How to
Concepting
The first step is to gather references and start to sketch, then you eventually will come up
with a design and start to work further with the idea
Block in
The fun part begins with a simple block in on how you want the scene to eventually turn out,
if you have a scene and a character, do focus on putting together either the character or
scene, do not work on both things simultaneously, its more time consuming that way.
UV-mapping
When I was satisfied with the scene I began to UV-map it
Be aware of how you’re putting the seams and how you lay out the uv-maps.
I re-used many meshes so it would be less time consuming and less work.
Texturing
I used stock pictures/textures from CGtextures, and I went out and photographed textures
too.
I textured the building pretty early in the project, just so I could get a feel of how it
eventually would turn out, and I thought that I easily could go back and tweak the textures
when I had time.
The Monster
I researched more about my monster, the type of skin I would want to achieve and I wanted
horns on him so i researched and started to model the horns.
The horn where very simple shapes, and the sculpting progress in Mudbox went on fast and
smooth.
When I was finished with the horns i rendered a displacement and normalmap from Mudbox
and connected them to the hornmeshes in Maya.
When I felt happy with the horns I started to do the basemesh of my monster,
and tested it out in the scene.
Retopo and Sculpting
I needed to do a retopo of my character so I did it in DrasterNEX, so it would be more
animation friendly with a smooth edgeflow.
The sculpting began and it was done by my trusting Wacom tablet.
The horns where in a separate Mudbox file, so it wouldn’t slow down the computer so much.
I assigned the displacement and Normal map from Mudbox on my basemesh and with some
tweaking in the normal map, the monster went smooth.
I did a simple texture too him, just to test it out.
Rigging
I did a simple IK joint rig, then I skinned my horns on specific controllers, so it didn’t deform
or jump out of place.
After all the rigging, I basically started to texture more and mapping the skyscrapers with
normal maps, specularmaps and ambient occlusion.
I did a test animation just too see if it would work with such a big mesh.
I did a subsurface scattering on my monster for the final stages of the project and tested out
the power of it.
Then I started to set up renderpasses, Z-depht, Beauty and characterpass/lightwrap pass,
just the monster in it with a surface shader on the city so it went black.
A simple Nuke comp with my Z-depth pass and some glow.
Final tweaking and final movie render in Adobe Premier Pro, with camerashake, motionblur,
e.tc.