Clicker | The Last Of Us

This character, the "Clicker" was inspired by The Last Of Us, following a bunch of references.

The retopology was made in Autodesk Maya under a UDIM workflow, but that shell arrangement would be re-arranged in a single Layout to upload later in Sketchfab.

I look for a bunch of references for skin tones, this because I wanted to create a rotten skin. The texturing process was well separated in different well named layers, for each channel.

I decided to separate the model in different files for texturing, that would make more manageable the process itself.

• Head
• Body
• Clothing

I decided that the best way to perform this task was to start with the body, then, I created a Smart Material with the finished texture, and I use that Smart Material for the other files (the other body parts), that allowed me to preserve the colors and the useful layers, that way, I would just have to adjust minimum details.

Personally, I prefer to separate each mesh in Maya, both high and low poly, having everything well named and organized in the outliner and preserving the final transformations of each mesh, this technique to allow me a better preview when texturing in Substance (and in this case, to keep all the detail behind the clothing); when textures finished and connected back in Maya, just set the mesh transformations back to cero to have each mesh back to its original place in the character.

All of this, just when the character characteristics make it posible.

Just for the fun of it, I rendered an animation of the Clicker by using a Mixamo animation, and I just fixed some skin weights and keyframes for the lower part of the character.

I performed the whole character modeling in ZBrush, with 6 subdivision levels and lots of details along the skin and the mushrooms, helping me aside with brushes and alphas, I used an external model of Alexander Antipov for the teeth and I added extra details in the software.

For Sketchfab, I avoided re-texturing a new model with the new shell arrangement by just editing all texture images in Photoshop, placing them in its new UV position. This because for the final render, I wanted to keep all the details, and for Sketchfab one, I just wanted the possibility to explore in a closer way the model without worrying about the huge file sizes.

For rendering, I used Volumetric Lights to create the atmosphere, I imported some assets from the MegaScans Library and I rendered the Z Depth Map to create depth of field in the final render. Finally, I just added a few adjustments to the final image in Photoshop to get the very last outcome.

I always enjoy seeing the Black & White versions of the renders.

Thanks for reading me along the process of the Clicker.
Hope you all like it as much as I did!