This year's projects, 2023-2024

PROJECT 1: ROLLING TEAPOT, surfacing

Model by Brice Laville. Concept by Tom Robinson - RenderMan “Rolling Teapot" Art Challenge

Surfacing training to discover and learn Mari. The idea was to make a toy abandoned in a garden for a long time.

The toy's paintwork is a reminder from the original concept art with similar colors, even if barely noticible with rust damage, dirt and moss covering it.

Under different lighting to highlight some other details.

PROJECT 2: OLDMAN BUST, all aspect

From concept art to final render, is a bust from an old man waiting death.

The original sketche was a starting point to the overall idea of the project, cross with references photography for heads, hands, skin, clothes, props,... enable to have more precise information for the model, sculpting details or materials.

The overall shape was sculpt inside Zbrush in T pose then I retopology it in Maya.

After modeling the props, I did a quick rig for the character enabling to pose it easily, from the body curvature to the fingers laying on the walking cane.

I then resculpt it to fix and improve the posture and give a more natural shape and position.

After doing UVs, I start sculpting thinner details with symetry disabled, to give more natural looking especially on the face.

The clothes were made part on Marvelous Designer, part on Zbrush. I started on Marvelous designer in T pose to have a rough pattern and model, then simulate them with a simple animation enabling to have some coherent folds in the final posing.

I then export them in Maya to retopology them, before going to Zbrush fixing weard looking folds and adjusting them on the final characters.

The texturing parts was made on Mari. Starting with XYZ textures to add thinner details on the face, to crosspolarize texture for the face as bases color. Remaining parts of the head as well as hands were a mix of tileable skin texture, made from parts of the face, mix with hand painted maps.

Grooming was made using Xgen Interactive.

Based on the same model but with different lighting intention, enabling a different mood or some neutral ambiance.

PROJECT 3: VIOLIN, all aspect

The model was built based on a scheme from Stradivarius violin, with modern bow and violin accessories references.

This project was a good opportunity to work a little bit my modeling skill based on real life objects, trying to be as close as possible as originals.

It was also a nice project to work on in surfacing, with a lot of interesting materials and details on them. With different woods pattern, for 2D or 3D pieces, such as the scroll and neck for example, requiring veins pattern fitting seamlessly on a 3D surface.

Violin have interesting variety of patterns depending on the side of the object, thin and lengthy on the top, thick and space on the sides or large and symetrical on the back. Here is a turnaround enabling to see all this details, with some breakdowns.

Hope you like those projects, I will be glad to get feedbacks on them to keep improving my works.

Léo MORIN