Turning Spirited Away's Zeniba into a 3D Model with ZBrush & Marmoset Toolbag

Introduction

My name is Daniel Merticariu, and I've been a 3D Character Artist for eleven years now. I've worked on various projects, both triple and double A. I've worked in game development studios, art outsource studios, and in advertising for a short while. I hope the film industry will be joining my list soon enough. Although so far, my favorite thing has been working with indies.

Zeniba is the last character in a series I started, based on the drawings of Patrick Gañas. The main idea behind choosing these three witches was to try and explore a new style consistently. Trying to make them from the same world, while also honing the style a bit further with each iteration.

After posting the first of the three witches, some people told me that it felt as if it belonged to the universe of Hayao Miyazaki, without knowing the intention behind it. And I, for one, don't even know if she is indeed from one of his movies. But I've only seen six of his twelve full-feature films, so maybe I still have some exploring to do.

Although it is also possible that Patrick made a character who feels as if they belong to one of those worlds. What I can say is that it's easy to recognize how genuine the worlds of Hayao Miyazaki feel if their style managed to pass from him, through Patrick Gañas' drawings, to my own sculpts. I also hope that the process of exploration, and the progress in it, can be recognized from the first of the witches, Luna, and on to the last, Zeniba.

Zeniba

Out of the three witches, I was expecting the portrait of Zeniba to be the hardest. However, I managed to finish it in sort of record time. It took me the least out of the three. I started from the 3D Scan Store's free head base meshes, and after two hours of work, I had a sort of sketchy likeness. Using just basic brushes.

One thing I like to do, though, that may be peculiar, is to try, at first, while only using the Move brush on a base mesh, to get a sort of primary shape likeness out of the first subdivision level. I only subdivide after I get this first glimpse of the character already being recognizable on that first subdivision level.

This is what I had after the first day of working on it. On the second day, I was kind of tired, so I sort of slacked, it seems. I remember it only taking three days. I have three saves. But it seems on the second day, I did mostly nothing. I think those sorts of days are also a part of the process.

I arranged the pose a little, cleaned up the hair, removed the neck to make it as it is in the concept, and added the bun. I can't imagine that taking me more than 15 minutes. A slow day.

On the third and last day of sculpting on it, there's a bit of a leap. I started adding color, cleaned up the collar she has, and tried to match it as close as possible to the concept, added the glasses and earrings, which are quite simple shapes, and added in the hair.

The hair is made with an IMM brush at first, but mostly placed manually. I wasn't quite pleased with the result after the simple strokes of the hair IMM I had. So, I started reshaping them using a combination of Smooth, Pinch, and Move brushes to have some variation in thickness, from tip to root, but also from one strand to another.

I was quite pleased with how the hair turned out on my Witch of the Waste character, about which I have another small breakdown here. So, I wanted to achieve the same effect on this one, although the hair isn't as dynamic as it is on the other portrait, and it is better put together, which makes it more difficult for the SSS to pass through.

Thus, to avoid it becoming too opaque, I made the strands thin and left quite a bit of space between them and the sculpted base. That way, light had enough space to go through, even if just a bit. This took a bit of back and forth between ZBrush and Marmoset Toolbag.

Rendering

I used Marmoset Toolbag for rendering, and I started prepping the rendering scene as soon as I threw some color onto the model. Imported it right away and added some basic lights. It took me a few tries to get it right with this one, although I have three different light setups that look almost the same. After some tweaking, I took the lights that worked best in those three initial setups and combined them in a fourth one, which ended up being the final one.

I ended up using a studio light HDRI on a very low brightness, which barely works as a fill light, but does one good thing: it gives one of the visible highlights, which brings life to them. This can always be a problem when trying to have some very contrasting lights, you end up putting the light sources in places where they aren't visible to the eyes of the character, and so they get no reflection, making them look dead.

This is one way to fix that. Another trick, which I also employed here, is to use an omni light, with low brightness but with a visible shape, further away from the character, so that its light doesn't affect the character, but the shape of the omni is visible enough in its eye.

I also had a main light that was lighting up the face of the character, primarily, but also the hair. I used a spot light with a big diameter to have soft shadows. I also tried replicating with it some of the shadows from the concept, but I ended up wanting to give it a more dramatic feel. So I left the forehead covered by shadows.

But since this light, even if it was lighting the hair, wasn't giving it the same see-through effect as on The Witch of the Waste, I ended up adding another top light, just for the hair. I'll show below the main and top light side by side. 

Conclusion

After this was settled, I also wanted to have the soft rim light from the concept visible on her left cheek. I added that in, but it wasn't working for me, so that's when I decided to make it more dramatic by adding a second, harsher rim light, coming from lower behind her back, to give her face a bit more contour on the left, and some highlights on her hair on the right.

So, a bit more of a complex lighting system on this one, rather than the traditional three-point lighting. I ended up using 5 light sources on top of the HDRI, all with their specific role. After the lighting was done, I animated a camera to spin around the model a bit, and, after an hour of rendering, I ended up realizing that I'm not yet pleased with the model.

What I wasn't happy with was the initial harshness of her wrinkly skin. So I went back to the model, and with some Dam Standard and a bit of Pinch, rearranged the wrinkles on her nose and below her eyes. And it was the right decision, they ended up bringing a lot more to the general liveliness of the character. And they were added after the character was already done and rendered.

Afterwards, I spent another hour rendering the same clip, and two more after that, but it was worth it. And that brings me to the last question: what advice would I give to beginners? Never settle for the first try.

Daniel Merticariu, 3D Character Artist