Kate McNeely

All thing CGI \\ 24 \\ This is a blog to document my art projects

[mcneeart]

Character modeling for my senior film

The secondary character in my film is Fred, and I’ve been in charge of modeling his character. Here’s my workflow and progress so far!

I started out with a simple blockout in zbrush to get his shapes down to match the concept art. I also make sure to double check the black and white silhouette to check that the shape reads.

Next, I focus on getting the main shapes and nailing down the proportions

I sculpted the hand separately based off the mesh I already made for Frankie and changed the shape to match Fred better.

To finish up the sculpt, I dynameshed the face together and finished sculpting the details on the face.

I did retopology in Maya with quadraw. For the rest of the model, I plan on adding details to the pants, improving cuffs on the shirts and pants, and finalizing the shoes.

Here’s the current model turnaround:

https://youtu.be/EhVF2e-0pRA

[mcneeart]

Character look development WIP for my senior film

Full beauty renders of Frankie:

This is a shader breakdown for the eye textures:

First, I use an add node to blend a handpainted eye texture with an eye shine created by using a circular ramp texture. In the ramp UV node, I can change the location of the eye shine depending on the shot, and even animate it procedurally.

Next I added a soft blue rim by blending an ambient occlusion node with the eye texture. This helps to fake a subsurface scatter and add a bit of color to the eyes.

The final result is plugged in to the base color. The other attributes are left at default except for roughness which is turned up to 1.

Her sweater color was hand painted in substance painter. I used a normal map to create the illusion of a knit pattern and a displacement map to create the sweater seams. With a little roughness and a light sheen map, I got the final result!

For Frankie’s face textures, I created a base color map. I took that map and turned up the saturation to create her sss color map. I also remove a couple of details like her face wrinkles so they aren’t as emphasized.

Her face maps in all their horrifying glory:

I also painted a black and white map for the subsurface weight giving stronger results in areas like the ear and nose

Next, I’m work on finalizing the hair and the textures for her hands and clothes!