Making a Boy on a Stick Horse with ZBrush, Maya & Substance 3D Painter
Peter Sandeman told us about the There's a Snake in My Boots project, discussed the texturing process, and showed how rendering was approached.
Introduction
My name is Peter Sandeman and I'm currently a Senior Character Artist at Bungie. I'm Australian but I moved to LA a few years ago for work. I've been working as a 3D Artist for about 12 years now. I got into 3D art after being hired as a junior designer in my first job and then being asked by the 3D manager if I wanted to learn 3D and eventually join the 3D team, I did and I haven't stopped since. It's a pretty fun job as far as jobs go.
The There's a Snake in My Boots Project
This was meant to be a quick one-day project. I needed a break from something else I was working on and originally planned for this just to be a sculpt and leave it there. However, like most things, it ballooned out and all of a sudden I was not only texturing but building a background. My image is based on the work of Andy Estrada. I've been a fan of his for a very long time. This was actually the third time I attempted to make something based on his work, but with the other two, I just ran out of steam. Projects for me feel like a bit of a race, when you start you have all this energy and motivation but over time that starts to dwindle. I find the best practice is to move as quickly as possible because at some point it's going to get hard and you need to make sure you've got the energy to get it over the finish line.
As for references, I didn't use a lot for this project. Normally I'd start by gathering everything needed to plan out the whole image but as I had only intended on doing a sculpt the concept art was all I intended on using. As the project scope grew I grabbed a few things here and there (e.g., images for the wooden toy train) but otherwise most of it was so simple I just built from memory. However, an important thing to note is that reference gathering is a critical step in any 3D process so I wouldn't recommend the workflow I used here especially to anyone just starting out.
Modeling
Unless it's for work, I will almost always block out in-pose (so working asymmetrically). Using ZBrush I grab basic shapes and push and pull them into position. My main focus is making sure the silhouette is working from all angles. It can be very easy to fall into the trap of having things look right from one angle but as soon as you rotate it starts to break down. The best way to avoid this is by continually checking your model from all perspectives, correcting forms early on is much easier than having to try and fix things in the later stages.
The face is one thing I don't like to work on asymmetrically. As soon as I have a basic blockout for the head, I will move it back to the center so I can work on it with symmetry, I also like to get good topology in place to make my life easier. There weren't too many challenges in the way of modeling for this project. Other than the character sculpting it's mostly just traditional sub-divisional modeling. One aspect of ZBrush I really like that does help speed up the process is dynamic subdivision. It's super helpful for clothing, it means you can keep the surface single-sided with a low poly count and still be able to see a smooth mesh preview with thickness. Basically, if I'm able to make something using dynamic subdivision, I will; the hat was also made this way.
Retopology
For retopology, I use Maya's Quad Draw tool and I also use Maya for all my UV unwrapping. I've used a few other tools for this in the past but I actually like the Maya tool set. The thing it lacks is a good way to do a rectangular unwrap (straighten shell is next to useless and 3rd part tools are pretty slow) but everything else is very good. I prefer staying inside one software package whenever possible.
Texturing
Texturing was all done inside Substance 3D Painter. I made a smart material for skin a few projects back so I tend to reuse that while also trying to improve upon it each time. The eyes are a pretty basic setup as well, they have a hand-painted iris that sits on a concave surface then there is an outer transparent mesh that sits on top and has a convex surface over the iris. It's more or less how you'd set up a realistic human eye and it means light catches when it hits the iris and tends to look nicer than if you didn't do it.
I generally approach clothing by using a base material found on Substance Source, it's super handy to have a bunch of ready-made materials you can test out and see if hits the vibe you're after. Then you can build upon the top of that to get more complexity and storytelling into your textures. Mostly you're just looking to create variation, think about where dirt might build up but also areas that would be exposed to more light because they will generally fade quicker. Reference is king here because it will expose you to things you might not have otherwise thought to include. I also have a large material library I've collected over the years, so if I can't find what I want or make it in Substance 3D Painter, then I will tend to fall back on that.
Composition
The environment was the one element I had to design on my own as the sketch didn't include anything. Again, the planning was very haphazard because it was only meant to be a sculpt. I knew I wanted a western-themed kids' bedroom, but beyond that, it was just a lot of trial and error. I was thinking about a painted backdrop on the wall as if the kid had drawn it himself. However, in all of my tests, this was too visually confusing. Finding a good balance between the environment and the kid was a real struggle, you want the background to support the story without getting in the way. As a result, the scene just sort of evolved along the way. I built one thing which made me think of the next thing and so on.
The background elements were all made with traditional subdivision modeling and then organized around the character to try and give him the best readability. Being flexible with the placement gave me the opportunity to fix areas that were too visually noisy. Kill your darlings, so to speak. Don't be afraid to change everything if need be and try to not get too attached. At the end of the day, your image needs to sell your story above showing off that really nice modeling job you might have done.
Rendering
For rendering, I use V-Ray for Maya. I don't put a lot of importance on the software people use, your employment will usually dictate that for you, so I believe the best thing to learn is whatever you have access to and are excited about. That said I like V-Ray because it's fast meaning I get to see my preview renders and make decisions on the overall look a lot quicker.
I light almost exclusively using area lights and I tend to follow the basic three-point lighting principles and build up from there. I will light using just one light at a time so I know exactly what it's doing, then I will balance them all together once I think I have everything I need.
For compositing, I use Nuke, I had to learn it a little while back for my job and I just continued with it. I'm still way faster in Photoshop but Nuke is a lot more flexible. I don't know if I have any rendering tricks for stylized characters but I do like to take advantage of light linking. If there's something specific I'd like the lighting to hit but I don't necessarily want it to impact everything then light linking is a great way to achieve that. In traditional photography, this would have to be done using cutters, so it's a pretty handy feature to have in 3D.
Conclusion
All up I was probably working on this on and off for a couple of months. Whenever I finish a project, I like to critically assess the result and come away with areas for improvement. I find this is often a more helpful approach than indefinitely working on things I don't like. Failure is often the best way to learn, so as an example, even though I was never happy with the horse fur, I took a lot of lessons out of it and next time I tackle a similar problem, I'm confident I can improve upon it.
Whatever skills I possess are a culmination of lessons learnt along the way so I guess my advice to aspiring artists is to not be afraid to fail. I'm a big fan of this quote: "Fail early, fail often, but always fail forward". So long as you are learning from your failures and not just repeating them, I think you're on the right track.
