3d art

Character
Lighting and colour
Getting the right look and feel
4 hours
render time
Resolution:
3,000 x 4,000
I imported the
09 model into ZBrush
for detailing. Although the
topology wasn´t that even, the
result was satisfying. I only
used the Standard brush to add
wrinkles and folds. Most of the
scales were created using
custom alphas, keeping them
exaggerated in some parts and
subtle in key zones like the face.
Once done, I exported a 4k
displacement map.
Normal
mapping
Due to some hardware
limitations, I wasn’t
able to render a proper
normal map from
ZBrush, so I used
CrazyBump to quickly
generate one from the
displacement map.
I extracted the blue
channel to simulate
a cavity map over my
main texture and
enhance the contrast of
the scales and wrinkles.
As for the lighting, the
fact I rendered three
different light sources
in ZBrush helped in the
composition to
simulate a key, rim and
fill light. The final touch
was to correct colour
with Curves to gain a
warm tone, levelling up
the blue in the shadows
and an orange/yellow
in midtones.
Using an UV template from Maya
10 as a guide, I painted the base colours in
Photoshop, using a basic round brush to create
different tones while staying in my chosen
palette. The displacement map helps in many
ways to shade specific areas in the body. The
stripes, eyes and extra scales are hand-painted.
I posed the character inside Maya to match my sketch, but the dragon
11 looked kind of weak, so I decided to pose him into a gallant flying position.
The result was this roguish dragon leaving his crime scene with a satisfied attitude.
The posed OBJ was imported as a 3D layer into ZBrush at the lowest level.
Back in ZBrush
12 I exported several
renders from ZBrush using
different MatCaps, various
light sources, a ZDepth and
a flat colour pass, previously
setting my canvas to a pretty
high resolution. All those
renders gave me full control
over the final image
composition later in Photoshop.
In Photoshop,
13 I composited the
ZBrush renders, masking the
proper areas of the different
layers to gain the desired
volume. I wanted a warm
atmosphere ,but also a
painting-like mood. I painted
extra shadows and put smoke
from stock brushes. Finally I
added subtle motion blur in
the wings and depth of field in
the completed scene.
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