Brave Cow

Hey everyone ! I'm back with a new personal project, a cow !

A friend named Felix kindly agreed to share with me the cow model he had made for one of his personal projects.

If you want to discover the creative process behind this cow, then you're in the right place!

#1 - References

As usual, the very first step was to look for references. The idea was to find images of cows from all angles, images of good enough quality to identify the flow of the hair, and references for different textures such as skin, fur, dirt, muzzle, eyes, hooves, etc. 

#2 - Modeling & UV

As I said earlier, Felix had already provided me with a base model with retopology, so I could go straight to the UV.

Then I made a few adjustments and added details to the model, depending on what I wanted to show in the project.

#3 - Grooming

Maps painting

The first step in grooming is the preparatory work on the maps. I painted a lot of maps to delimit zones, make masks or give specific values to certain places in order to turn these maps into multiplier coefficients.

Then I mixed these maps together in a point vop, multiplying, subtracting and adding to get exactly the information I wanted in these maps.

Guides

Looking closely at the references, I recreated the fur's flow by placing the guides manually on the model and orienting them precisely.

Fur

Then came the hairgen step. I delimited the areas so I could work more precisely on each one. I used a porgressive workflow, adding levels of clumps gradually and using modifiers such as frizz, bend, length, etc., to create the desired effect. I also managed the thickness here. This is where my earlier painted maps were crucial!

#4 - Texturing

Skin : I baked the details of the high poly model onto the low poly model in Substance Painter. This lightened the scene while preserving the details and allowing me to use all these details in various maps later on.

For the sake of consistency, I've created the location of the spots at the skin texture stage, because that's what happens in real life.

I painted the basecolor of the skin and a first draft of roughness maps. I also added a few additional details to the displacement details, as bump maps.

Fur : I reused the mask created earlier for the spots, and I basically gave the fur the colors I wanted. I made variations and imperfections and anticipated at this stage the areas where the fur would be dirty.

#5 - Posing

Using Maya and observing references, I put the cow in pose. I chose a pose reminiscent of the way cows stand when we pass near their meadow 

#6 - Lookdev

I made a tool for scattering geometries on fur using painted maps. I used it to scatter little drops of drool on the hairs around the mouth. Mixed with models of flowing drool, it added realism.

Skin texture : I imported my maps from Substance & I used them with PxrSurface nodes, tweaking my maps to get the best result.

Fur : I followed the same procedure, but I used a PxrHairColor and a PxrMarschnerHair, which I set to artistic mode as I wanted more freedom. (That's why  I painted the fur color and not the melanin values)

#7 - Lighting & Rendering 

For the lookdev scene, I build a basic 3-points lighting with an environnment to add details on reflections. I got these lookdev assets from Cave Academy.

Then, I rendered with Renderman.

#8 - Final images

Indoor / Studio lighting

Outside / Natural lighting

And that's it! I hope you like this little cow !

Thanks again to Felix for the base model.

Thanks for reading until now, and see you soon for new creations !