Cruella Lookdev

Hello, my name is Patricia Urdiales, and I'm thrilled to present a project I've been working on for 12 weeks as part of the 3D production module at Animum School. This project involves creating the LOOKDEV for an animated sequence provided by the school and created by Elena Onate, a fellow animation master student. In my case, I've worked on the character of Cruella from Disney's live-action adaptation. I would love to share with you the entire process I followed, from gathering references to the final composition. I hope you enjoy it.

Once I settled on the character of Cruella and the shot I wanted to recreate, I began gathering all the information that would be useful for the subsequent stages of the work. I collected several references, including her makeup, different outfits and their patterns, a variety of hairstyles, as well as various elements of the environment.

MODELING

 I proceeded to do the blocking, and once validated, I began modeling the set and its props. During this process, I noticed a detail in the shot I had selected as the environment. There was an excessive symmetry. To address this, I decided to slightly adjust the camera position. This would subtly offset the character, creating a more dynamic composition using the rule of thirds and breaking the symmetry.

Having so many similar elements, I decided to do the UVs once I modeled them.

NORMAL CAMERA   |   MODIFIED CAMERA

Once I completed modeling the set and its elements, I proceeded to work on the character's clothing. I used Marvelous Designer for this task. Subsequently, I imported the result into Maya and made some adjustments, such as discarding the threads of the jacket and recreating them using textures in Substance Painter to optimize the model. For the boots and the cane, I used Maya. Then, I optimized the mesh of the different parts of the clothing. I mapped all the garments and created an optimized version for simulation and another for the final mesh.

GROOMING & TEXTURING (CHARACTER)

Once the clothing modeling and the character's UVs were completed, I brought the entire model into Substance Painter. I started by working on Cruella's makeup and textured the elements that made up her wardrobe. After finishing this stage, I imported all the textures into Maya and proceeded to make final adjustments in the Hypershade before rendering it with Arnold.

LIGHTING & RENDER

With all the elements gathered to compose the scene and the character's texturing completed, I textured the set in Substance Painter.

Then, I began assembling the scene. To start, I created a new scene and imported the set along with all its shaders. Next, I imported the character, as well as all the hair and clothing geometries, connecting them with their respective previously created animation caches and linking them to the character elements. After confirming that everything was working correctly, I proceeded with the lighting and made final adjustments to the textures.

Regarding the lighting composition, I based it on the principle of "highlight by contrast," where the character is the darkest part of the image, thus emphasizing their presence in the scene.

After completing this stage, I began creating the layers to take them to post-production.

COMPOSITION

I moved on to the post-production stage. I gathered all the layers and brought them into NukeX, where I made various corrections, such as enhancing the integration of the character into the scene, adjusting the lights, and correcting some noise in Cruella's skin and hair. I also improved the highlight by contrast and exaggerated it.

BEFORE POST-PRODUCTION  | AFTER POST-PRODUCTION

FINAL SHOT

Thank you very much.