Elephant in the Jungle

Elephant in the Jungle

This elephant in the jungle was made during my project week at Pixlvisn media-arts-academy.

After gathering references I started to model the elephant in Zbrush .

First step was to block out the proportions - after that refining the details such as bigger and smaller skinfolds, placing toenails and adding damage to the teeth.

Here you can see a decimated version of the body - ready for retopology in Maya.

After retopology and UV's were done the next step was texturing in Substance Painter.
The most difficult part for me was to get the feel of the skin right.
Texturing was definitely the most fun part because the skin of elephants are so detailed and interesting to look at - every elephant has a different pattern and their individual spots which are  just like a fingerprint.

Beauty ,albedo, specular, coat, SSS

Because we only had one week to complete this project I wanted to rework it with a more patient eye.

Here you can see the comparison between my new model and the old one.

I reworked the eyes, added a groom and shaded the elephant differently.

The final rendering was done in Unreal Engine 5.2 .

Here you can see some of my references - this project was a lot of fun to create and I learned so much. 
Especially asking for feedback helped me a lot with the proportions and the sculpting.
I am so happy to show this project to all of you - and I want to thank you for your interest in all the upcoming 3d artists!