Jourge

Hello!
I'm currently studying Computer Graphic Arts at The Animation Workshop.
This is the result of a 4 week project, where the assignment was to create a bipedal character and render it in Arnold. The course focused on concepting, pipeline, sculpting, topology and rendering.
Texturing was not required.

It was my first time creating a character following a proper pipeline and it was a great experience, I feel that I've learned so much and improved a lot in only 4 weeks.

I want to thank our incredible teachers that we had to help us along the way:

Kenny Anderson, our concept teacher and Pat Imrie, our 3D workflow, Zbrush and Maya teacher.

For concepting, I knew that I wanted to create a fun and mystical character, so I dived deep into Pinterest to seek out references that would be useful for that.

I also made sure to explore the character, shapes & posing.

Once I had settled on a design, I finished up a rendered illustration and a turnaround of the character, so I could move on to the 3D part of the project.

At the beginning of the 3D workflow, we were instructed to create a basemesh in Maya, to make sure the proportions are correct and to block out the major shapes and muscle groups. We could use a skeleton to help with the important bone landmarks.

Then the basemesh was exported to Zbrush, where I used it to create a high poly dynamesh, adding skin folds, facial features and defining the muscles more accurately. 

Once I was satisfied with the dynamesh, it was exported back into Maya, where I began to retopologize the character. While working in Maya, I also started to create the assets I needed.
Since they were all fairly simplistic, I made sure to create them with clean topology, so there would be no need for retopologizing the assets.

Then I exported both the retopologized model and the assets into Zbrush, to project the details from the high poly dynamesh sculpt unto the model and to add finer details to the assets.
After having projected and added the needed details, I posed the model with the assets inside of Zbrush. Since I had subdivided the model, I exported the high poly displacement maps of it.

Finally, I exported a low poly and subdivided version of all the meshes back to Maya for rendering in Arnold. I made a quick shader for the model and imported the maps I had exported earlier.
I had a bit of trouble with the displacement maps, mainly due to the polycount difference between the low subdivided meshes and the high poly the maps were exported at. I fixed this by re-exporting the mesh with a slightly higher polycount. 
Then I set up a turntable and lighting.

And then all that was left was to render it! 

Thanks for checking out my entry!

Best,
Sebastian