Salkantay: How to Turn Mountain into Woman in 3D
Vitor Menezes shared a brief breakdown of the Salkantay – "The Wild Mountain" work, showed the brushes he used for modeling, and talked about the texturing process.
Introduction
Hey everyone! My name is Vitor Menezes, I'm a 19-year-old Character Artist from Brazil. I've been studying and improving my craft, trying to make my first breakthrough into the game industry for about 3 years.
Most of those on this crazy path of pursuing a career as an artist used to draw as a kid. Well, that wasn't my case. Playing video games and taking acting classes as a kid, all I ever wanted was to tell stories with my art, to incite some train of thought on how my characters live, their environments, and so on. Eventually, I came to an understanding that working with 3D characters would be the channel I'd rather use to tell my stories.
The Salkantay Project
I've always been passionate about Naughty Dog's style, very inspired by masters such as Frank Tzeng, Danilo Athayde, and Soa Lee, so their works somehow will always find a way into my reference folder.
My initial goal with this project was to learn how to make haircards, so I really wanted something that could challenge me on that subject.
Fortunately, the concept art from the great artist Lee Yeonu was the perfect match for my goal for the project.
Sculpting
The sculpting process is always an enjoyable step, especially in the beginning when forms are still very loose, your worries are just on the bigger shapes and silhouettes. I used to feel pressured during that phase when I started studying, I'd be anxious and rush the process until it turned into something less ugly, but it really is a paradox: if you never embrace that ugly unpretentious part, you'll never reach the true beauty and potencial that the piece contains.
As for the brushes, there was nothing fancy, just the good old ClayBuildup, Dam Standard, Move, Clay, and Standard.
Retopology
I used Maya to make the retopology of my character using the Quad Draw tool. Also, I did the UV mapping in the same software.
Hair
To create the hair, I used Blender to generate and place the cards and xNormal to bake the textures.
Texturing
For the textures, I used a mix of ZBrush's Polypaint for the eyes and Substance 3D Painter for the assets. For the face, I started with a scan provided by James Busby and did a couple more layers of color and roughness variation in Photoshop.
Lighting
I really wanted to give a cinematic mood for the lights; fortunately, I was blessed with some awesome references, especially Ogre by Eduardo Porceli. I even had that one shot of his character in the woods, with a low light above his head, as my computer's wallpaper for a while, great inspiration for this one particular take.
Conclusion
I really wanted to thank every single one of my friends who helped me a lot throughout this project, the projection I have on social media, and especially the growth I have as an artist. Also, thanks to those who made it to this part of the article, I'm glad to be able to share this little breakdown with you all. So bear with me, promise you'll see me around sharing more of the projects I've been working so passionately on, and until next time!
