The Gnomon Workshop – Creating a Realistic Humanoid 3D Character

This 3.5-hour workshop shares the complete character creation process of a humanoid 3D character, from 2D concept, through ZBrush, Maya, and Mari to the final render using V-Ray. Revealing his entire thought process and 3D workflow, Babak Bina, a Character & Creature Design Lead at Zoic Studios, begins from a 2D concept that he takes into ZBrush to explore design possibilities, searching for interesting ways to execute and enhance the concept art while visualizing the character in 3D.

Once satisfied with the character model, Babak shows how to create a generic UV using ZBrush’s automated system, UV Master, which can be taken into Maya to prepare it for a multi-tiled workflow. The texturing also begins in ZBrush, where Babak discusses how to harness the strength of masks combined with Polypainting to maintain all your sculpted details.

With the base Polypaint created in ZBrush, the textures are then ready to export into Mari, where Babak walks through his tried-and-tested methods for creating different channels in Mari based on the Polypaint and displacement exported out of ZBrush. In the final portion of the workshop, Babak investigates the most effective lighting setup for the final render and walks through the shaders he creates in V-Ray.

This intermediate-level workshop assumes some working knowledge of the listed software and is aimed at sharing the industry standard practices, tips, and tricks Babak has learned and gathered throughout his years working as a character artist in the film industry.