Todd the Toad

Rookie Awards 2023 | Rookie of the Year - Finalist

by jjeum on 17 Apr 2023 for Rookie Awards 2023

A personal project that I started while at Think Tank Training Centre to get more comfortable with sculpting, texturing and lookdeving an organic piece.

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Todd the Toad

by jjeum

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Maps Breakdown

References

The images on the left were used as main reference for sculpting and texturing.

UVs

I made the UVs symmetrical for the body so the texturing process would be easier as I can copy and paste across UDIMs.

Sculpting Process

I retopologized and UV'ed in Maya a base mesh and started sculpting with subdivisions in ZBrush to get displacement maps. I imported XYZ maps onto a layer in ZBrush and used it as a base to hand sculpt on top of. To speed up the sculpting process, I used VDM brushes that I created and existing reptilian scale alphas.

Texturing and Lookdev Process

Part 1: Baking

I baked maps in Substance Painter and exported out dirt/grunge masks. Also exported out cavity and peaks and valleys mask from ZBrush following a guide on Paul H. Paulino's artstation.

I did a quick first pass of the diffuse map in Painter. I would later import this first pass into Mari and texture on top of it.

Part 2: Painting

I brought a decimated mesh from ZBrush into Mari so that I can paint on top of a high quality mesh without sacrificing performance. I used the bakes and masks I got from Painter and ZBrush and procedural masks in Mari to start the texturing process.

The goal was to get as far as I can using procedurals then add details by manually painting and projecting.

Part 3: Lookdev

As soon as I had a good base for the diffuse and roughness maps, I kicked the textures into the VRay Al Surface shader, setup my lights and cameras, then started doing test renders.

Lighting setup

A simple 3 point lighting setup with the toad in a box to showcase the asset in a neutral environment and lighting.

Test Renders/Feedback Process

After each day of work, I let my pc render a quick turntable overnight so that I can address mistakes I see in the renders the next day. I asked peers and mentors at school for feedback from the test renders and addressed notes accordingly.