3D Creative December 2015

124 

December 2015 

Issue 124 

+plus 

• 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

3DCREATIVE: 2005 – 2015 

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. 

Issue 119 | November 2015 

119 

Create a 

dynamic 

exosuit scene 

Learn how to create 

a sci-fi mech and 

pilot character 

plus 

• 10 of the best digital images 

• Embellished anatomy 

• Painting an 

experimental scene 

• and much more!

3DCREATIVE MAGAZINE | ISSUE 124 

Editor’s letter 

MARISA LEWIS 

Junior Editor 

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. 

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! 

KEEP UP TO DATE 

WITH 3DTOTAL! 

• facebook.com/3dtotal 

• facebook.com/layerpaint 

• twitter.com/3dtotal 

• twitter.com/layer_paint 

• youtube.com/ 

3dtotalpublishing 

• vimeo.com/3dtotal 

• vimeo.com/layerpaint 

• pinterest.com/3dtotal 

• instagram.com/3dtotal 

• google.com/+3dtotalcg 

• 3dtotal.tumblr.com 

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 : 


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. 

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: 



Magazine. 

Your 

Get the most out of it! 

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. 

Download resources 

Whenever you see this symbol, be sure to click it to 

download free resources to accompany that article! 

Visit http://www.3dcreativemag.com/resources_2015.html if viewing from a mobile device. 

For lots more tutorials and exclusive articles, visit: 

www.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! 

5

078 

3DCREATIVE MAGAZINE | ISSUE 124 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 

008 

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 

6 | 3DCREATIVEMAG.COM

096 

3DCREATIVE MAGAZINE | ISSUE 124 113 

022 

042 

058 

7

3DCREATIVE MAGAZINE | Art Gallery 

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


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

JetSpeeder Concept 

Piers Coe 

Year created: 2014 

Software used: 

Maya, MODO, Photoshop 

Web: pierscoe.com


Mr Fang 

Diego Sain 

Year created: 2015 

Software used: ZBrush, KeyShot, Photoshop 

Web: iusalab.com 

Rooster Dream 

Cristiano Rinaldi 


Software used: MODO, ZBrush, Photoshop 

Web: simultan.it 

3DCREATIVEMAG.COM


11

Alien Type X 

Shaun Sherman 



Photoshop, ZBrush, KeyShot 

Web: shaunsherman.com 


Mecha design 

Jonathan Renaux 


Software used: ZBrush, V-Ray 

Web: jonathan-renaux.wix.com/jonathan-renaux 

13


Lobster 

JongJik Kim 



Maya, ZBrush, NUKE, 

After Effects, Photoshop, 

mental ray 

Web: kimjj.net 



15




Meteora Security Guard 

Mark Chang 


Software used: CINEMA 4D, ZBrush, Octane Render 

Web: artstation.com/artist/equinoz


Dark Mermaid 

Ashleigh Foo Chong 



ZBrush, KeyShot, Photoshop 

Letting Machines Do All 

the Thinking [A Bad Idea] 

Robert J. Tiess 

Year created: 2015 | Software used: Blender 

Web: artofinterpretation.com 



19

African Elephant 

Stavros Fylladitis 



ZBrush, Maya, V-Ray, Photoshop 

Web: stavrosfyl.artstation.com 



21

3DCREATIVE MAGAZINE | Designing for videogames 

videogames 

Designing for 

We catch up with MachineGames’ talented 

Matthias Develtere about his latest projects 

and best creative advice 



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. 

23


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. 

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. 

A 3D model Matthias made for this magazine! Check out 

issues 113 and 114 to see how he made it © 3dtotal 



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. 

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 

office we are using MODO, so I am trying to fit 

both into my pipeline. 

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 

25


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 


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. 

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. 

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 

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. 

3dc: Vehicle designs are a huge part of your 

portfolio and something you really enjoy. What 

makes vehicles especially interesting to you? 

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. 



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 

27


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. 

Here are some vehicles Matthias made back in 2013 



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 

29


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 

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? 

These environments were team 

efforts. On this environment, 

Matthias’ job was to dress up the 

existing architecture © ZeniMax 


A hero asset Matthias made 

during the production of 

Wolfenstein: The Old Blood and 

learned a lot from © ZeniMax 




The main chapter Matthias worked on 

during the production of Wolfenstein: 

The Old Blood was Chapter 6 © ZeniMax 


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. 

Never rush into it, start with a plan 

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. 

3dc: Finally, and most importantly: what do you 

like to do in your spare time? 

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. 

3dc: Thank you very much for speaking to 

3dcreative today! 

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

I love working with you guys. 

The Artist 

Matthias Develtere 

develterematthias.wordpress.com 

31

3DTOTAL’S ANATOMICAL COLLECTION: 

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!

ORIGINAL MALE 

AND FEMALE 

FIGURES STILL 

AVAILABLE FROM: 

SHOP.3DTOTAL.COM

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 



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. 

35



This was Dmitry’s contribution to a Facebook 

contest by Serge Birault, the original concept artist 


37


3dc: Tell us about the software or tools that 

feature in your typical 3D workflow. 

This is one of Dmitry’s earliest personal projects 

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. 



Dmitry made this model very quickly in his spare time 

39


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. 

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. 

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. 


An elf girl, Dmitry’s latest project 


41

Sketchbook of Damir G Martin 

The Artist 

The sketchbook of 

Ruben Alvarez 

Ruben Alvarez 

rubenalba.com 

Software used: ZBrush 

Concept artist Ruben Alvarez shares 

a behind-the-scenes look at his 

ZBrush sculpts 

3DCreativemag.com 

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.


Find some sculpting 

inspiration in this month’s 

ZBrush Sketchbook… 

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! 

Ruben’s idea for Electric Lord 

was to create a character with 

rubber and metal armor to 

generate electric waves 

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 

43

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 



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

45


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. 

Sketch of a snake dragon with feathers instead of scales 

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 



The first creature Ruben designed with ZBrush 

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

47


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 


Would you like to see your sketches 

featured in 3dcreative magazine? 

We’re always on the lookout for talented artists 

and their artwork to adorn the pages of our 

magazines. If you think you have what it takes, 

please get in touch! 

All you need to do is email 

marisa@3dtotal.com with a link to your 

portfolio and some information about you. 

We look forward to hearing from you!

3DTOTALPUBLISHING 

ZBrush is a powerful program offering digital artists of all levels intuitive and 

inspiring workflow solutions for 3D models and 2D images. Following on from the 

success of other ZBrush titles such as ZBrush Character Sculpting: Volume 1, this 

new book focuses on the design and creation of a variety of character 

and creature sculpts by world-class artists including Mariano 

Steiner, Maarten Verhoeven, Caio César, and Kurt Papstein. 

Topics covered by the panel of industry experts 

include alien concepts, quadruped designs, 

and inventive creatures, while a collection 

of speed-sculpting tutorials offers 

fantastic insight into working quickly 

with this revolutionary sculpting 

software. Aimed at aspiring and 

experienced modelers alike, 

ZBrush Characters & Creatures 

is a go-to resource for those 

looking to learn tips, tricks, 

and professional workflows 

from the digital art masters, 

taking you from concept to 

completion across a variety 

of imaginative projects.

A comprehensive human anatomy guide 

for today’s 3D artist, offering fundamental, 

theoretical, and practical skills for anatomy 

and proportion. 

Anatomy for 3D Artists is an essential teaching 

guide for sculpting human anatomy. Nonsoftware 

specific, it is packed with everything 

that today’s 3D artist needs to know in order 

to tackle the difficult task of recreating the 

human form in 3D. Starting with the use of 2D 

references, and moving on to practical and 

advanced 3D sculpting – including topology – 

the book covers every stage in the creation of 

all kinds of male and female figures. Featuring 

established artists such as Chris Legaspi 

and Mario Anger, Anatomy for 3D Artists 

also includes several master projects for an 

informative and in-depth overview of the 3D 

sculpting process of various forms, showing how 

the archetypal human form can be adapted to fit 

any character shape! 

ONLY 29.99 (APPROX 49.99) 

288 PAGES | ISBN: 978-1-909414-24-2

3DCREATIVE MAGAZINE | Mastering displacement details 

The Artist 


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, 

3DCREATIVEMAG.COM 

using ZBrush and 3ds Max


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! 

Sculpting the skin details: Now that 

01we 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. 

Detailing cloth in ZBrush: Clothes are 

02 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 

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. 

Exporting Maps from ZBrush: I 

03 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. 

53


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. 

Using VRayDisplacement in 3ds 

04 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 

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. 

Painting the skin colors: I usually 

05 paint most of the textures directly 

in Photoshop, but for the skin I use a mixed 

workflow of Polypaint in ZBrush with some 



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. 

Maps used to create the skin shader 

“We need more than a 

good texture to reproduce a 

believable skin shader in 

any renderer” 

Finishing the skin texture: We need 

06 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. 

Texturing the eyes : Eyes are usually 

07 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. 

55


Fabric textures used in 

the cloth shaders 

Texturing the clothes: The secret to 

08 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. 

Texturing the spray tank models: I’ve 

09 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. 

Basic shader setup: These are some 

10 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 

Metal shader workflow of the spray tank 

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 


roumenfilipov.com 

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 


The Artist 


Rory Björkman 

artstation.com/artist/bjorkman 


Maya, MARI 

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. 

59


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. 

Overview of the MARI workspace: Before we begin, here’s a brief 

01 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! 

Ambient occlusion: After importing the geometry, the first step for 

02 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. 

Texturing crevices: Now the AO is complete we need to go over the 

03 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, 

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. 

Creating the model’s ambient occlusion (AO) 

Using brushes to add texture to the ship’s crevices 



Making and adding the ship’s specular map 

Specular map: As we go we can create 

04 and add to our specular map. Firstly, 

under the Channel menu, create a new channel 

with the name ‘Specular’. 

Open this channel stack and drag it across to the 

left of the screen. Keeping this open, return to 

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. 

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.” 

61


Texturing bronze parts: Now let’s bring some color into this ship. I 

05 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. 

Making a rivet texture: For our ship to look as if it’s made of large 

06 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. 

Placing the rivet texture: Before we place the rivet texture created 

07 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. 

Additional metals: To create a variation of metal types, I think we 

08 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 

Picking out the ship’s bronze detailing 

Creating a rivet texture with Photoshop 

Applying the rivet texture to a base metal texture 



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. 

Detailing some more welds and bolts: 

09 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. 

63


Transferring textures to the specular channel 

Adding textures to the ship’s engine 

Texturing the engine: Now we need to start filling in some of these 

10 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. 

Updating the specular map: Using the textures we have already 

11 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. 

Filling in the window textures 



Texturing the propellers and side engine 

Adding a wood paneling effect to the nose of the ship 

Painting the windows: Using the provided texture ‘dull window’, 

12 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. 

Wooden texturing: In keeping with the vintage theme and in the 

13 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. 

The propeller and side engine: Using the texture ‘round metal’, 

14 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 

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. 

Adding dirt and grime: As a finishing touch it’s always good to 

15 add some wear and tear to a vehicle like this. First make a new layer 

65


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. 

Adding dirt to the specular channel: 

16 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. 

Try using the pinning function 

Adding our dirt textures to the specular channel 

Making normal maps: We can make 

17 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. 



Finishing off the texturing process with normal maps 

NEXT ISSUE 

Rory Björkman shares 

his mental ray 

rendering workflow 

The Artist 

Rory Björkman 

artstation.com/artist/bjorkman 

67

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 



The Artist 

Victoria Passariello 

vitrux3d.com 


3ds Max 


creates hard-surface 

models because she loves 

robots and 3D. She works 

at Perihelion Interactive 

making ships for sci-fi 

videogame The Mandate. 

69


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. 

Making UVs: To make the UVs I use 

01 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. 

Using checker maps: Another 

02 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. 

Texture sheets: Feel free to make two 

03 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. 

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



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

Rendering the UV template, mask and AO map 

Rendering out the maps: Before starting to paint the textures, I 

04 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. 

BPR Metalness/Roughness workflow: For this project I’m using 

05 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. 

71


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. 

Establish the different colors: To start 

06 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. 

To learn about the PBR Metalness/Roughness workflow in depth, 

look up Allegorithmic’s comprehensive documentation 

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. 

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. 

Add metal textures: Once I set up all 

07 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. 

Adding the panels map: To add even 

08 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. 

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. 



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 

73


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 



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

Making the emissive map: Once I’ve 

09 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.) 

Adding peeling to the borders: Finally, 

10 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. 

Decals: After the hard work of painting 

11 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. 

75


Make different adjustments to a texture to use it as rust 

Adding rust: For the rust effect, I want 

12 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. 

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

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. 

Dirt pass: I don’t paint the dirt by hand, 

13 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 



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.) 

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 


renders the ship in 

Marmoset Toolbag 2 

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 


vitrux3d.com 

77

3DCREATIVE MAGAZINE | Texturing assets with Substance Painter 

Model file 

Texture files 

The Artist 

Andrew Finch 

andrewfinch.carbonmade.com 


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


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. 

Updated base layer: In the previous 

01 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. 

Geometry Decal tool: We will be 

02 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. 

The base layer is an already existing diffuse texture from Photoshop 

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

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

Baking new texture: Smart Materials 

03 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


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. 

Smart Materials: Substance Painter’s 

04 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. 

Smart Material properties: To access 

05 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. 

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

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. 

Gold ring: The texturing process can 

06 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. 

Leather straps: I use the Smart Material 

07 ‘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 

Texturing different elements now becomes a quick process 

the best results for edge wear using both the 

with heavy use. I’m not heavy with the default 

curvature and AO maps. This is a good base but I color of the leather, so to make it look more 

feel it could be improved more, so I paint in more natural I edit the base color and edge damages 

edge wear using a white noisy brush in the mask color. I use a lighter beige color to help it stand 

layer to paint in areas that would be worn away out from the wooden panels behind it. 



The heavily worn leather strap using curvature map and hand painting 

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

Outer leather surrounding: I will use 

08 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. 

81


Varying the wood color: The wooden 

09 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. 

Hand-painted dirt: Now all of our 

10 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. 

Painting dirt build-up: On a new layer 

11 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. 

Coloring the dirt: Doing the same 

12 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. 

Stitching mask: I feel it would be an 

13 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. 

Imported layer mask: Import the newly 

14 created mask texture into Substance 

Painter and select it in the Textures tab of the 

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

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

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



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. 

Dirty stitching: The stitching stands 

15 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 

CHECKOUT CHAPTER 04 ON PAGE 086 

Andrew Finch renders the final shield asset… 

Andrew Finch 


83

Bringing you practical tuition and advice from an experienced 3D Trainer, 

this invaluable book offers a comprehensive guide to character creation in 

Autodesk’s very popular 3D software, Maya. 

Beginner’s Guide to Character Creation in Maya continues 3dtotal’s tradition of offering helpful 

guides for beginners looking to step into the world of digital art. Talented 3D Animator and 

Trainer, Jahirul Amin, gives an insightful breakdown of how to model from scratch using Maya 

and Mudbox. Not only will you learn about the principles of rigging and animation, with a 

step-by-step guide detailing how to link the joints and create constraints and controls for 

animation, you will also learn how to correctly light and render your scene for porfolio-worthy 

presentation. Plus, in-depth chapters on anatomy will provide you with a solid foundation 

on which to develop your 3D character skills, so that by the end of this book you will have 

created your very own realistic walk cycle. 

ONLY 29.99 (APPROX 49.99) | 288 PAGES | ISBN: 978-1-9094142-0-4

3DTOTALPUBLISHING 

AVAILABLE NOW! 

An innovative and fun way for people 

of all ages to find the inspiration to 

pick up a pencil – and draw! 

The Sketch Workshop incorporates a luxury 

leather-style folder that can securely hold a 

workbook and up to 20 quality drawing tools. 

We’ve created a number of workbooks that 

cover popular topics including: 

Designed to be easy to carry and use on the 

move, this beautiful art resource offers a 

complete sketching solution for beginners, 

hobbyists, and artists looking to brush up on 

drawing skills, with tuition by pro artists. 

FOR MORE INFORMATION ON THE 

FOLDER, WORKBOOKS, AND DRAWING 

TOOLS AVAILABLE, PLEASE VISIT: 

SHOP.3DTOTAL.COM

3DCREATIVE MAGAZINE | Presenting assets in Marmoset Viewer 

Alphas and maps 

The Artist 

Andrew Finch 



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


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. 

Stencil masks: No well-used Viking 

01 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: I prefer to use 

02 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. 

Fresh blood splatter: On a second 

03 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. 

Painting blood detail onto the shield using a stencil mask 

Dried blood splatter painted onto the shield 

Fresh blood splatter to contrast with the dried blood 

I also add two more levels modifiers to give the look fresh. Continue to paint the blood around 

blood a more vibrant red color, and also a lower the shield but don’t go too overboard with it, or 

roughness value so it’s more reflective, making it it’ll hide the other nice details in the shield. 

87


Filling in the cracks: The painted-on 

04 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. 

Normal map wood damage: At the 

05 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. 

Completed texturing of shield: This 

06 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. 

Exporting the textures: The export 

07 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. 

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

Painting in new normal map details into the wood damage 

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. 

Completed model in Substance Painter, ready for export 



Exporting the textures out of Substance Painter ready for Marmoset 

Importing the shield mesh and normal map into Marmoset Toolbag 2 

Mesh and normal in Marmoset: The 

08 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. 

89


Importing the metallic map: Next up 

09 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. 

Importing the roughness map: 

10 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. 

Importing the diffuse texture: Now 

11 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. 

Adding a sky light: It is important to 

12 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. 

Placing point lights: Even though 

13 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 

Adding the metallic map to the material 

Adding the roughness map to the material 

Adding the diffuse (base color) to the material 



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. 

Curve editor: Only some of the effects 

14 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


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. 

Final scene: To finish off the scene, 

15 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. 

Exporting to Marmoset Viewer: Now 

16 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. 

Using the Curve Editor to color correct the scene 

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 



YOU CAN VIEW THE 

FINISHED ASSET IN 

MARMOSET VIEWER 

BY CLICKING HERE 

93


The Artist 

Andrew Finch 




95

3DCREATIVE MAGAZINE | Designing a fantasy character 

The Artist 

Tanvir Islam 

incubatorfx.com 

facebook.com/tanvirmni 


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 



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. 

Concept: Blizzard Entertainment’s 

01 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. 

Starting from a sphere: If it’s a 

02 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 

Further sculpting: In order to build up 

03 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 

97


The sculpted mesh so far 

Retopology: Now it’s time to do the 

04 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’. 

Setting the scale in Maya: Now I’m 

05 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. 

Making polygroups: Now I bring the 

06 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! 

Retopologizing the mesh with ZRemesher 

Making sure we set the correct scale in Maya 



The model split into polygroups 

Add surface noise to the skin before beginning to sculpt details 

Some of the brush settings used for sculpting details 

Adding surface noise: Before going 

07 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 

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. 

99


The custom brushes used for 

The finished skin details 

The model’s UVs in Maya 

Sculpting skin details: For skin pores, 

08 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. 

Exporting UVs into Maya: For the UVs, 

09 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 

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. 

Sculpting the armor: There are a few 

10 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 



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. 

Detailing the armor: No we can 

11 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. 

101


Creating a stitch using a torus 

Creating a cloth with stitch detailing 

With the help of this technique, I create all the 

armor pieces. 

Making a stitch: First we need to create 

12 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. 

Creating cloth: Now I’ll create some 

13 fabric. First I do the ‘Group by normals’ to 

separate the facing surface by polygroup. I divide 

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. 

Final accessories: The belts are created 

14 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. 



The model with final details added 

103


Exporting displacement maps 

Moving into Houdini 



Setting up shaders in Houdini 

Displacement output: This character 

15 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” 

Exporting into Houdini: With the help 

16 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. 

Houdini shaders: I assign Houdini’s 

17 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. 

Testing the displacement: As the 

18 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. 

Texture painting: I texture the body 

19 using a mix of image projection and 

105


Setting up the displacement 



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. 

Texture detailing: Now with more of 

20 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. 

107


Painting hard surfaces: For hardsurface 

texturing I use ‘Mask by cavity’ 

21 

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. 

Color maps: Later on I’ll use these maps 

22 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. 

Area lights: For the lighting setup, I 

23 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). 

Further shader setup: I double-click 

24 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’. 

Further test renders: These are a few 

25 settings I use for the mantraSurface 

shader to create skin for the body. Pictured are 

a skin shader test rendered with the color and 

Texture painting for hard-surface accessories 

The model’s map so far 

A simple area light setup for the model 

More mantraSurface shader setup 



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. 

Rendering cloth and accessories: 

26 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. 

109


Adding facial hair: For the beard I 

27 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. 

Creating the beard 

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” 

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

28 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. 

The final render: For the final image, I 

29 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 



Using fur nodes 

to add softer hair 

and fabric 

111




113

NEXT MONTH 

Rendering a spacecraft scene 

Creating smoke with FumeFX 

Informative new interviews 

Inspiring ZBrush sketches 

10 of the best 3D images from 

around the world 

Plus much more!

Stay updated! 

For your daily fix of news, animations, trailers and much more from the 

3D industry, make sure you head to 3dtotal.com... 

CLICK 

HERE 

Freelance 3D artist Brice Laville Saint Martin discusses his workflow and influences for his recent gallery entry, ‘Teapot Tank’... 

Join the 3D community! Over 27,000 people head to 3dtotal every day. Discover why at: 

3dtotal.com 

Francisco Garcia-Obledo Ordoñez 

‘Forza 6’ and a52: recreating the past 

Interview: Marcos Tonda 

Review: KeyShot 6 

Cinesite & Spectre 

Interview: Christian Peck 

For more top stories, news and industry updates, head to 3dtotal.com

3D Creative December 2015

Create successful ePaper yourself

Delete template?

Save as template?