Saturday, July 31st, 2021 Posted by Jim Thacker

Discover how to create killer 3D creature concepts


The Gnomon Workshop has released Creating an Original 3D Creature Concept: Viper Dragon: a complete guide to modelling and texturing creatures recorded by Scanline VFX character artist Kurtis Dawe.

The workshop comprises seven hours of video training for ZBrush, Maya, Mari, Photoshop and KeyShot.

Light and shade a photorealistic character in Maya and Arnold
During the workshop, Dawe sets out his workflow for designing hero creatures for movies and games, from gathering reference images to final Photoshop composite, creating a 3D concept for a ‘viper dragon’.

Dawe sculpts and retopologises the creature in ZBrush, sets up UVs in Maya, and textures and shades the model in Mari, before posing the creature using ZBrush’s Transpose Master tool.

He then lights and renders the posed model in KeyShot before compositing the renders in Photoshop to create an illustration suitable for presentation to a client, or use in a portfolio.

The tutorial uses Dawe’s commercial Dragon Scale VDM brush packs for ZBrush, which can be found in his ArtStation Marketplace store.

About the artist
Kurtis Dawe is a character artist and modeller at Scanline VFX. He previously worked at games and VFX facilities including EA Vancouver, DNEG, Method Studios and Zoic Studios.

While working for MPC, Dawe worked on the sculpts for Pumbaa from The Lion King, Dumbo and Mrs Jumbo from Tim Burton’s Dumbo, and two of the titans for Godzilla: King of the Monsters.

Pricing and availability
Creating an Original 3D Creature Concept: Viper Dragon is available via an online subscription to The Gnomon Workshop. Subscriptions cost $49/month or $490/year. You can try the training for free.

Read more about Creating an Original 3D Creature Concept: Viper Dragon


Full disclosure: CG Channel is owned by Gnomon.