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| BigFoot |
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| Me with hair tweak |
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[EDIT] I've added some details on how I approached the Bigfoot model including lots of details at the end for those that are interested[/EDIT]
A couple of ones today, finally calling the bigfoot head shot done, as I have to get that one wound up as I have a busy week or two ahead of me. Orantrix was used for the hair, sculpted and textured in mudbox, renmderd in 3dmax with vray for the Bigfoot and mental ray for the digital double of me. My hatred of doing hair is wel known..however I have to say that the demo of ornatrix I used for these is probbaly hte best hair systemn I have ever tried. Its very easy to get the look your after I find. I'll do a breakdown of why certain design choices were made on the bigfoot another time.
Enjoy
My Approach to Bigfoot
I thought the subject matter of the bigfoot
model, my preparation and research for it may be interesting for some. I wanted to show the good, the bad and the downright ugly to show in context what goes on behind the scenes. As a note to those starting out, things rarely pop out fully formed and perfect. It occurred to me that artists rarely show when things go wrong, they only want to show the good things. It also occurred to me that its far more useful to people starting out to see the mistake as well as the solutions and decisions made and why.
I decided to do a bust of Bigfoot, coz..well ....why
not? I didn't want to just 'sculpt
something that looks cool' off the top of my head but do some proper research
as I would do in production. So it had
to have a strong basis in reality using anthropological references and mixing
them into a way that I felt made the most logical sense. That way I am nearly guaranteed to get
something that is believable at the end.
My first move was to do a speed sculpt to get a feel for
things and to see what pops out of my head when it's on its 'default
settings'. My first idea was to mix
together both human and gorilla. While that was all very nice and all that, it
didn't 'float my boat' and so it was back to the drawing board.
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| the original speed sculpt |
Step two was to change the 'mix' of source animals to human,
gorilla and gigantopithicus (an extinct giant ape ). The reason for this choice were that it is
a bloody huge ape and the right
silhouette, it is also many big foot believers 'animal of choice' if it turned
out to exist.
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| Photoshop mockups |
So I ran off some Photoshop mock ups using my speed sculpt
as a basis until I was happy the mix would both work and look right. I didn't however want to go too much in the
direction of Gantipithicus as the ape looked a bit bloody gormless to be
honest and didn't look at all threatening.
(if you don't believe me, look up some reconstructions that have been done by anthropologists lol). So by varying the amount of each animal until I was happy I ball parked
the main concept. S by doing a 3 way blend between human, gorilla and Gigatipithicus skulls I had a ballpark shape.
Texturing was fun as I didn't want to take the predictable
way out and give him black gorilla like skin.
That was simply too forgiving as a main colour, so I went with something
paler. (This also helps with the subsurface scattering of the skin, as dark
colours do not scatter well).
For his eyes I had a choice between human and ape, I decided
human would made him look way too much like planet of the apes so went with
chimpanzee eyes instead as they also seemed to add something to the
model...they just felt 'right'.
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| oh no..... that doesn't look right at all! |
The hair and fur I initially approached completely differently
to I (or most other people) would. I
created some hair out of splines for the sides of the face, the chin and the
overall 'flying' hairs on the head. I then put hair and fur under this for the
head part to fill it out using the default hair and fur in 3ds max. while the cheek and chin hair looked great the
rest looked like shit as you can see above (in fact it looks like a cross between a hair brush and pubic hair). So it was back to the drawing board.
I then started messing around with the Ornatrix demo (which resets your models hair every time you save), and was
amazed how much easier it was to use.
Anyone who even remotely knows me, knows I hate doing hair on
models. I'm usually terrible at it, so
if I can get something looking even remotely ok out of it the it has to be a
good system.
So in this case research was vital and kept it from getting
too far away from reality. It was
rendered in 3Ds Max 2014 using Vray and comped in Photoshop and Nuke. (minor
grading). Hopefully this helps those starting out to see that things undergo a few iterations, a lot of planning and problem solving and don't just pop out fully formed. It came to me that artists normally only how the 'good decisions' of a piece, never the good and bad in context.
