Anthony Ali - 3D Generalist

Drone

In a dystopian society a young boy, scavenging through the junkyards, is spotted by the militarized police as he tries to flee. 

This project, based on concept by Alex Nice,  was completed for my Demo Reel while attending Gnomon-School of Visual Effects and animation. This was a lot of fun working on, and I learned a lot throughout the process.

Process

Blockout

I started off blocking out the environment and using default Mixamo characters to get the framing and timing correct on the animation. Once I had everything to the size and position I wanted I moved on to modeling the ship. 

Modeling

Creating the boy was the easy part. He was a simple Zbrush sculpt with the clothes made and animated in Marvelous Designer. For the animation I used the original Mixamo Animation from the blockout and reapplied it to the new character. Creating the ship was a bit more challenging. The block out started off with the it being solid, but through the process I designed the interior. This helped me figure out the proportions and placement of the wings and cockpit. With the ship completed I moved on to texturing it in Substance Painter, rigged it, and animated it.

Creating the cinematic look

The difficult part came with the lighting, rendering, and the smoke effects. I started off with a day scene, but through the art direction of my instructor Miguel Ortega I switched the scene to night, and continued to build out the city background till I achieved my final result. I am really proud of the results, and through all the struggles and rendering crashes I have learned a lot from this entire project.

Oracle

One does not venture into the woods before seeking the wisdom of the woodland Oracle. 

This is my first Demo Reel project, based on concept by Miguel Nogueira, and first fully polished character. I knew this project would be very difficult, but it posed a very exciting challenge. 

Process

Creating the sculpt

I started this project during my Texturing and Shading 4 class taught by Tran Ma and then finished it during Demo Reel. The initial project was to create a highly realistic bust. I had blocked out the body in simple forms, and detailed the head. 

Texturing and refining the sculpt

The texturing for the skin and Antlers were all done in Mari using TexturesXYZ. I had never used these before and it blew my mind the quality of these skin textures. I had way too much fun texturing this! 

I had to refine the sculpt many times before I got it looking right, but my first real roadblock was the hair. The hair was done with Xgen and my knowledge of this system was very limited. It took many attempts and a lot of learning before the results started to look good.

Creating the full body

After completing my Texturing and Shading 4 class I began to work on the full body for the character. There were many layers of clothes and assets. I created most of the clothing in marvelous designer, modeled the belts and accessories in Maya, and made the fox coat with Xgen. 

This character was a huge challenge, but I was very excited to face it. I wanted to push myself and improve the best I could. It took many weeks to complete, but very well worth the challenge. I was new to both Xgen and Marvelous Designer, and spending countless hours struggling I became much more proficient and confident in my skills. This was by far my most difficult project and I am glad I faced the challenge and exceeded my expectations.

Ark

Long after we're gone what secrets do we leave behind. What is Project Phoenix? 

This is my 3rd Demo Reel Project, Ark, based on concept by Vladimir Manyukhin. For this project I wanted to create a still image that really told a story. Unlike my other 2 projects this one did not require a heavy amount of modeling or texturing, and this allowed me to focus on the storytelling and practice creating foliage.

Process

Modeling

I started this project with modeling the basic shape of the door to match the concept reference. It's just a circle so that went pretty quick and easy. I used stand in Mixamo characters to get the scale and placement correct for both the characters and the structural placement.

Creating the characters

When it came time for the sculpting I needed to figure out what style I wanted to go with. The original concept greatly exaggerated the body, and I wanted to maintain a little of that style without making the character look too broken. I fixed some of the anatomy, but maintained the skinny and stylized look of the concept.

I used Marvelous Designer to create the loin cloths, and modeled the spear in Maya. To pose the characters I used the Mixamo auto rig and then manually posed them in Maya. Doing this caused the body to deform and break which I then needed to re-sculpt in Zbrush.

Adding the Foliage

This is where all the time and effort went. I started off using Quixel Megascan plants to scatter the initial grass and other plants. For the "alien" looking plants I decided to try procedurally making them in Houdini. I first tried Speedtree but struggled to get the exact look I wanted. Using Houdini gave me well needed practice and control over the procedural design of each plant. I textured these plants in Substance Painter.

To place the megascans plants and grass I used Maya's Mash network. Each plant needed to be placed differently so I used Substance Painter to paint a black and white visibility mask for each Mash network.

Creating the Vines

I made these vines in Speedtree and had way too much fun! I imported my structural geo into Speedtree and then spent hours wrapping vines after vines around them. 

Composition

Getting the composition right required a lot of back in forth with the foliage and the lighting. I repeatedly added and removed foliage, changed their positions with Mash, adjusted the lighting, and rendering it until I achieved the final look.

This project was a lot different from any other I've done before, and I had a ton of fun making this. This was full of experimenting and trying new things that I haven't done before, and I hope you all enjoy this piece too!

These 3 projects were truly a blast to work on and I'm proud to show you all these achievements!

 You can follow me on my artstation https://www.artstation.com/anthonyali