The Sasquatch & Scarecrow

I created the Sasquatch character from an idea I had of a furry Muppet-like creature. I modeled the character in Maya, then rigged and weighted it. I found a motion capture of the Thriller dance I liked on Mixamo.com. I brought the MoCap dance into Maya, and had to connect it to the Sasquatch character with the same number of joints. There were some animation fixes I had to make because the MoCap only had one shoulder joint, and did not accommodate the twisting of the bicep.

I groomed and simulated the Sasquatch hair in Houdini. When simulating the groomed guides, I created a VDB of a larger Sasquatch, and used that as a collider, so the hair would not fall underneath the short hair/peach fuzz layer and be most visible when dancing. I textured the base skin layer of the Sasquatch in Substance Painter. I also created a slow moving horizontal fog in Houdini so that the Sasquatch fit better into the shot. 

I modeled the storefront environment in Maya. The storefront, lanterns, bench, mailbox, and hammocks were textured with a combination of Mari and Substance Painter. I composited the Sasquatch into this scene in Nuke.

The Scarecrow was also created from my own idea. I modeled the character in Maya, including the boots, body, pumpkin head, hat, overalls, and shirt. I found two MoCap animations on Mixamo.com, one walking, and one jumping. I combined the 2 animations together in Maya so it was a fluid movement. I rigged and weighted the Scarecrow, then added the MoCap to it.

I used Houdini for the cloth simulations. The shirt had to be simulated first and then used as a collider for the overalls, so that it would look more realistic, and not overlap. The overalls have a pocket, which was created in Houdini with a planar patch and is constrained to the main overall flap.

The boots have a few different elements to them. The rivets, and lower shoelace pieces are point deformed to the shoes, so that they would not lose their shape when the Scarecrow was walking. The top laces were four separate hair simulations created in Houdini.  The poof of dust when the Scarecrow jumps onto the ground was also created in Houdini.

The fire inside the pumpkin head was created in Houdini, as well as the horizontal fog/brown dust that surrounds the Scarecrow and T-post. The background to the shot was created in Unreal Engine. I textured the ground, and added mountains, reeds and grasses to the scene. I then lit the scene and added atmospheric fog. All the elements were combined and composited together in Nuke.