Camilla Marinelli 2024

Abandoned Bedroom

I would like to start by presenting my first solo project made immediately after the masterclass at Skyup Academy.
Of all the projects I will feature here, this was the most challenging but also the most satisfying to see completed.
"Abandoned Bedroom" is inspired by the concept art for "The Last Of Us" created by John Sweeney.

For this project I created the scene in Maya and the textures in Substance 3D Painter. The renders were made in Maya with Vray and the final touches in Adobe After Effects.
I started by downloading all the assets of the various objects that I would need to assemble the bedroom.
Afterwards, if necessary, I modified them in Maya to make them as similar as possible to those present in the concept art.
The only assets I decided to recreate myself were the mirror (in Maya), the curtains, the blanket on the bed and the one near the windows (in Marvelous).

Than I proceded with collecting all the references I needed of the different objects and materials present in the scene, such as fabrics, different types of wood, plush toys references for the fur and so on.

Next I started setting up the main scene in Maya. The first thing I did was set up a physical camera, trying to recreate the same perspective and framing as the initial concept. Then I moved on to creating the main structure of the room and the set dressing phase.
Once the room was set up I moved on to the lighting, which I finalized after putting together all the materials on the scene. During this phase, to make the scene more realistic, I added the EnvironmentFog.

I divided the various assets into different materials and than I moved on to Substance 3D Painter. During the texturing process, I managed to create the various effects present in the starting concept through the use of various masks and filters.
Some posters are real assets present in the scene, others, the thinner and more damaged ones, were made directly on Substance.

Before moving on to the final rendering phase, through the use of Maya's Vray fur, I created the fur of the plush toys. 

After importing the textures into Maya, I compiled the various materials, creating a blend material to recreate the effect of dirty glass, between clear glass and dust, and adjusted the lighting.

With the correct final lighting, I returned to Substance to modify the texturing where needed.

Below you will find the final renders before and after compositing (made in Adobe After Effects).

Ellie

For this project, I decided to create the textures in Substance 3D Painter, the grooming in Maya with Xgen and the final render through UE5.

I started with downloading a 3D model of the character and than I proceeded with its texturing and grooming.
The first thing to do was collecting all the references I needed of the character and various materials, like leather and different fabrics.
The trickiest part of the texturing process has been the skin of the character.

In order to correctly texture the skin, the first thing I did was looking for RBX Imaging and cross-polarized photographs.

After that, I started the texturing process in Substance 3D Painter. Here I divided the skin into layers as it would be in real life. So, I created two main folders: subdermis and dermis.
In the subdermis one, I created a noisy and bloody red base layer to which I added different fill layers (a purple and yellow one) to create some color contrast. In the dermis one, I focused on the creation of the top layer of the skin adding the small details, like sun demage and moles.

All textures were done in Substance except for the eyes and hair, which were produced on UE5.

Below you will find respectively the skin texturing process and the various maps extracted from Substance.

While below you will find other steps of the texturing process.

After finishing the texturing process, I went back to Maya to take care of the grooming of the character.

The three main collections I created were hair, face and micro-fur each of which is made up of different descriptions. 
As soon as I finished the grooming, I transformed the guides into interactive groom and exported them along with the character's mesh in the scene previously created in UE5.

Having worked with a multi-udim workflow, I imported the textures into UE5 as Virtual textures. After that, I created the Master materials following the division of materials made initially on Maya. From them I created the various Instance Materials to match the various parts of the character (trousers, t-shirt, skin...) so as to have the maximum control over the various parameters of the material. In particular, as regards the skin, I created a material that had a "subsurface profile" as a shading model in order to recreate the typical scattering of human skin.

Afterwards, I dedicated myself to creating the materials for the eyes and hair.

The last aspects I had to adjust were the various roughness values and, having done this, I moved on to the rendering phase.

First of all I fixed the lighting of the scene, then I created two backgrounds, one for the animated render with the symbol of "The Last Of Us" and a more neutral one for the still renders, and finally I made the renders.

Who You Gonna Call?

The last project that I would like to present is a part of the group project "Who You Gonna Call?", inspirated by the movie "Ghostbusters: Legacy", made during the Computer Graphic Masterclass at Skyup Academy.
I covered the role of Lead texture artist and I was in charge of the textures of the hero asset, the iconic Ecto-1, and of the sheriff car.

First I prepared a PureRef containing various references of the Ecto-1 used for the film in order to recreate it as close as possible to the original. Through the film and several blogs and websites, I was able to find a large amount of pictures from different perspectives.

One of the most difficult parts to texture was the roof of the car. There are many elements for which there were no clear images. While for the Sheriff's car I found some references of the car used in the film and also various images of Oklahoma police cars (the state in which the film is set). The Pureref also includes various pictures that I have used as stickers in Substance 3D Painter.

The main assets were modeled in Maya and we decided to divide the two vehicles into different materials, also to be able to texture them more easily.

The texturing phase on Substance 3D Painter ended in Maya, where we create the various materials. We made a blend material for glass, between clear glass and dust, for each car.

We have reached the end of the presentation of my projects!

I would like to say a big thank you to all the people who have made it this far. Thank you so much for taking the time to view this entry! I really appreciate it very much.