Master Cg Creature Creation

Learn to create realistic creatures from start to finish using industry standard software

What you'll learn

Sculpting, and re-topologizing high fidelity creatures in Zbrush for film and VFX

Master MARI for professional texture painting.

Utilize the USD workflow between Blender and Houdini, and creating Realistic Fur for creatures as well as Karma Look Dev, and rendering

Compositing the rendered EXR images in Da Vinci Resolve using the ACES workflow, with some basic colour grading as well.

By the end of the course, you will have created a realistic Chimpanzee for production.

Requirements

Basic knowledge of 3D modelling and Sculpting is expected

You will need to have the software installed for following along, or at least have alternative software for some parts (example Blender for Sculpting, or Substance Painter for Texturing)

Description

In this comprehensive course, you will learn to create an anatomically correct Chimpanzee from the ground up. We will deep dive into Zbrush's many features to help speed up our sculpting process by utilizing off-the-shelf tools and dynamics wherever possible, without getting too caught up on jargon or over-focussing on names of the bones and so on. I will also teach re-topo techniques right inside Zbrush, and then take the production model through to Blender for a rig, and an idle animation, and later to MARI for texturing, and then to Houdini for Fur and Look Dev using Solaris, and Karma.Finally I will go over the process of rendering correctly in the ACES workflow to then composite and colour grade in DaVinci Resolve.The course contains over 8 hours of content, and focusses on helping you create eye popping renders of realistic creatures which you may implement in your own creature projects. By the end of the course, you will go from someone who's not sure about their skills as a character / creature artist to being confident enough to advertise yourself as a CG creature artist on social media.I hope you will thoroughly enjoy this course as creature art is the most fascinating facet of VFX and CG in general.

Overview

Section 1: Introduction

Lecture 1 Course Promo

Lecture 2 Course Expectations

Section 2: Sculpting in Zbrush

Lecture 3 Creating Bones Brush and setting up references in Zbrush

Lecture 4 Creating the Skeleton

Lecture 5 Finalising the Skeleton

Lecture 6 Establishing muscles

Lecture 7 Sculpting the Skin

Lecture 8 Adding Feet & Refining Form

Lecture 9 Detailing the face

Lecture 10 Final detail pass

Section 3: Retopology in Zbrush, and UVs in Blender

Lecture 11 Beginning Re-Topology

Lecture 12 Finishing Re-Topology

Lecture 13 Initial UVs and Export to Blender

Lecture 14 Finishing UVs in Blender

Section 4: Rigging and Animation in Blender

Lecture 15 Rigging

Lecture 16 Animation

Section 5: Texturing and Look Dev

Lecture 17 15 - Houdini Scene Setup

Lecture 18 16 - Setting up the scene in Mari

Lecture 19 17 - Texturing Skin, gums and teeth

Lecture 20 18 - Further Texturing and Look Dev

Lecture 21 19 - Micro displacement and Final Look-Dev setup

Section 6: Grooming in Houdini

Lecture 22 20 - Fur Part 1

Lecture 23 21 - Fur Part 2

Lecture 24 22 - Final Adjustments and Render

Section 7: Compositing (The final section)

Lecture 25 Compositing in Resolve - The Final Chapter

This course is ideal for somebody with basic 3D knowledge, looking to delve into the complex realm of Character or Creature art for Visual Effects and Film.