"Aubrac cow and her calf"

After a long research and study of the anatomy of cows I started the high poly sculpt on ZBrush.

I started with the basic shapes, having in mind the skeleton structure, and I added little by little the muscles and the fat. 

When I had the volumes I wanted it was time for a retopology in Maya to obtain a clean low poly mesh in which I projected the high poly mesh.

Then I added more detail and proceeded to cut the Uvs of the model (Maya).

With the Uvs done I added the fine details and the sculpting was done!

The model was textured in Substance Painter.

The challenging part was making the cow’s hair. I’ve never done animal hair so it took a while. I used interactive grooming in Maya Xgen. 

For the render I used Maya Arnold. I tried to replicate the lighting and camera angle of the original photo.

PS: the calf is the model of the cow duplicated and modified to have the correct anatomy and colour, and the hair was made the same way as the adult cow.

I leave here the final result. Enjoy!