Tutorial: Designing & Creating a Creature Bust
The Gnomon Workshop has released Designing & Creating a Creature Bust, a detailed guide to 3D creature design, recorded by Wētā FX lead 3D modeler Pascal Raimbault.
The workshop provides 4.5 hours of video training in ZBrush, Maya, Houdini, Substance 3D Painter and Krita.
Design, sculpt, texture and rig a production-ready 3D creature
In the tutorial, Raimbault sets out his pipeline for concepting characters for production, creating an asset suitable for use in VFX or game cinematics, ready for any department in a studio to take over.
He begins with 2D design in open-source paint app Krita, then building up a 3D model in Maya and ZBrush.
The workshop explores Raimbault’s favourite skin-sculpting techniques in ZBrush, and how to make models production-friendly, including how to rework the topology and handle the UVs in Maya.
Raimbault also covers how to create additional elements like hard-surface costume pieces, which he details in ZBrush, making extensive use of ZBrush’s powerful Polygroups.
The model is textured in Substance 3D Painter, look dev work is done in Houdini using Solaris, and finally, the character is rigged in Maya, ready to be posed and rendered using Houdini’s Karma renderer.
To finish off, Raimbault shows his high-res renders produced using some basic compositing tricks in Houdini.
As well as the training videos themselves, viewers can download a ZBrush 2022 .ztl file including the high-resolution skin sculpt and an early work-in-progress version of the costume model.
About the artist
Pascal Raimabult is lead 3D modeler at Wētā FX, and also previously worked for Industrial Light & Magic.
He has worked in the movie industry for more than 25 years, with credits including James Cameron’s Avatar, Peter Jackson’s King Kong, all three The Hobbit movies, Black Panther and Aquaman.
Pricing and availability
Designing & Creating a Creature Bust is available via a subscription to The Gnomon Workshop, providing access to over 300 tutorials. Subscriptions cost $49/month or $490/year. Free trials are available.
Read more about Designing & Creating a Creature Bust on The Gnomon Workshop’s website
Full disclosure: CG Channel is owned by Gnomon.