24/5/2018 Stylized Character Creation with Maya and ZBrush - Stylized Bay

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Stylized Character Creation with Maya and ZBrush

May 9, 2018
A fully detailed technical breakdown of building a stylized character from scratch to nish. Caroline Ng provides us her insight, thought process
and several potent tips and tricks to achieve stunning result!

Hello! My name is Caroline Ng. I am a 3D generalist for lms and games. Here is a tutorial of how I create a stylized character for games. It’s
based on an illustration by Karly Jade Catto.

Collecting references

The rst thing I do is gather references of the materials I will be texturing as well as images that will help me gure out the form of the character.
Since there is no character sheet showing the di erent angles of the bunny, I search for similar concepts or illustrations of characters drawn in
di erent angles, as well as 3D characters done by other artists.

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Modeling the base mesh of the character

Depending on the asset that needs to be made and how di cult it is to model, I will either choose to model straight in ZBrush or Maya. Usually I
would model inorganic assets in Maya and more organic assets in ZBrush. For this project I modeled the bunny and his clothes in ZBrush; the
shing rod, hooks, strings, and ropes in Maya.

I started by blocking in the character using basic shapes such as spheres and cylinders. Referencing often to the reference images I found. I
adjusted the shapes from di erent angles until I felt pleased with the shapes. I would then use “Merge Down” (if your shapes are inserted as
separate SubTools, you would need to do this so they are merged into one SubTool) and “Dynamesh” to merge all the shapes together in one
continuous mesh.

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Modeling the base meshes for the clothes

The technique I used to model the bases of the clothes was by extracting a mesh from the base mesh. This was done by masking the shape of
the clothes on the base mesh and extracting them.

Make sure to put the thickness to 0 and to click on “Accept” afterwards. This mesh should come out as a new SubTool.

Using ZModeler

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Next, ZRemesh the model with the option “Half” applied, as this halves the poly count and gives a cleaner mesh. Now it’s time to apply the
thickness to the clothes. In order to do this, I used the ZModeler tool. You can use polygroups to control which areas to be extruded.

1. First, I press on Ctrl+W in order to make sure the extracted mesh is all one polygroup
2. Hovering over a face of the polygroup you want to extrude, press down the space bar and a window should show up
3. Still holding down the space bar, I choose the options highlighted in orange in the image below
4. Click and drag to extrude the mesh
5. Using this method, you can polygroup speci c areas and only extrude that polygroup.

Sculpting in ZBrush

The next step is to sculpt in the details of the model. I usually use the standard brush or slash brush to sculpt fabric. Because this character is
stylized, make sure that each stroke sculpted on the clothes is intentional. For this project I sculpted up to the secondary details and left tertiary
details for texturing.

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Making the low-res

Now with the high-res sculpted and done, I decimate the model in ZBrush. Export the decimated high-res model and import this to Maya. Now
you will want to retopologize. You want to do this using “Quad Draw” under the “Modeling Toolkit.” First select the mesh you want to retopologize
and make it “live” (the magnet icon on the top shelf), then select “Quad draw” and draw four points on the mesh. Hold down Shift and hover over
the four points. You will see a green face, left-click on it to create a face. Once retopology is done, it’s time to layout the UV. Once the UVs of each
piece are attened, make sure that the pixel density is correct.

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Making the cage

With the high-res and low-res done, it’s time to bake! We want to separate the meshes as far as possible, exploding them. You want to organize
your meshes in layers. One for low-res, one for high-res, and one for your cages. To make the cages, you want to select the low-res pieces and
duplicate them and put them in a layer and call it cage.

Select the Move tool and open the tool settings. You want to change your “Move Settings.” Change the “Axis Orientation” to Normal. Now select
all the meshes in the cage layers and right-click > Vertex. Select all the vertices on the mesh, using the Move tool, click and drag on the N. You
want the cage to cover over the high-res. You may need to move individual vertices because you do not want the cage meshes’ vertices to be
intersecting into one another.

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Baking the high-res to the low-res

1. Export your high-res as an OBJ. Do the same for the low-res and the cage meshes. So in total you have three les for baking
2. I open Substance Painter and import my low-res. To bake in Substance Painter, go to the “TextureSet Settings” and click on “Bake textures”
3. Select your Output Size. Import your High De nition Meshes by clicking on the paper le icon on the right. Tick “Use Cage” and import the cage
le on the paper icon on the right
4. Select Bake at the bottom. You may need to adjust your Max Frontal Distance and Max Rear Distance depending how your bake goes

Texturing

For texturing, I mainly used the smart materials and materials provided inside of Substance Painter. I applied the smart materials and materials
as a base. I used smart masks, mostly the occlusion dirt smart mask in order to create a stylized look on the texturing, using a contrasted darker
color. I added a paint layer on top of the smart mask applied and hand painted the edges. This created a more natural look.

I do more details in the texturing phase, such as the threads on the clothes and badges, using a layer with the height map higher than the rest.

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Bringing your model and texture les Marmoset Toolbag

I bring the low-res model into Marmoset Toolbag and plug in the maps to the corresponding boxes. I made additional maps for SSS and Fuzz. I
used Fuzz map for the clothes to create the cloth-like texture.

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Lighting in Marmoset Toolbag and presentation

I use the HDRI provided in Toolbag and dimmed the brightness of the HDRI so that it would act as a ll light and show re ection in the eyes. The
important part was to have the re ection in the eyes to make the character come alive. I used the three point lighting set up. An orange/yellow
key light, a blue rim light to contrast the warm key light, and another purple ll light.

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honorable mention:
Big thanks to all artists and sites below, this article wasnt sucessed without the glory tributes of :

CAROLINE (PRICILLIA) NG

https://www.artstation.com/carolinepricillia

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