NATHEN VIZER
3D Character / Hard Surface Artist
Moth Fairy
While considering the third piece for my demo reel, I came across The Moth Fairy concept on Artstation and gained interest at the challenge of rendering out fur. I contacted the artist and he gave me permission to do this piece.
In ZBrush I decided to approach the sculpt with the dynamesh and zremesh method.
This piece was an experiment I used to further my study of anatomy so i could achieve a more realistic style.
Responsible for all expects of this piece except for the concept.
Concept by: Alessandro Poli
Tools: Zbrush, Maya, V-ray for Maya, Photoshop CS6
Topology
I knew retopo would be easy for this character since it would only be the base shapes that i would need like her hands, head and body. and also in the process i was able to do the UV's for the textures i needed for her body and head so that afterwards i could just UV snapshot the pieces and start texturing her
Texturing
For texturing i decided that i would go for a photoshop painted texture since i wanted to try and be true to the original concept, i didnt need substance for this, just a uv sceenshot of the map, a normal map, and also a AO bowl bake from Xnormal to help me with guides.
I did not include the arm fur in the concept because i couldnt get it exactly right, so i decided to just have plain arms
Render setup
After i was satisfied with the texture on the Wings and body, it was time for me to setup the shaders and fur for V-Ray
Aswell i didnt use normal maps since i wanted to work with Displacement maps again since learning from my mistakes with the likeness sculpt. This time i used the object method instead of the shader way for using displacement since i did not know how to make multiple maps for a single sheet and EXR's are very touchy if editing them. so Vray attribute subdivision was also used to smooth out the mesh for displacment to work better
For the Fur, i was shown how to use V-ray fur for rendering with using color sets to style the fur. at first i wanted to try using Xgen hair but i realized that i would not have enough time to make it look proper with the time i had left in my studies. i do wish to work with Xgen in future time but for the time i had V-Ray fur was a great substitute.
Aswell with the eyes i was puzzled as to how i would make a good irridecence shader for the bug eye effect, luckly one of my classmates showed me a really good shader to make that so that saved me a lot of time and headaches
Lighting and Final render
Once i got the shders and the fur to my level of satisfaction, i moved onto lighting for her render. ultimately i knew i wasnt gonna have time to animate her especially with 4 arms, so i just decided to make a posed render of her with a skeleton bound to her skin.
and then came the lighting, i went with a 3 point lighting setup like i did with my likeness sculpt and most of it was just playing with the lights to make them bring out this mothgirl, although it is dark i knew i could bring it out more in after effects and photoshop
Final Result
