accordingly. Under the default displacement section which comes with mantraSurface, you will find textureDisp already connected to luminanceDisp, RGBDispChannel and texture_value. Disconnect them from textureDisp and connect them with the ‘add’ node which we created just now. I also change UV Transform’s ‘Translate x’ value based on the UDIM number. I use a value of 0 for the first, 1 for the second and so on.

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Testing the displacement: As the scale of the model is based on realworld scale, I’ll have less trouble getting the displacement and detail which I already achieved in ZBrush. Here you can see the settings for the displacement, and test renders of the model with and without displacement.

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Texture painting: I texture the body using a mix of image projection and 105

3DCREATIVE MAGAZINE | Designing a fantasy character

Setting up the displacement

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Starting to paint texture onto the model

hand painting with the various masking features that ZBrush provides. While texturing I use ZBrush’s skinShade4 shader. For image projection I use ZBrush’s Spotlight function. First we have to import a texture from the Texture menu. Select the texture and press ‘Add to spotlight’. The Lightbox might pop out at this point, but turn it off. Now we’re in texture placement and editing mode, so place and edit the texture using the circular manipulator.

Adding more realistic detail to the skin

Now we need to use two important shortcuts: Z and Shift+Z. Shift+Z will enable and disable Spotlight mode. After turning Spotlight on, the ‘Z’ key will switch between image-editing and painting mode. For the Standard brush, we must enable ‘RGB only’ to project color. If ZAdd/ZSub is enabled it will project detail as well. This way I project images to most of the areas of the body.

Using the Standard brush with the Color Spray setting and Alpha58 (or a custom alpha), I use the ‘C’ key to color-pick from existing projected textures and fill the white gaps. This way I get a vibrant color effect from the brush, which is like a real skin texture.

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Texture detailing: Now with more of a careful painting approach, I will finish

the texturing using various different alphas and colors. While painting these areas I will choose darker colors to paint the cavity areas, compared to the areas of relief. For this, I lower

the subdivision level and apply the option ‘Mask by cavity’, then blur the mask once, then sharpen it again. Then I go to the highest subdivision and start painting.

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Painting hard surfaces: For hardsurface texturing I use ‘Mask by cavity’ the same way, but in addition to that I use two extra brushes. I use the TrimDynamic brush with RGB turned on, which constrains the painting at the edges only. With this we can get a torn edge effect. I also use the Pen A brush, which helps to create lines from thin to thick, and is good for scratch effects.

Texture painting for hard-surface accessories

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Color maps: Later on I’ll use these maps as masks for creating layered shaders.

Pictured, you can see the color maps for the body.

For the specular map, I combine the desaturated color map with the displacement map, then paint and adjust a few areas in Photoshop.

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Area lights: For the lighting setup, I use four area lights. All the area lights’ attenuation is on, and the sampling quality is increased for a quality render. One environment light uses an HDR image (the yellow box).

The model’s map so far

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Further shader setup: I double-click the mantraSurface shader that I created for displacement and open up the inside network section. I follow the same workflow here for the UDIM that I followed for displacement, but this time I connect the ‘add’ node to the surface model’s ‘sss_clr’.

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Further test renders: These are a few settings I use for the mantraSurface shader to create skin for the body. Pictured are a skin shader test rendered with the color and A simple area light setup for the model

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More mantraSurface shader setup

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Testing the skin shaders with a new render

Rendering settings and results

displacement maps only, and finally a skin shader rendered with the color, displacement, specular and attenuation color maps.

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Rendering cloth and accessories: See pictured here the render settings for the metal and leather surfaces, and also some

close-ups of the rendered surfaces, including the stitched border detailing and elemental motifs designed at the beginning.

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Adding facial hair: For the beard I separately output the face as a null to use it as reference to the fur node. Now I create a geometry node, and under it, I reference the ‘OUT_beard’ using the Object Merge node. In this part I minimize the area more, just to keep it where the beard should be. I paint unnecessary areas and delete based on color.

I create a point node to add the normals so that the curves align with the surface’s normal. I create a scatter node to scatter points on the surface.

Then I duplicate the lines using ‘Copy SOP’ on this surface. At the end, I add a Curve Groom node, which will later be used as a guide curve. After adding Curve Groom and grooming the curve, the beard looks more flowing and natural.

“With the combination of fur and cloth displacement, a nice soft cloth effect is achieved”

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Using fur nodes: Let’s create a fur node.

Under the skin tab I choose the ‘OUT_ beard’ as skin mesh and Curve Groom as a guide.

I hide the guides I created before and set the fur parameters as shown in the image. I use the color map for the tip and root color of the fur material, then set the reflection settings as pictured. The results are shown in the test render.

For the eyebrows and eyelashes, the same technique is used, but for the cloth and armor padding, no guide is needed – just fur with a different appearance setting. With the combination of fur and cloth displacement , a nice soft cloth effect is achieved.

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The final render: For the final image, I don’t do any pass rendering, just some simple color corrections and some iris blur for close-ups in post. These renders are straight out of Houdini Mantra.

The Artist

Tanvir Islam

incubatorfx.com facebook.com/tanvirmni

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Creating the beard

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Using fur nodes to add softer hair and fabric

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