Orc Boar

Software

The “Orc Boar” is a personal work I have produced in the last three months.

Maya, ZBrush, Substance Painter, Unfold3d, Mari, XGEn, Yeti, Arnold, Photoshop and other MISC software were used in the production process.

References

The reference inspiration is mainly from a picture found on Pinterest before, and some personal modifications were made on the basis of the original picture with some references found to obtain the final effect.

When looking for references, I have the following directions

1. High poly engraving reference
2. Reference for the same type of material
3. Quality reference for advanced models (finished products)
4. Hair Reference
5. Targeted detailed reference

Some of these references were found when I was working on similar works in the past, and some are now specifically found separately. Then you can sort them according to your habits.

Blockout

Because I am used to using ZBrush to make sketches to quickly find the feeling of the work. So when making this work, I will also use ZBrush to make a rough draft first. During this process, you can also check whether there are any problems with each part’s relationship and level, and also pay attention to how to better explain some unclear places.

During the production process, simple coloring is also carried out through ZBrush to prepare for the color matching in the subsequent production. Of course, the final color matching is somewhat different from the draft color matching.

After the draft and the large scale are determined, I will go back to Maya to create the basic model according to the draft.

The most important thing in this step is the wiring. It is necessary to make the wiring more uniform, and it is necessary to observe the turning point of view from multiple angles. Try to show the shape and expression of the draft we made before. The biological part needs to be routed according to the structure.

Also, note that the scale of the model itself can be adjusted by taking a simple character and placing it on the side.

At this time, there are no obvious details of the things produced, mainly to control the relationship between large scale and large structure. After all the preparations are ready, you can classify the objects and import them into ZBrush one by one.

Sculpting

In this step of sculpting, I did not rush to put the pose when I first imported it. Instead, I first did a large-scale carving on some parts that would not change much and distort. This part is mainly to add changes and break the neat model.

The two parts of the orc and the wild boar have been individually carved in-depth, and it is not necessary to be very meticulous, mainly to distinguish those large shapes. It should also be noted here that the Zb files also need to be sorted out, otherwise the subsequent adjustment will be more troublesome.

After that, I felt that the large size was almost the same, so I adjusted the pose of the model. In fact, I tried several poses during this process and found some different pose references.

In the end, it was finalized to use the current appearance and this perspective. And in the process of adjustment, some small and cautious fixes are also made to some parts that will be affected by pose.

The hair and fabric hope to show the feeling of being blown by the wind, which will make the whole picture more dynamic.

In fact, there are many places that will be blocked when carving, and those places can not be processed too much. After all, this production is not a project, and some places that cannot be seen may never be seen.

High poly, textures and details.

This part needs to be explained first. In fact, I personally prefer to make some texture details at the bottom in SP or Mari, but in order to make the high poly look more complete, this time I made these shadings in the high poly information. Sometimes it is actually easier to make adjustments and modifications in the subsequent steps. When adding, also pay attention to adding layers to the model, as well as Morph Target, so that if there is an error, it will be better to modify.

In order to be more refined, I divided the file into three files, one for the details of the props, one for the details of the character, and the other for the details of the boar. In this way, my computer can barely support the required accuracy.

In some cases where I need to refer to other parts, I will reduce the number of faces of those parts and import them for reference.

I will also delete some invisible places in order to save resources (personal works so I know I don’t need them, if it is a standard project, please do not imitate)

Part of the skin texture is imported into ZBrush after mapping with Mari and XYZ, and the other part is modified and added using the texture brush of the skin. Finally, further optimization will be carried out with the layer and Morph Target.

When sculpting, you should also pay attention to comparing the reference, see the depth and extent of the good works, and then imitate their effects.

UV and Baking

When I make my personal works, I have the habit of merging close objects together and making material maps together, so that the subsequent sp baking of ao maps will have good results, and I don’t need to import everything. It will also save the performance of the computer.

I divided the model into several parts, the character, the character equipment, the boar, the seat cushion and the armor of the boar. Then each part is given a shader, which is arranged through UDIM. When placing UVs, try to control the chessboard as much as possible. Of course, it can also be properly optimized according to the plot situation. For example, the precision of the face is relatively high, so it will give more. But as close as possible those places need to be adjusted to a similar accuracy.

When baking, I prefer to replace the 32-bit image of the baked exr. This format will be very convenient when importing Arnold later. In the past, when I used 16-bit images, I needed to test back and forth to adjust the strength of the replacement, which was more troublesome.

Sometimes I also bake a 16-bit displacement map to use as material for subsequent textures.

I usually set the normals to level 3 for baking, and I will also bake a level 1 for the subsequent sp production process so that they will not be superimposed with the displacement details. After the baking is completed, it will be imported into Maya for the first time for rendering testing of the white model. There are some objects that are interspersed and fitted close together. There will be some problems during the baking process, so I will put them before baking. Move it away and bake again, which can greatly reduce the error rate of baking.

The baked file is also named according to the naming convention of sp, which is convenient for me to import sp for the subsequent steps of production.

In the process of checking the white model, I mainly checked the reduction degree of the props in the early stage, because the effect of adding 3s to the biological body needs to be adjusted slowly in the future, and I did not go to too much comparison effect in the early stage.

When testing material replacement, I will also do a lighting idea for the model by the way. Because the white mold stage requires a reliable lighting relationship, it is relatively simple, and it is easier to get the effect that you want to appear. The camera perspective will also be produced as a backup solution. You can see that I did not choose the picture from this perspective in the end.

Skin Material

When making the skin material, I first used ZWrap to wrap an XYZ material on my model and then used color projection to quickly create a base color for the face. After that, I used the seamless texture made by my own ps for 3D projection in sp, and quickly covered all the places that were not covered.

Because there are many layers in the skin part, it is not completely made in one file. The first file is mainly for color and roughness, and the other file is for highlights.

The idea of ​​​​highlight production is the method used in a tutorial by my boss before and produced an effect of inverse color processing. I’ve always found the effect to be very interesting and have followed this approach. In the picture without highlights, you will see that the effect in the sp looks a little oily on the skin itself. It is because the specular map is to be combined later, so this part is left with some adjustable space.

I personally feel that the texture of the skin needs to pay attention to a key point.

Changes in large color blocks, and changes in details. In the process of production, we need to constantly zoom in and out in order to see the specific effect perfectly.

At the same time, we will continue to put it into Arnold to render the test to see how it works.

In the end, I also used the coat to make the second layer of highlights. Although it was very shallow, it felt that the changes were richer.

During this process, I opened a separate file for testing the effect of the skin.

Because the place where the blue color appeared in the previous production process was not obvious enough, this time I also paid special attention to regulating it. The two balls placed in the front are mainly used to compare the effect of light.

Materials for Props

When I only made materials for props, it was divided into two stages. The first stage was to make color matching and a big feeling. In the early stage, I just used some smart materials I made before to quickly fill it. Cover all the props in the picture.

And perform a rendering test to see how the picture looks.

After this step, I feel that the amount of information is still relatively small, and it is basically in the state of the basic color, so I start to de-stack the image in a targeted manner. Using high-contrast retention and stacking can quickly and efficiently produce a large amount of detailed information.

I like to use this kind of picture to treat them as a continuous picture in four squares in PS, and then add changes to the overlay used in sp. Here is just to say that the overlay algorithm of sp is different from that of ps. I have been troubled by this problem for a long time. Recently, when I communicated with a big guy, he found the problem. The image needs to set the color space in sp to complete the superposition like PS.

I made more complex processing for each basic material I made before, mainly to make the changes clear, and to see more and richer changes after the distance.

Then import Arnold for rendering test and try to restore the effect of sp better. Due to the intercommunication and optimization of the two software algorithms, Arnold can basically achieve the perfect SP effect now.

During the production process, I also found a lot of corresponding references to analyze and compare to see the difference between them.

Basically, for every material I need to make, I will find the corresponding target to analyze and compare and finally make it.

When everything is ready, put the material into Arnold and render it, see the overall effect and adjust some parts that don’t fit properly. Finally got an effect. (You can turn on independent rendering at this time to see the results faster)

After I feel that the effect has basically reached a satisfactory level, I will start to perform the same operation on all of them, and quickly make all the remaining parts of the material.

Hair

I mainly use XGen and yeti for hair. Most of my projects use XGen. I am more familiar with XGen. In the early stage, I only made a draft of my hair. After that, I will enable activation in Maya, then create curves, and then use XGen. Convert the curve into a guideline (guide) in the middle, and then quickly add supplements to these guidelines, you can efficiently create the required hair. Xgen I think the pre-cleaning work is very important, so I will be very careful step by step to check whether every detail is cleaned up. The naming is also very careful, after all, it is not convenient to modify it later.

After making it, look at an HDR in a separate file and simply check whether the overall effect is satisfactory.

The material of the hair did not use the Arnold material because it was too slow, so I directly used the effect of XGen. I felt quite satisfied, so I imported the file into the collection file that was originally organized.

Yeti is mainly used to make those fine fine hairs. I used to like to use it very much, but I have been using it for a long time recently, and I am a little rusty with the new version. When matching the renderer version, I did a long match, so I found the corresponding version number on the official website before rendering it.

When Yeti grooms the groom, it will be very inconvenient to make together, and it will freeze. I don’t know if it’s a problem with my computer. So I made 3 parts separately and then converted to curves. The script was then converted into the final overall guideline. Then I started to continuously adjust the data and details in the editor to match the mask range of multiple different areas in Sp.

Finally made the current effect. In fact, I originally wanted to make some dandruff, and I also wanted to make several more layers, but because the computer adjustment was already very stuck, I gave up.

The color change is the effect obtained by mapping some photos of hair in sp.

After all, this is made, it is imported and sorted into the same file, ready to start the final rendering adjustment.

Eyes

The eyes are actually an XYZ scan material that was used before. The effect is very good, and you can get a good effect by connecting the corresponding graph to a reasonable place. The only thing to pay attention to is that due to the limitation of format and number of digits, many parts of the picture need to be adjusted to very small data.

Because the distance between the eyes in my picture is relatively far and relatively small, so there is not much to say, it is a relatively basic production.

Layered Rendering Composition

I turned on some of the layers I needed in Arnold. In fact, I was quite satisfied with the overall effect, so I didn’t need to adjust too many details. The main thing was to do some things that were inconvenient to handle before rendering.

Because there is no nuke on the computer, I continue to use ps for synthesis. It is very inconvenient for PS to read exr. A plug-in called exr-IO needs to be installed to read each channel perfectly.

Because the picture has many layers and the picture is relatively large, after directly adjusting the z channel to a more clear black and white relationship, the picture is converted to 16-bit for processing, which can be greatly optimized.

One of my personal habits is to adjust the direct lighting to a warmer color and the indirect lighting to a cooler color, and the combined effect will be good. Then stack a certain amount of ao (ao needs to pay attention to the ao will make mistakes in the case of fog, you need to get a fog-free ao to come out), and use the z channel to cooperate with the ps selection tool to open the relationship between the front and back. Add some blur to the distance. I also adjusted the color and contrast and added a bit of noise to improve the feel of the picture.

Finally got the current effect.

Because the computer monitor has a certain color, I will send it to the collection for inspection and correction.

Later, I also rendered some pictures of other perspectives that were arranged before.

Originally, I was thinking about whether to use materials to add a background, but because there was no planning in the early stage and the effect was average, I didn’t add it. Of course, it’s also because the computer really can’t carry it, and it basically takes a day to render such a picture.

The above is the whole process of making this work. I will share it with you here. I hope you like it.
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