3D Creative December 2015

3DCREATIVE MAGAZINE | ISSUE 124
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