Mudbox - Reference

Reference
Mudbox
Mudbox
Table of Contents
S# Session Page
1. Making of The War Troll 3
2. Making of Queen of Death 17
3. Sculpting a Modular Stone Staircase 46
4. The Making of the Giant 73
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Session 1: Making of The War Troll

Source http://www.cgarena.com/freestuff/tutorials/mudbox/wartroll/war.html
21/01/2015
Date of Retrival
I modeled the character War Troll for my entry at Autodesk Mudbox Armed and Dangerous Challenge.
My initial idea was to basically create a reptile like biped with strong structural feel as well with an
aggressive attitude. I also wanted to put a drastic contrast in forms by adding a female figure to the
composition but later did not continue with the idea due to lack of time.
Here are my initial concept sketches and reference sheet:
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© Copyright, Aptech Limited.
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Next, I started to make a very boxy base mesh with all quads in Maya and gave a very basic volume in
mudbox:
Next, I started sculpting the model in Mudbox:
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During this process I mostly used the following tools and occasionally with some combination of STAMPS:
But during the process of sculpting I never bothered about the loops or any technical issues rather I
concentrated on sculpt rhythm flow etc .
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Then I generated a animatable mesh in Maya using the awesome NEX tools from DRaster.I used the Quad
Draw function of NEX to generate the topology.
I first exported the 3rd or 4th division Mudbox mesh and broke them into several parts for easy retopology
in Maya.
During the process of topology I retweaked the model several times and I used Send to Mudbox and vice
versa feature of Autodesk creative suit 2013:
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Similarly I created a total of 12 UV layout which means I planned to distribute the model into 12 texture
maps of 2048x2048 for the bigger models and 1024x1024 for the smaller parts.
Once the model is finally over and the UVs are done I started the process of transferring the high detail
version of Mudbox to the newly generated topology using
MESH → TRANSFER DETAILS in Mudbox.
Next, I quickly posed the model using Mudbox and Maya Bones and retweaked the model wherever it got
messed while posing :
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And I baked Displacement and Normal Maps of all 12 textures in Mudbox using
MAPS → EXTRACT TEXTURE MAPS.
Once all this are done I started to paint the textures in Mudbox:
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Next, I extracted the Color Map, Specular Map and Ambient Occlusion Map from Mudbox :
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Once the modeling and texturing phase is over I started the most lengthy part of this project which is
rendering. Since as a modeling and texturing Artist I learnt a lot in this phase.
I used Mental Ray for rendering and Fast SSS shader for Skin material generation.
I used a basic 3 point light with HDRI for lighting.
The Lighting stages:
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For the Skin Shader I used MISS FAST SKIN SHADER
And Finally for compositing I used a very few render passes:
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And I followed a pretty simple render settings:
Finally I was happy with the result with few additional tweaks like blur, cloud, lens adjustment and noise
in photoshop:
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Session 2: Making of Queen of Death

Source http://www.cgarena.com/freestuff/tutorials/mudbox/deathqueen/queen.html
21/01/2015
Date of Retrival
Before I start describing the making of “Queen of Death”, I should mention when and why I created it.
Few months back I participated in a competition called the “Autodesk Mudbox challenge”. The theme
was “Armed and Dangerous”. I found that it was an interesting theme and challenging too as in this
process I need to learn Mudbox which was almost new software to me.
Topics I will cover in the tutorial are:
1. Concept Design
2. Base mesh
3. Sculpting
4. Topology
5. UV layout
6. Re-Projection and Re-Sculpting
7. Texturing
8. Lighting
9. Rendering
10. Composition in Photoshop
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CONCEPT DESIGN
I started processing the concept in my mind and came up with some ideas. For a long time, I had wanted
to create a beast so I felt that this was a good time to give it a try.
One of my first ideas was a cute innocent child holding a lollipop in one hand and a giant horrible beast
or creature on the other hand. I was about to finalize my concept and entitle the piece “My Cute Poppy”.
It was then that I realized that there was no weapon in my image (as per the theme it was necessary to
have a weapon) and the child seemed too small to catch our eyes. Hence I decided to replace the child
with an adult lady, where I would get some space to play with the armor and weapons. I took one of Mark
Newman’s sculpted characters (for a quick rough idea of the look n feel) and placed it in my scene to see
how it looked against my giant beast. I roughly sketched her clothes and hair and gave her a place-holder
weapon.
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Now I felt fairly satisfied with the characters. I intended to go for an ancient mythological look and not so
sci-fi or futuristic.
I started collecting more reference and finding out ways to make my composition look more live. One name
that came to my mind is Frank Frazetta – He was one of my favorite artistes. I find his work very interesting
in several aspects. Besides, he made his characters look so alive and his works are so dynamic that they
always tell us a story.
Thus, I started thinking of framing my artwork in action, more expression and overall in more dramatic
presentation.
I started making rough sketches of my characters. I would scribble on a piece of paper or on my phone
when I was not in front of my computer.
These are the sketches which I did quickly in my mobile (Samsung Note I) whenever something came to
my imagination. It helped me a lot as I progressed further.
Note: I have observed many times that interesting images come to our mind unconsciously and when we
least expect it. I recommend taking rough notes of them immediately, because they may prove valuable.
Even just a rough sketch will help you not to forget. Later you can redefine it, as I did.
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Below is a quick concept design of the whole idea.
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Base Model for Beast

I created the base mesh for the beast character in Maya. As you can see, I tried to keep the mesh to quads
as much as possible and also tried to give approximately equal spacing between the edge loops, which
helps while sculpting in multi sub-division level. I didn’t give myself much time for the base mesh as I had
already planned to go for re-topology after the basic sculpt.
In the image below, I have managed to make some saddle space on the beast’s back. I seated a default
human mesh that comes with Mudbox as a place holder on the back of the beast and sculpted the volumes
around it accordingly. Also, I played with the proportions, pushed the back legs further and sculpted out
more details till I felt it was ready to go for re-topology.
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Once I got the major volumes and details, I went ahead for re-topology. 50% of my topology was done in
MAYA and the rest in TopoGun. Below is a WIP screenshot from TopoGun.
Here is a shot of the completed topology of the beast along with other assets which were pending. Also,
as you may have noticed, I created separate mesh for the ribs to get better control and better lighting and
shadow for the particular area.
Note: Re-Topology was important for me as I didn’t want to use a displacement map and I could give the
desired pose for the character at any time I wanted.
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UV
I know that many artist don’t like to spent much time on UVs as it usually seems like a boring job and
therefore use auto generated or random UV’s. Even though I would say that is okay, spending a little more
time on UV layout may save lots of time later on in the Texturing stage.
I used a 4k map (4096x4096). As you can see below, I mirrored the UV shells and also tried to utilize as
much space as possible in the 0 to 1 grid. This definitely made my job faster and easier while Texturing. I
was able to spend more time on getting finer details on one side and then easily copy the same on the other
side in Photoshop. So technically, I saved lots of time while getting better details. By using the maximum
of your UV space, you will get more pixels to paint for your character.
TRANSFERRING SCULPTED DETAILS

I transferred the sculpted details through Mudbox (transfer details) in the new retopologized and UV-ready
model.
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QUEEN MODELING
I chose the default human base mesh in Mudbox to start sculpting my Queen character. As you can see
below, I changed the proportion step by step to give a feminine look with basic volumes and shapes. At
this stage I was mostly concentrating on her basic anatomy without looking for the finer details.
As a next step, I prepared a new topology for the Queen character and carried on with finer sculpting. This
new topology was rig ready and important to me as I don’t have to be worried while giving the final pose
and expression. Also I tried to create the topology to match with the silhouette of her anatomy so that I
don’t have to use Displacement map which is expensive in the final Rendering stage.
Below is a close-up of her face topo and anatomy.
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Once I was done with the sculpting, it was time to design her costume and other related assets. I started
with a screen grab of the sculpted Queen character and sketched out rough designs on separate layers
in Photoshop. I love to work in this way as it saves lots of time and I can turn out more designs quickly.
Directly starting on 3D might consume more time and also make it difficult to experiment with varieties so
quickly.
Costume design in Photoshop made my job easy and I was able to quickly move on to modeling the base
mesh of her clothes in Maya.
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You can see that I started the base modeling of her clothes. At this point, I also modeled her basic facial
expression and straightened her arms to give a standard riggable pose.
QUEEN’S UV LAYOUT
I planned to go for a single texture page for her skin instead of multiple texture pages. Again I tried to utilize
the maximum UV space and placed each shell carefully to minimize wastage of space.
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PREPARING FOR THE FINAL POSE

At this stage my characters were ready for the action pose. I planned to model the rest of the pending props
and sculpting details after I was done with the posing.
As Mudbox supports .fbx format and maya joints with skin weights, I did a very basic joint setup for my
characters in Maya with painted weights. Then I exported it as .fbx and started experimenting with poses
in Mudbox.
Note: You can experiment with multiple poses in Mudbox and save them individually in the same Mudbox
or .mud file. Above is a screen grab of the Poses tool menu in Mudbox.
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The above image shows the painted weights in MAYA and below is a pose made in Mudbox with the same
skeleton.
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While posing the beast I referred a few images of leaping tigers collected from internet. Also I tried to give
a feeling of heaviness for his body.
Once I was done with the basic pose with the help of joints, I started re-sculpting it and fine-tuned a few
areas.
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To showcase more aggression, force and body strength, I tried focusing on the silhouette and the overall
curve of the body. I also straightened a few of the body parts like neck, the line from shoulder to elbow etc.
The below image will make my points clearer.
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Breaking the symmetry also is important to give a natural and lively look.
I had to stop at the 6th subdivision level as there were a lot more assets to come which would require a
lot of memory.
DESIGNING THE BOW AND ARROW
The Queen’s weapon was still pending, so I again started with a rough concept for it, then modeled the
base mesh in Maya and sculpted in Mudbox as shown in the image.
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POSING THE QUEEN CHARACTER

I did the basic rigging for the queen in MAYA and posed her in Mudbox, using the same techniques that I
used for the Beast.
To avoid a boring and flat pose I conciously tried not to make her look as if she is posing for the camera.
Aggressive expression, bent and twisted torso, tilted Bow, flowing hair braids etc played a very vital role
in her overall pose.
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TEXTURING THE BEAST

Mudbox is an extremely flexible tool for texturing as you can have more than one layer with multiple
blending options just like Photoshop. You can have more than one map like Color, Specular, Bump etc.
at the same time. Also, you can switch to Photoshop at any time with the help of “Export screen to PSD”
and get back in Mudbox with “Re-Import from PSD” to continue painting in 3D viewport.
Beast Texture
As I hadn’t prepaired any color concepts for the beast, I didn’t have much idea about the exact texture
that I wanted for the Beast. Hence, I started experimenting and played with various color combinations
and slowly got a direction to go forward. Below I have given some WIP images to show how I progressed.
Step 1 – I started blocking out with reddish tint but I felt that it wasn’t so interesting.
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Step 2 – Tried multiple colors but it was looking too colorful.
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Step 3 – Toning down the colors towards dark grey. Here I started liking the tonal value and went forward
with finetuning it more.
Step 4 – Here I am almost done with my Diffuse map.
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Step 5 – To make my Beast look more interesting, I started painting the inner lava in bright reddish yellow
color. As this all was a bit experimental, I took separate layer for that, which you can see on the right hand
upper corner a layer named “ beast_fire”. It’s very important as anytime I can edit the color and play with
transperancy etc.
TEXTURING THE QUEEN

I wanted to paint the Queen’s skin a bit dark. I started with a fair skin and tried to make it dark with the
required value changes.
Step 1 – Projecting skin color is a pretty simple and straight-forward process. I loaded a few hi-res
images from my library as stencils and with the help of the Projection Brush in Mudbox, I easily managed
to paint the whole body skin.
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Step 2 – I am done with the skin diffuse map. I brought the tone down from a fair skin to a mid dark tone.
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Step 3 – Here again I took the supports of layers. As you can see I painted her blue colored mask in a
different layer and also for the Kajal(eye-liner). Later I changed the hue and converted the blue to green.
Step 4 – As I mentioned before it is fun to do texturing in Mudbox. With the help of stencil, here I’m
projecting a leather texture to create bump map.
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Some more updates are given below
Below are the Diffuse Maps of the Queen and the Beast
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CAMERA
I took the final posed models into MAYA and set my camera angle, so that I could show my characters
and the action in the best way possible. I placed my camera closer to the ground to give a dynamic look.
Maya Shading
For the Characters’ skin and also for the elephant tusk, I used SSS Maya Mental Ray Shader. Below you
can see the SSS shading network for the Queen and the Beast’s skin. I used multiple maps for better
control.
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LIGHTING
Lighting is one of the most important areas of CG. Bad lighting would definitely spoil all the hard work which
I had done so far. I wanted to do something in lighting which would make my artwork more dramatic. To
avoid flat lighting I tried to play with more shadows and Rim light to get a more 3 dimensional feel.
I started with a simple 3 point lighting concept. I placed Key, Fill and Rim lights and also an area light for
bounce light from bottom with a low intensity.
As the final render was going to be a still image, there was plenty of scope to play with light. For an example
– If you feel that a particular part is not getting proper rim light, you can create a separate light just for that
area, to achieve what you are looking for.
Maya Mental-Ray Render
I rendered four passes, namely 1.Diffuse, 2. Specular, 3.Ambient, 4. Ambient Occlusion which I later
composited together to form the Beauty Render. I also rendered the saliva in a separate render pass.
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Later, I rendered a few more passes for Rim highlight.

Final Composition
As the Beauty Render was to be a still image, I chose Photoshop for the Final Comp. I added some
elements like smoke and the green lightning effect in Photoshop. I also adjusted the exposure value.
The background was painted in Photoshop. I kept it dark and blended down the details so as to keep the
focus always on the characters.
Hope you got some useful stuff from this !!
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Session 3: Sculpting a Modular Stone Staircase

Source http://cgi.tutsplus.com/tutorials/sculpting-a-modular-stone-staircase-in-
autodesk-mudbox--cg-2024
Date of Retrival
21/01/2015
In this tutorial you will learn the fundamentals of sculpting hi-poly environment art. We will cover the
process of creating an optimized base mesh in 3ds Max, and then export it into Autodesk Mudbox to
sculpt in the details, starting with the larger forms, eventually working our way down to the smaller details,
and finally using alphas to add surface detail.
Final Effect Preview
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Step 1
Select the box tool from the sidebar.
Step 2
Click and drag on the grid, then enter the dimensions. You may choose different dimensions of your own
design if you like.
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Step 3
Select the hierarchy tab, and click ‘Affect Pivot Only’. In the Top viewport, move the pivot to the corner of
the box.
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Step 4
Access your array menu by going to “Tools >Array”.
Step 5
Click the preview button, and alter the settings as shown below. Depending on the dimensions of your box
you may have to change these to suit your setup.
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Step 6
You should now have something similar to below.
Step 7
Convert one of the boxes to an editable poly by right clicking and going to “Convert > Convert to Editable
Poly”.
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Step 8
Select the “Attach” tool from the sidebar, attach all of your boxes into the same object.
Step 9
Select a ring of edges around one of your boxes. Select the connect tool from the sidebar, and use 2
segments to break up the steps into smaller construction blocks.
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Step 10
Connect rings around your object to match the following image, and alternating between 2 and 3 segments.
It will help to have hotkeys for popular functions such as connect and extrude.
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Step 11
Select all the edges that you just created and click the “Chamfer” button. Enter ‘1’ in the ‘Chamfer Amount’
option. This value may vary depending on the box dimensions.
Step 12
Enter into polygon mode by pressing 4, select the polygons in between the chamfer you just created, and
delete them.
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Step 13
Your mesh should now look like this.
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Step 14
Zoom in between the blocks, select the opposing edges, and use the “Bridge” function from the sidebar.
Step 15
Your mesh should now look similar to this.
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Step 16
Select horizontal rings and use the “Connect” tool from the sidebar. Enter around -70 in the ‘Slide’ option.
Step 17
Your tpology should now look like this.
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Step 18
Select the polygons within the sections you have just created, and hit “Extrude”. Change the type to ‘Local
Normal’, and enter a value of 3.0.
Step 19
Select the edges that you won’t be needing, and delete them using Ctrl+Backspace. This will delete edges
and verts together.
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Step 20
Your mesh should now look like this.
Step 21
Select the backfacing polygons that won’t be needed, and delete them using the delete key. We do this
because they aren’t needed, and it is pointless to waste precious Mudbox resolution on something that
won’t even get sculpted.
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Step 22
The faces that aren’t needed are now deleted.
Step 23
Your mesh still looks the same from the front.
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Step 24
It’s time to export your base mesh from 3ds Max and get it into Mudbox. After selecting your object, go to
“File → Export Selected”.
Step 25
Name your file according to your personal choice. It is good practice to keep naming conventions, for
example I called this ‘Environ_Stair_Basemesh’.
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Step 26
Import your object using “File → Import”. As this is an environment object, and not an organic character,
you don’t want the first few sub-division levels to smooth out your hard-surface definition. Now go to “Mesh
→ Add New Subdivion Level” and click the box next to it.
Step 27
Make sure “Smooth Positions” is un-ticked. This means you can sub-divide without loosing your lovely
hard edges.
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Step 28
You may find it helpful to enable Full Screen mode when sculpting, this will give a larger view of your object.
Step 29
It’s useful to have some ambient occlusion to help show different height levels within your object, anything
such as cracks, bullet holes, and gaps will have ambient shadows when this option is turned on.
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Step 30
The first thing to do is sub-divide by pressing Ctrl+D. Your mesh from 3ds Max is currently extremely
uniform. This isn’t the case in real life and especially not the case in games. Since this environment piece
is inspired by the GOW universe we’ll have to anticipate battles raging around it, decades of use without
being cleaned, hundreds of soldiers using the stairs every day and therefore loads of ‘wear and tear’. you
get the idea. Select the “Grab” tool from the main toolbar and begin to make some of those sides uneven.
Don’t go overboard, we’re looking for subtle changes here. It helps to visualize the prop being used, and
visualize how it gets damaged.
Step 31
Sub-divide again, and using the scrape tool sculpt over the very sharp edges of your stairs. This will give
it a chipped and worn feel. Once again, don’t go overboard...less is sometimes more. You may also want
to start working in larger bullet holes, or chipping off corners of the stairs. The overhang is the thinnest,
and therefore the most fragile piece of stone, so it will be damaged the most.
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Step 32
Continue to add larger types of damage. Don’t go near the alphas yet though, just work in the larger forms
before getting into the nitpicky stuff. Using the sculpt brush, take off the corners of the stairs, especially
where they could be kicked and used the most.
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Step 33
Now that you have your basic damage down, you can work in a simple alpha image to get some form of
what kind of material it is. In this instance the bottom of the stairs are brick, while the top slabs are granite.
Select the brick stencil that comes default with mudbox, and an image will appear on your screen.
Step 34
Select your sculpt brush, and sculpt onto the front and side faces where the brick would appear. Scaling
is extremely important at this point, because you don’t want tiny or mis-aligned bricks. Think about how
large the asset is in comparison to the world, things tend to get built accurately and therefore will be aligned
correctly. Don’t worry we can damage it later.
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Step 35
When working with hard-surface environments in sculpting software, you may find it easier to use a
solid falloff, this will avoid any ice-cream like patches that will make your concrete look and feel like a
marshmellow.
Step 36
Continue to use the brick alpha while adding some basic detail. The way the brick was laid at the side of
the stairs will match the front, so you don’t want four bricks vertically on one side and then only two on the
front. make sure they match up.
Step 37
Cover all of the surface that is suppose to be brick. Your mesh should now look like this, although it may
feel a little soft. We’ll solve that next.
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Step 38
Select the “Contrast” brush from the tool panel. This will sharpen your height values, and make your bricks
look a whole lot better.
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Step 39
Use the “Contrast” brush along the gaps between the bricks. This will bring them out a lot more and give
you an effect that doesn’t just look like alphas slapped on.
Step 40
Your mesh should now look like this. The brick is far more professional now that it has enhanced contrast.
It may help to add deeper cracks along the brick lines in some places. This will give it a more dynamic
and life-like feel.
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Step 41
Select the alpha underneath the off button. This is an interesting stone texture that will benefit you with
some minor surface detail. You may choose to select another alpha depending on your preference.
Step 42
Using the “Sculpt” brush, sculpt interesting sections of the alpha onto the model. Try to keep all of your
surface detail similar in size.
Step 43
Use the alpha on the top of all the slabs, remembering not to go over the top with the depth or detail. A low-
poly version may only have 512 or 1024 textures so things such as minor surface detail is just wasting time.
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Step 44
Use the default “Sculpt” tool and increase the depth of the cracks between the brick. You don’t want it to
look like an alpha has just been applied and left as that, or that would just look amateur. Depending on how
defined you would like it to be, you may also choose to use the contrast tool to really bring out the gaps.
Step 45
To avoid a spongy feel, you want to make the edges of your bricks hard. To do this, use the “Scrape” tool,
and remove the sharper edges from your brick. This is the limit of how small you should want your details
to go. Smaller details won’t show up on the normal maps when baked out.
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Step 46
Depending on how damaged you want your staircase, use the “Scrape” brush further, and scratch off the
side of your brick. The edge of the brick would have been one of the first things to crumble and fall off with
prolonged use.
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Step 47
Here is the finished sculpted environment asset. I chose not to take off the edges of the brick excessively,
though you may choose to decide otherwise. As previously mentioned, less can sometimes be more when
applying damage to game assets. Subtle changes that catch the eye and make you think are better then
just slapping on loads of destruction, dirt, and damage.
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Session 4: The Making of the Giant

Source http://area.autodesk.com/tutorials/the_making_of_the_giant
21/01/2015
Date of Retrival
This article will take you through the various stages I used to create Keith Thompson’s Giant character,
from initial setup and block-in all the way through to final renders in Unreal3 engine.
I am still very much learning this whole process, this isn’t necessarily the best way to do this, it’s just what
worked for me on this project.
I won’t be covering all of the steps in detail, but this should help to explain my workflow and the reasons
for some of the decisions I made along the way. This article assumes that you have a decent grasp on
modeling and texturing. I have always wanted to document this process from start to finish and I hope it
helps some people.
My workflow for this model was...
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I prefer to build a quick and messy block-in mesh first. This is because I find it a lot easier to get the
topology looking good with a retopology pass. It also allows you to make design changes as you progress
with your model and not be bound by the shape and topology of a low poly mesh created earlier.
The drawback to this workflow used to be that you end up with a high res model that doesn’t have UVs
assigned to it. The transfer UV’s tool introduced in Maya 8 now solves this problem by allowing you to
copy you low res UV coordinates onto you high res mesh.
BLOCKING IN
The initial block-in mesh is a quick and rough shape that will be used as the base mesh for the high
resolution sculpt. I am not too concerned at this stage with creating an animatable topology, but just getting
the basic shape modeled. The sculpting pass is the stage of modeling I enjoy the most so I never want to
spend too much time on the block-in.
I tried to build the block-in mesh as evenly spaced quads where possible, to help keep even poly distribution
when I start sculpting. If you download the ActivePolySmooth script (from Highend3d or 3dbe.com) then
you can check at the touch of a button if your mesh is going to have any problems with pinching when it
is subdivided.
I started with the organic sections that would be sculpted, using poly-by-poly modeling. I never really got
my head around box modeling and I find this method is much quicker. The first stage is blocking in the
strips that will define the shape of the body, hands and legs, paying close attention to the reference images.
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I try to keep things as simple as possible at this stage. Just follow the front and side views to define the
strips. This gives me a basic cage. from here it is just a case of extruding new polygons and joining up the
various strips to create a whole shell.
- The hands and feet have more topology modeled into them at this stage than the rest of the character. I
find it much easier to sculpt the tendons of the feet and hands if you have edges defining their flow.
- I always prefer to block in the arms using primitive cylinders so I do this last and join them up with the
strips already in place for the shoulders and chest.
After I joined up the various strips and tweaked the mesh I end up with this.
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The block-in of the rest of the model is very simple. The wooden planks, cannon and armour are all just
modeled from primitive shapes then moved scaled and rotated into position and hidden for later. There is
no need for a retopology pass on these parts so I made these hard surface parts as accurate as I could
at this stage.
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The last stage of the blocking process is to decide how to split the mesh up into smaller workable chunks
for sculpting and baking maps. As I was going to be baking my maps in Maya, I had to split the mesh into
small sections so the final sculpted parts wouldn’t be too high-poly for Maya to handle.
Thinking about where I could hide the seams in the model played a big part in my decision of how to split
the mesh.
- The large collar could be used to hide a seam between the neck and body geometry so I could make
the head a separate mesh.
- Also the cloth on the arms would allow me to hide a seam between the hands and the arms - this allowed
me to make the hands a separate mesh too
here is how I split the mesh up.
Finally I exported all these parts as separate .OBJ files, using the following export options.
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The materials “off” option isn’t really a big deal, but this way it saves having a separate .MTL file for every
section you export.
HI RES MESH -- ORGANIC SECTIONS
There are hundreds of excellent sculpting tutorials available online that cover how to sculpt digitally.
When I’m sculpting I only really use basic brushes at low intensity, this seems much more intuitive to me
and is more like working with real clay.
For me, the best results come when sculpting quite slowly and building up strokes. Gradually building up
low intensity strokes on your mesh helps to avoid the puffiness that you see in a lot of digitally sculpted
models.
A lot of sculpting tutorials online start with a tweaking pass where the major forms are moved around until
all the proportions are correct. In this instance I had already built the base mesh to be as close to the
intended shape as possible so a tweaking pass wasn’t necessary.
While sculpting I think it is very important to get the absolute maximum detail from every level before
subdividing again. I usually get to a point where I think it’s time to subdivide, then set a timer for 1 hour and
force myself to work on the existing level for that extra hour. This also helps to avoid the dreaded puffiness.
Once the sculpts were finished I exported each section into a folder as an individual .OBJ file
The imported head and hand sections and resulting sculpts through 5 levels of subdivision.
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It is possible to go into a lot more detail, but things like pores and scratches can be added as normal map
overlays later. By keeping the mesh quite light, it is a lot easier to work with later on in Maya.
Once all the separate sections were sculpted I imported them all into Mudbox. I selected all the parts at
once and exported them as a single mesh.
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HI RES MESH -- ORGANIC SECTIONS
The hard surface sections of the model are really easy to produce. I use Maya’s basic modeling tools.
For the collar piece.
1. I started by selecting faces from the low poly mesh, duplicating them and moving them outwards from
the original.
2. Then extrude the new faces to give the new section some depth, and move it back into the original
mesh.
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3. I repeated this until I had made enough individual little pieces. I then beveled all the sections (with 2
segments on each bevel) and applied a mesh smooth (Exponential - 2 levels) to give me the final collar.
This same process can be repeated with all the hard surface sections. The crisp edges obtained from
beveling and smoothing give excellent results when baking normal maps later on.
Once I had all the hard surface sections worked up into high res meshes, I combined them with the organic
sections which give me my complete hi res mesh.
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RETOPOLOGY
Next, I rebuilt all the organic sections with topology that represents muscle flow and is also animatable.
There are many advantages to a topology pass. The sculpting process means that parts of the high mesh,
like the pecs of the character, do not fit into the block-in mesh anymore. This could cause problems later
when trying to bake normal maps.
My method for creating the final low res mesh is.
1. Import a high res sculpted section into Maya
2. Place it into a Layer and make that layer a reference so the mesh cannot be selected.
3. Now using the create polygon tool, I can hold V to snap polygons to the high res mesh and work around
the mesh creating a good topology. It helps to have plenty of reference for this part. Follow muscle flow
and place enough polygons to ensure a smooth silhouette. The final result of snapping all these polygons
to the high mesh is this.
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4. Once I have this patchwork of polygons I can merge them together to create a final mesh. I usually go
round the model once with the MOVE NORMAL TOOL and tweak some points using the high poly mesh
layer as a reference, and making sure the low mesh fits around the high one as tightly as possible. I have
a bad habit of tweaking meshes to death but using this method the low mesh shouldn’t need too much
more work.
5. I repeated that process for all of the organic sections, and for the hard surface I just imported the parts
I modeled for the original block-in mesh. Once they are all put together, I have my final low poly mesh. At
this point I had to collapse a few loops and merge some verts to get my mesh to my target 10,000 triangles.
UV MAPPING
This section will be short and sweet as there is nothing really special about my UV mapping workflow. I
have tried quite a few pelting and unwrapping plugins for Maya but I always come back to laying out the
mesh by hand. 95% of my projections are using Planar Project and then just stitching pieces together and
relaxing the UVs.
I always use the channel box to input identical Projection Width and Height values. This keeps all the
projections even.
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For this model I initially projected all the UVs as evenly as possible.
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Then I had to think forward to the baking and texturing stages. Thinking about how I would paint textures,
and how the model would be used in a game, I could make decisions on which parts needed more texture
space than others. For example.
- The face would usually be given a lot of UV space, but for this character the face is mostly hidden by the
mask and straps.
- Also I planned on using the same overlays on all the various skin textures so all the skin sections had
to be around the same scale.
- I thought the planks on the armour would look bad if there was no obvious wood grain texture to them
so I assigned them more space.
- The feet are mostly covered by planks, but as this character is a giant they will be the nearest thing in
view to any player in a game, so they were assigned a bigger space in the UV map.
- The skin areas would be covered in small scars so I didn’t want to share UV space and have the scars
identical on both legs and arms.
- The left arm has ropes cutting into it so that needed its own UV space.
Once I had decided which parts were a priority for UV space I did the bit I hate most of all...laying the UVs
out into 0-1 space.
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RIGGING
As this model was just a personal project I didn’t want to spend too much time on the rig. Just enough to
get the character posed. The protruding belly on this character was difficult to include in the rig as I used
a very basic rig, with the armour pieces parented to the nearest bones.
As you can see, it’s not going to worry Jason Schleifer anytime soon, but it does the job for this project. I
tend to rush through the rigging part to keep myself motivated. I learned rigging from an ancient Gnomon
DVD and haven’t really moved with the times in terms of new tools.
I modeled and rigged in this pose rather than a Tpose because in my limited experience it is easier to
get the shoulders deforming well in the semi Tpose. This pose means that the hand joints can pull on the
verts in the legs, but I find it easier to fix this problem than doing intricate weight painting in the shoulders.
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I also find it helpful to keep a script on my shelf to snap the rig back to this bind pose incase all else fails
I know I have that there to reset the rig.
1. Select all the joints in the skeleton.
2. Open the script editor and add. rotate 0 0 0 ;
3. Save as a script.
I then save this rigged file out and didn’t touch it until my final presentation stage. The next stage is baking
maps and because I don’t need any rigging information on the mesh to do that, I revert back to using my
unrigged low poly mesh.
BAKING MAPS
The first thing I did before baking any maps was save a copy of my UVmapped low poly mesh as “BakeTemp.
mb”. This meant I could chop the mesh up into sections and have a backup master of my low mesh to
revert to.
The first thing I baked was the head, I imported the low and hi res sections. These still had their world
coordinates assigned so there was no need to change the positions. After a few tweaks on the low mesh
I open the Transfer Maps window.
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I baked a normal map and ambient occlusion map for every section of the mesh using the following
settings.(1= low poly mesh, 2=high poly mesh) I have never had to change these settings for any objects
(apart from the map size) so they should be good for most things.
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For the hard surface sections I could bake multiple parts at once to save time. By splitting the object
up before I baked the maps, I could avoid the errors that appear in the normal maps from intersecting
geometry. Here you can see the hi and low meshes for the Giant’s mask split-up for baking.
Once I had all my little individually baked sections, it is just a case of SHIFT+Dragging them together into
one complete map in Photoshop and cleaning them up slightly. Be careful...this next diagram might blow
your mind.
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Cleaning normals maps isn’t as daunting as it seems. The Smudge brush at 75% Opacity and Spacing
turned ON should wipe away most small problems easily.
I check each section on my model individually and cleaned up the maps as I went along. I find it much
easier to find and fix errors when I’m concentrating on a small section of the mesh rather than having a
2048x2048 maps riddled with errors to pick through.
Once I had my Ambient occlusion and Normal maps baked and combined I baked an Occlusion pass on
the entire low poly mesh. This is then multiplied over the top of all the other layers at around 20%.
It is also a good idea to colourize occlusion maps to compliment the surface they are sitting on top of.
For example the skin sections on this character have red occlusion maps, the metal parts have navy blue
occlusion maps. Multiplying black occlusion maps over skin is very obvious and doesn’t help to sell the
skin as an organic surface.
With the baking finished, I had the base for my textures.
TEXTURING
Some people like to work in passes on their textures, I prefer to work at each individual piece until its
finished and then move onto another piece. Again there are hundreds of texturing tutorials out there, but I
will concentrate on how I made the Giant’s skin. The details may not come out in these pictures but they
should give a rough idea of what I’m doing.
For the skin sections.....
1. I start by gathering references, in this case I was heavily inspired by the face-huggers’ skin tones in the
Aliens movies, and CG models like “The Orc” by Lacopo Di Luigi.
2. I set the occlusion layer for the skin to multiply at around 50% and lay down a base colour, in this case
RGB:166,160,144. A lot of texturers like to lay down a midtone first and then add dark and light tones, I
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prefer to start with light tones and work by darkening them down.
3. Next I add colour passes. I saw a guy using this technique at an Art School show using an airbrush
and thought I would try it in Photoshop. I like the results and the variations it gives. Basically I do three
seperate colour passes on three layers (blue, green, purple) using very low opacity brushes. I simply add
those tones where I feel they may appear on the skin and finally smudge them out a little.
4. Next I add a blurred layer of Blue speckles and a layer of pink/red speckles on Multiply at around 40%
to add some variation to the skin surface. I also add a subtle overlay of a concrete surface to give some
grain to the skin.
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5. Next up I whack on some nipples, and 5 hand painted dirt layers using various grunge and dirt brushes.
I try to keep these layers subtle at this stage so I can tone them up or down as needed later on.
6. Then I add details, various layers of spots, pock marks, cuts, scratches and stains.
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7. Finally I adjust the contrast, saturation and levels until I like the look, and I have my final skin! Oh the
joy!
I never really have a set workflow for making skin textures, I like to just piss around until it looks ok. I always
keep everything on separate layers though. The final levels and saturation adjustments really depend on
the engine/renderer you are aiming for so testing along the way will really help.
From here I flatten my skin layers and drag it into my Specular map.
1. CTRL+U and shift the hue to get a deep blue colour.
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2. Next I ran Noise and Paint Daub filters to add some fine grain, specs and detail to the surface.
3. Finally I made some adjustments to the Saturation, Levels and contrast. Again it helps to test this in the
engine to see how it’s looking and what needs to be changed.
The last piece in the puzzle is the normal map overlay. This can be any picture/texture with a fine grain. I
just ran one through Ryan Clark’s ridiculously good CrazyBump Beta program to extract normal information
out of it. I reduced the global intensity and removed all but the fine detail to keep it subtle.
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This was then saved as a .TGA and overlayed on top of the baked normals. Ben Mathis has an excellent
tutorial covering this technique at.
Normal Map Workflow
So thats about it for the skin. I use this DIFFUSE - SPECULAR - NORMAL workflow for all parts of the
mesh until I am happy with the textures.
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PRESENTATION
I used this model as an opportunity to try out the Roboblitz editor and the unreal engine for rendering. I
was really impressed at how artist-friendly it is and stunned at the quality of the graphics in-game.
I am totally new to working with this editor and still have it all to learn. I am at nowhere near the stage of
helping other people to use the tools, so I will only go through the rough steps and setup I used to produce
my final image.
3DBuzz.com has 4 excellent free introduction videos for Using the Roboblitz Editor, made by Adam
Hettrick
1. Pose the mesh in Maya and Export using Actor X or .ASE exporter plugin.
2. Import the mesh and textures into a new package in the Roboblitz Editor.
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3. Build the shader in Unreal’s Material Editor.
4. Build a basic subtractive geometry cube as a level and apply textures to each surface (for the walls and
ceiling I used the BLACK_NO_SPEC_mat material that can be found in the PROP_hub package included
with Roboblitz. This effectively makes the walls and ceiling pure black.
5. Import the Giant mesh, add a PlayerStart and Setup some lights.
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Mudbox - Reference

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Reference

Session 1: Making of The War Troll

Next, I started sculpting the model in Mudbox:

MESH → TRANSFER DETAILS in Mudbox.

For the Skin Shader I used MISS FAST SKIN SHADER

And Finally for compositing I used a very few render passes:

And I followed a pretty simple render settings:

Session 2: Making of Queen of Death

Below is a quick concept design of the whole idea.

Base Model for Beast

TRANSFERRING SCULPTED DETAILS

Below is a close-up of her face topo and anatomy.

PREPARING FOR THE FINAL POSE

POSING THE QUEEN CHARACTER

TEXTURING THE BEAST

Step 2 – Tried multiple colors but it was looking too colorful.

Step 4 – Here I am almost done with my Diffuse map.

TEXTURING THE QUEEN

Some more updates are given below

Later, I rendered a few more passes for Rim highlight.

Session 3: Sculpting a Modular Stone Staircase

Final Effect Preview

Session 4: The Making of the Giant

HI RES MESH -- ORGANIC SECTIONS

HI RES MESH -- ORGANIC SECTIONS

3. Build the shader in Unreal’s Material Editor.

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