Designing a Stylized Creature in ZBrush, Blender & Marmoset Toolbag

Introduction

Hi, everyone! I'm Francisque Facon, a French Character Artist who just graduated from Artside School’s 3D character art program, and now I’m ready to dive into the industry!

I grew up playing video games, and I have always been very passionate about them. So, when it came to the point where I had to choose a career path, I decided to try playing around with 3D and fell in love with making characters in ZBrush. Initially, I enrolled in a school, but after two years, I made the decision to switch to online classes.

During this 2-year period, I discovered Marc Brunet's hand-paint tutorial. I made my first sword and character in this style. That's when my obsession with hand-painted textures came in. Since then, I've made most of my projects using this workflow. I also played with PBR mixed with handpainted workflow on my "Sharp Shooter" and "Rusty Sword" projects.

The Peter Fishmouther Project

This project was done in a class with Marion Volpe as a teacher. I had a task to make a stylized creature. I chose the amazing "Peter Fishmouther" concept by Labros Panousis as a reference.

After some time using a PBR workflow earlier during the year, I wanted to go back to a more "diffuse only" approach on this project because it was always super fun to work with unlit textures. When I was painting that way, I didn't feel restrained by my Normal Map, so I could go crazy and add details wherever I like.

References 

References are super important, especially with a big project like this one. My main references were League of Legends, World of Warcraft, and Ruined King. Those games had an amazing unlit art style, and they came first when I was looking for hand-painted references.

Here's a simplified version of my PureRef board:

Sculpting 

The first thing to do was a rough blocking of everything. I tried to stay very low poly and keep the different parts of my character separated, so I could focus on what was important. When everything was in place, I merged my SubTools, used ZBrush's DynaMesh, and did a first pass of cleaning. Once I was happy with the result, I could add some details to have a decent supporting topology.

As you can see, the final sculpt is quite simple. This workflow didn't require it to be very detailed, since I would not be baking a Normal Map, and because I was going for something quite low poly on this project, I preferred to keep the small details (such as the scales) for texturing. That way I wouldn't lose too much time on the sculpting part.

So why did I not model the low from the beginning in 3ds Max?

• It was easier for me to block out everything in ZBrush before working on the low. It helped me get a clean and strong silhouette with good primary and secondary shapes. It was also super important to stay consistent on this part. 
• It allowed me to bake the first Ambient Occlusion Map as a base to start my painting process. That way, the lights were already blocked on most of the characters. Also, some details were faster to do in sculpting now, rather than later in texturing (ex: ropes, simple wood base for the harpoon).

Retopology  

I did the retopology in Blender with the help of some plugins like "Retopoflow" and "Speed Retopo" because those two were great tools that I preferred to use instead of 3ds Max. When the biggest part was done, I finished fixing and cleaning the low poly in 3ds Max.

A small tip: if you don’t know how many triangles to aim for with your final model, choose a game art style that you like and want to match and take it as a reference. Here I tried to have a model that could fit in League of Legends and ended up with a 12k triangles character.

UVs  

For the UVs, I divided them into two separate maps: one for the objects and another for the body. Although I could have fit everything into a single map by using a more tileable texture on the ropes, I wanted the light to affect different areas uniquely. Hence, I opted to be a little more expansive with my UVs for this particular section.

Still, I tried to duplicate and mirror other parts of the character, so I could gain some UV space and working time because everything duplicated or mirrored would be something less to paint. So if it doesn't impact the look too much, you should definitely do it!

I tried to straighten my islands as much as I could while avoiding too much distortion.

Finally, I tried keeping my UV islands as big as I could, because it was much easier to work on something when everything wasn't split in a ton of pieces.

Baking 

Speaking of baking, I did it in Marmoset Toolbag 4. Those are the maps that I baked and will use later: 

There’s also a “contact AO” that I baked in 3DCoat using my low poly directly so that I could have proper contact shadows between my low poly pieces. In my opinion, the 3DCoat did a better job than Marmoset Toolbag on this part. It was also faster and easier to do it that way.

You can do the same by going to the "Textures" upper menu and clicking on "Calculate Occlusion". Here's the window that will appear, those are the settings that I used. You can play with the light count for better texture quality. I would not recommend going higher than 4096 because your software will probably freeze or crash.

Composited Ambient Occlusion 

Before starting to paint, I wanted to have a first base created by using all these Maps. I liked to mix those together and have some kind of grayish final result. I played a lot with the opacity and blending modes of my layers to get what I want. 

Here's how I composed my Base Map with only 5 layers:

• First, I used all the Ambient Occlusion Maps coming from my baking process (base AO, AO with floor). The contact AO was added later in the texturing process.
• To get a Light Map, you can use the green channel from the Normal Object Map. To do so, import your Normal Object Map in Photoshop > select the layer > go to channels > select the green channel > press "ctrl+a" > press "ctrl+c" > select back RGB > press "ctrl+v" in the layers window.
  Next, it is necessary to duplicate the green channel from the "Normal Object Map" and place it on top of everything. This will act as a form of lighting, simulating light coming from the top and following the volume of the character.
• The gray layer is a simple layer with a "Multiply" blending mode to darken everything.
• The curvature is used here to sharpen the result. It is very important to use a low opacity on this one. You want to avoid having a strong curvature everywhere. 
• The fix layer is a paintover layer to fix artifacts or displeasing mishaps.

Texturing 

Speaking of texturing, the idea was first to get a black-and-white base before going full color. This was easier for working on the volume and global lighting without having to think about hue and saturation.

Once the black-and-white painting pass was done, we could use some Gradient Maps to apply colors. This tool is super powerful because you can get some early color variations without painting everything.

Here's a step-by-step screen, where you can see the most important parts of the process:

Painting everything can be very long and tedious, sometimes you have to choose where you want to put your effort and details. Here I focused on the head. I added more scales, skin folds, and specular highlights. By doing that, I also created some contrast with the rest of the characters and brought more attention to the head and mouth.  

I always try to play with values by creating high contrast, especially on the focal point of the artwork, which in this case was the head and his big dangerous mouth! 

Don't forget to take a screenshot and check the values in Photoshop by turning it into a black-and-white image once in a while. This will prevent you from making big mistakes.

Adding a general gradient coming from the bottom was also super important to keep our eyes focused on the upper part.

Adding some cast shadows helped to bring the character to the next level and make it believable.

Since I was not working with PBR, the cast shadows wouldn't be automatically calculated. Therefore, I had to manually paint them in. 

One important tip to remember is to soften the edges of the shadows slightly as this will contribute to a more realistic appearance. If you are interested in understanding the reasons behind this technique, I recommend exploring the various 2D painting resources available on the internet. It's always beneficial to foster curiosity and expand your knowledge in the field.

Finally, here's the full texturing process! As you can see the idea was that I came from big simple lighted volumes, then I added some secondary shape details (the biggest scales, skin folds, scars) then tertiary ones (small scales and specular highlights). 

When everything was finally painted, I finished with a color dodge layer to fix one last time the overall global lighting.

Rigging and Animation

The super rig that I used to animate him with was made by my friend Max André! His rig was so nice to animate! Don't hesitate to check his profile for more information!

The animation really helps to bring a character to life. This was the first time that I animated one and, I have to say, that was something that thrilled me a lot! This idle animation was quite simple, I created a simple loop of 4 seconds with him breathing. Duplicated it three times to get a 12-second animation. And in the second loop, I implemented a small idle breaker with him turning his head to make it feel less boring.

Rendering 

All the renders were made in Marmoset Toolbag 4 (except for the Sketchfab scene).

Because this character was unlit, there weren't many settings to tweak. You can see on the screenshot below the materials settings. As well as the post-effects that I played with.

However, a very important post effect that I used is the "Sharpen" one. Sometimes the textures can feel a bit blurry in Marmoset Toolbag, so using the Sharpen slider helps to bring back the details that could have been lost and give better visibility of the character overall.

I also implemented dynamic shadows on the ground with a single top light. But for that, I had to light the ground using a simple material so that the character’s cast shadow would work. Otherwise, when I don't have an environment, I use a shadow catcher.

Finally, I added a bit of Ambient Occlusion in the render settings just to have a dynamic Ambient Occlusion that would follow the animation. 

Conclusion 

This was an interesting project that allowed me to experiment with a lot of things. Even though I am no Environment Artist or Animator, it was still super fun to make this small scene as well as the character! 

Thank you so much for your time and attention to my breakdown! I hope this helps you in some way with your future projects!

Francisque Facon, Character Artist

Interview conducted by Theodore McKenzie