LogInSisilia Nedyalkova joined us to explain how she created a slime sphere and other props that could interact with it, accomplishing a see-through dynamic – all inspired by a cheesecake.
Introduction
My name is Sisilia Nedyalkova, and I'm a 3D Environment Artist who specializes in stylized art. I started as a Concept Artist, but I struggled a lot with perspective and texturing. While studying at university, the program focused more on broad skills than on specialization, which gave me the chance to try 3D art, and I instantly fell in love with it. I finally felt like I had the tools to bring the images in my head to life and view them from every angle.
Props are always fun to make, but building an environment and watching it all come alive is a different kind of thrill. That's when I decided to specialize in environment art. To do it well, though, you need strong fundamentals in modeling, texturing, sculpting, lighting, and composition. I focused on sharpening those skills first because an environment can only look as good as the assets that fill it.
As an intern, I worked on Surviving Mars, Spider Tanks, and several VR projects, contributing various assets. After graduating, I briefly worked as a 3D Artist at a VR studio before moving into environment art. I'm now with Ghost Town Games, working on their upcoming project Stage Fright. My role includes asset creation, modular kits, foliage, rocks, materials, lighting, and set dressing.
The Cake That Struck the Inspiration
The inspiration for creating my Slime Material came from something unexpected: a cheesecake. I had made one the weekend before with gelatin and strawberries on top, and it looked gorgeous. A few days later, while having coffee and a slice at work, I thought: "Wouldn't it be cool to make something with that same see-through effect?".
When I started researching, I noticed that most slimes I found online were either flat materials with nothing inside or they were shaders and characters with 3D objects stuck in them to get the look. I was surprised there wasn't already a material that combined both, so I decided to experiment.
I don't have a lot of free time for personal projects, so I keep them short. Lately, I've been making materials and posting them to my portfolio, even though I wouldn't call myself a Material Artist. With my limited technical skills, shaders and anything node-based are still a challenge. So I like to say I took the "artist approach" and just faked it. In the end, it doesn't really matter how you get there, as long as it looks awesome!
I started by gathering plenty of references: other slime concepts, as well as props I could include inside the slime itself. Once I felt I had enough inspiration, I sketched out a quick, messy concept, nothing fancy, just a guide to start building the material.
Modeling and Sculpting
To get the look I wanted for the slime, I first needed to create some custom props that I could art-direct for the material. After sketching out my ideas, I decided which props I wanted in the final render and started modeling.
I always admire artists who begin sculpting directly in ZBrush, but that's not a skill I've mastered yet. Instead, I start by blocking out and building a basic high-poly model in Maya before moving into ZBrush. One thing that isn't talked about enough is how to prepare a solid high-poly for ZBrush. Without the right prep, you can run into gaps when importing or find that your model shrinks when subdivided.
The key is to add supporting Edge Loops in Maya before importing. ZBrush smooths objects when you subdivide, and if you don't guide it, your crisp shapes, like a cube, can round out into a sphere. I usually subdivide my props once or twice in Maya first. Even so, ZBrush will still show the faces, so you'll need to subdivide more if you want to sculpt fine details.
Once the model is in ZBrush, there are many ways to move forward. My go-to method is to subdivide heavily until I don't see any face outlines, then run ZRemesher to create a cleaner, more even mesh. Without remeshing, most of the topology gathers around the edges, which makes sculpting harder. After remeshing, I subdivide another two or three times to get enough resolution for detailed sculpting.
From there, I sculpt the details for each prop. I repeat this process: subdivide, re-mesh, sculpt for every asset. Once I'm happy with the sculpt, I decimate the model to reduce the polycount and avoid working with millions of points, which helps prevent crashes. For these props, I only needed three brushes in ZBrush to achieve the look I wanted.
The Material Creation Process
When I first started working on the slime, I went all out, really drastic and exaggerated, just to see how far I could push the shapes. But, as every Stylized Artist knows, too much noise can distract from the main purpose of the piece. I got so caught up in making a slime that looked like it was constantly dripping that I forgot the real goal: it needed to sit on top of props, and those props would disappear if the slime was too busy.
So I stopped and tested it early. I had recently made a coin material and used it as my test subject to check whether the slime felt too noisy and if I could still see the objects beneath. It's so important to pause and check that a material actually works for its intended use, it's easy to get tunnel vision and finish something that ultimately doesn't fit.
Because this material was meant to be used more dynamically, I needed to know right away whether my approach had potential or needed a rethink. After testing, I quickly realized the first version was way too messy, not stylized enough, and, honestly, ugly. With a few deleted nodes and some color tweaks, I ended up with something more presentable on its own and with good potential once made transparent.
With that new vision in place, I began experimenting with transparencies and cutout masks to fake the dense, refractive look of the slime. After I had a solid base, I returned to the props and placed them over the slime material, art-directing them so they looked like they were floating inside.
Getting the surface just right was tricky, it needed to be shiny but not so reflective that it looked like water, and not so dull that it blurred the props underneath. I also faked some lighting by adding a soft glow behind the props, which helped make the whole piece feel more dynamic and interesting.
Overall, the material wasn't a complex, node-heavy process. It mainly relied on warp nodes and blend nodes to stack effects, then layered two materials to create depth. The slime layer sitting on top of the art-directed base is completely tweakable. Everything from how warped it is, the colors, to how many layers it has is fully procedural. Even the art-directed props can be replaced with others to achieve a different look.
People often talk about how amazing it is to build materials procedurally because you can tweak them quickly. That's true, but in practice, once a material is finished, you rarely go back to make small variations. You usually need a whole new look, so you end up creating something different anyway.
I think that's why more artists are starting to create materials in ZBrush instead of only using Substance 3D Designer. For a stylized style, ZBrush can give you a stronger, more handcrafted feel. And honestly, if you know exactly what you want and build it right the first time, you don't need to keep tweaking it.
In the end, I believe the sweet spot is a combination of both worlds, bringing art-directed, sculpted elements into a procedural workflow. It gives you the creative control of sculpting while still easing some of the more technical parts of material creation.
Rendering and Presentation
For this material, the presentation was the most important part of the creation process. Unlike simple materials where everything sits on the surface and you can get away with a half-hearted render, this slime was supposed to be dynamic, it moves and fakes depth.
That meant I had to take some creative liberties and stack elements to get the look just right. I started by stacking two spheres, with the top one more subdivided than the bottom. This let me use a Height Map to create a bumpy 3D effect in Marmoset Toolbag, then I animated the material to scroll downward in the software. Figuring out the right scale and speed was tricky, too much scaling created a noisy effect in the moving slime.
Once I was happy with that, I focused on faking the depth. Marmoset allows different material types, so I created a glass material and applied my slime maps to it. This let me tweak properties like refraction and light scattering, which was incredibly helpful.
I also created a mask to make some areas transparent and others not, using transparency in places where ambient occlusion would normally hit. This highlighted the edges of the slime to fake the way light would interact with it. Because the inner sphere started to get lost under the top layer, I added emission to the bottom sphere to make it stand out.
When the material looked right, I moved on to lighting the scene. I usually use a four-light setup, deciding which side to highlight and which to rim-light. My preferred setup is left in shadow and right in light. For colors, I either choose a complementary color to make the material pop or a color closer to the wheel to accentuate the main color.
The remaining lights use the opposing color from the color wheel of the main light. I also added a bit of bloom and vignette. I keep the default skybox for its neutral white lighting, which feels like studio lighting, rotating it only if the material's refraction interacts with a light in a distracting way.
After rendering the animated material, I render a static shot and a background-free version for the thumbnail. I spend about as much time creating my thumbnails as lighting/rendering my materials. Many people just slap random elements onto thumbnails, but I believe they need to look good because they act as a mini-advertisement for your work.
For my materials lately, I like to create effects behind them, like drawing water, glow, or, in this case, slime drips on the sphere. I'm pretty proud of how those slime drips turned out, especially since I rarely draw!