Stylized Battle Nun Made with ZBrush, Substance 3D Painter & Toolbag

Introduction

Hi! My name’s Marat Latypov, I’m a 3D artist at Moon Studios. My career in 3D started when I got a CD with 3ds Max a long time ago. At that time I was studying economics at the university and I realized this is definitely not what I wanted to do in the future.

I got my first job in a small gamedev studio that was developing an MMORPG game. After the project had closed, I changed a lot of studios, worked on video games and music videos, taught 3D graphics, participated in challenges, and updated my portfolio. I started to get offers from large gamedev studios. Then I completely switched to freelancing and took a lot of good orders until the Moon Studios wrote to me a few years ago, and now I still work there. We have an incredible, very strong art department. I’m very involved in my work, but there is a desire to do something for myself, so sometimes I participate in challenges. 

Deadlines help you not to be lazy and not to stretch time for the project. I’ve recently come to know that my last work for the challenge won first place. I'm very happy, there were a lot of strong artists and great artworks.

The Nun Project

I took a concept from artist Julie Lafeuille who participated in the 2D branch of the competition. Unfortunately, she could not finish her work on time, and I had to think of something myself, but of course, I consulted with the author of the concept.

Modeling & Unwrapping

I use ZBrush for sculpting. To save time, I used my base mesh and changed the proportions a bit. 

Then I create the main masses very quickly and roughly to understand how they would look in 3D. Most of the time I make the character already in a pose, this gives me an understanding of the final result. 

After this, I work on the elements and add more details. For this, I use a small number of brushes, about 5-7. All brushes are standard but with some custom changes. So for example, in the Move brush, I have the Focal Shift around 70-80, which gives a softer interaction with the surface.

When sculpting, I almost never use subdivision, I'm not used to it. Instead, I increase the resolution in DynaMesh each time. Don't forget to turn off Blur in the DynaMesh settings otherwise, your details will be lost when recalculated.

For armor and various buckles, I use ZModeler. It's worth studying, it's quite a powerful tool, especially with the advent of the Slice Mesh function that allows you to cut any shape. The beauty of ZModeller is that I can apply Crease to the edge and turn on the Dynamic Subdiv right in the middle of the process and see the final result with smoothness. In this way, the finished model will be used for further baking as a low poly.

Once I'm satisfied with the result, I activate DynaMesh and add scratches, chips, and all sorts of scuffs and bumps.

For clothes, I don't use Marvelous Designer as it doesn't allow you to have nice artistic folds and it will take longer than doing them manually. For creases, I use Dam Standard, Standard, and Inflate brushes.

For retopology, I use 3DCoat, as it allows you to load quite heavy high polys with no need to spend time on decimation. And by the way, the tools for retopology are very nice.

Since I already have low poly models for armor and stuff, I can load them into 3DCoat and tweak them a bit.

Also in 3DCoat, you can make UVs. To improve the UV quality, you can load the model into RizomUV. You can get a good UV by literally pressing 3 buttons.

Texturing

I wanted to combine hand painting and PBR to explore how it can be done and understand the possibilities. Then I go back to 3DCoat.

It's hard to give advice here. If you are not very good at drawing (me neither), I highly recommend stocking up with a bunch of references. They can be completely different, not only examples of other handpainted works but also 2D works and even photographs. Do not forget to follow the tone in your work (when converting a picture to black-and-white, all the details should be read well and not merge with each other). It also helps to move the work away and view it in a small size.

As I will be using real highlights and shadows, I had to remove them on the hand-painted texture later on.

To create PBR textures, I prefer Substance 3D Painter, it's easy to convert an existing color texture to Specular and Glossiness. You can put the texture into the Specular channel, twist Levels a little, and also put an AO map on top with a Multiplay blend to avoid highlights at the junctions of several objects, for example, under the shoulder pads.

Rendering

I start setting up the scene by choosing the Environment map in Marmoset Toolbag. It is desirable that it matches your vision of the final picture. It is not worth taking a sunny day Environment map if the character is supposed to be standing under the moonlight in the final picture.

Next, I add the main light source and place it so that the shadows look the best. Then I add a rim light, which should outline the character's silhouette so it doesn't blend with the background.

I also used some point lights to highlight certain pieces of the character that I wanted to make pop.

I used subsurface scattering for the skin. Nothing complicated, I did not make any additional maps. This was just to give the skin a slightly smoothed effect. And I added an Emissive map to get rid of the gray shadows on the skin.

I added Sharpen in the camera settings to accentuate the hand paint. And with the help of Curve Editor, I added red in the shadows.

Animate the camera, turn on ray tracing, and render!

Conclusion

I worked on the challenge in the evenings after work. To be honest, many times I was going to quit. At the beginning of challenges, I am always very inspired, but in the end, I lose interest. Sometimes you need to give yourself time to rest, otherwise, you will quickly burn out. So I wish artists to be persistent, believe in themselves, and not forget to take a break from work!

Marat Latypov, 3D Artist

Interview conducted by Theodore McKenzie