Technical Breakdown: Stylised Jack-o'-lantern

Stylised Jacko Lantern

We were set a challenge to create a Jack o' lantern. I wanted to create something that was different, a little stylised and a little funny to look at. I also wanted to use this opportunity to use ZBrush a little bit since I hadn't had a chance to use it for a little while.

Started with a sphere in Zbrush and began to sculpt large forms, using Boolean to cut out a hole for the mouth. then using various brushes to shape the cavity and create a calved look.

After sculpting I needed to retopo, I used Maya for this and mostly used quad draw to create my loops, after which I welded some of the wasted verts at the bottom since I didn't need all that geometry for the bake and no one was really going to see the bottom.

I used Marmoset for the baking because I love the live cage feature, its really nice being able to see live previews of the bake and it means I can make mesh changes without waiting for bakes to render, I can also average out projections to stop any weird projection glitches that might show themselves.

Texturing was done in substance painter, Not a-lot to say about that process other than I was able to use the mesh maps from marmoset to create a really nice feeling pumpkin skin, I was also able to use AO layers to emphasise curve details.

Rendering and presentation was done in Marmoset