ALMA FLOR ADA
CHARACTERS
Concept art:
One of my team members created these character design sketches which the client approved.
Painting in Mudbox:
Once the characters were modeled and UVed, I brought them into Mudbox to paint their color, matching the concept art I was given.
Wings:
For the wings, which had separate UVs, I created a color map and displacement map in Photoshop.
Shaders and Layers:
The characters each got a shader with subsurface scattering for their skin. I set up render layers to give me a color pass, an eye specular pass, a cast shadow pass (depending on the desired result) and a fuzz pass.
We went back and forth about how we wanted the texture to look in the final composites, and we settled on a gentle fuzz. To achieve this, I set up a render layer with the skin assigned to a black material with a fuzzy-looking bump map (which was masked out around the eyes and mouth). I adjusted the lighting in that layer to give me a nice rim light which shows off the fuzz on the edges of the character especially well. Then I composited it onto the final image to show the type of fuzzy effect that we wanted to achieve.
Of course, I also had access to render passes such as ambient occlusion, reflection, specularity, etc.
Watch the Compositing Process:
Final Characters:
Johnny
Nico
 |  |
|---|---|
 |  |