Making Of 'DULI-BADULI'

Hello, my name is Maksym Khirnyy and I would like to present the making of my latest image. I can't tell how much of this is new to you, because 3DTotal has so many making of articles on site, but let's see how it goes.

I made Duli-Baduli with 3ds Max, Photoshop, ZBrush and CrazyBump, and I also used After Effects. I've had the idea of an intergalactic fruit salesman for a long time, but never found an opportunity to work on it until recently.

For the main character, I started with simple low poly modelling, refining the structure step by step, and then unwrapped and exported it as an OBJ file to ZBrush (Fig.01 - 02).

Fig. 1_

Fig. 2_

I reached the final model with subdivision level 5. I made only a basic diffuse map, and created the normal map with subdivision level 1 for coarser structure, and a second one was made with level 3 for finer structure. I made 1 normal map from 2 with CrazyBump using a mixer. You can also mix more than 2 normal maps for a final texture. I then made the displacement, specular and occlusion maps with CrazyBump from my final normal map, and combined them with the diffuse map.

The boxing system was simple low poly modelling with chamfer edges and unwrapping. After I rendered the UVW template I dropped a wood texture and a dirt layer. From this diffuse texture I made normal, specular and bump maps with CrazyBump - for the bump and specular maps this was enough because the dirt layer is dark in comparison to the wood texture (Fig.03).

Fig. 3_

For metallic objects I used the same technology, but without unwrapping; instead I used only one UVW map modifier with box mapping because the objects were quite small (and you would not be able to see the difference anyway).

The grass was done with only one polygon; the diffuse and alpha can be viewed here (Fig.04).

Fig. 4_

The fruit was created with the help of researching images; some of the textures I made the conventional way, but 2 of them I created with ZBrush materials. Here is an example of how you can take pixel information in ZBrush using Projection Master from ZMaterial, and put it into the texture (Fig.05):

Step 1 - The model should be completed. First you fill the object with your favourite ZMaterial with the
MRGB channel on.

Step 2 - Start Projection Master with Colours, Shaded and Material on, and then hit DROP NOW. You don't
need to do anything if you have only a material without any effects. You only need to "PICKUP NOW" the pixel information in your model

Step 3 - Push the Colour to Texture button so you have a white texture with some colour areas in it. This is your first texture for exporting to Photoshop

Step 4 - To do a second one you'll need to assign a MatCap White Cavity Material and fill the object with it with the MRGB channel on, to delete all the colour information from the previous texture in your model

Step 5 - Fill your object with your favourite ZMaterial with the MRGB channel on; this time you'll need to rotate your object to the other side and DROP NOW in Projection Master

Step 6 - Push the Colour to Texture button and you will have your second texture

Fig. 5_

For this particular fruit (Fig.06) I dropped 13 textures, took them into Photoshop, and put them all in one picture; there were 13 layers in one file. For the next step you need to delete all white colour information from each layer. To do this, you go to Select > Colour Range, pick white with the picker and hit OK. After doing this for each layer, only the colour information you need remains. Merge all the layers and your colour texture is ready to use; you can mix it with all the additional textures which you get from ZBrush. The same was done for all the other fruits in the scene (Fig.07).

Fig. 6_

Fig. 7_

The caterpillar I started with low poly and then worked with ZBrush for the modelling (Fig.08). I used the Standard brush for fine structures with Alphas; here are some of them (Fig.09).

Fig. 8_

Fig. 9_

Texturing was done with ZBrush and Photoshop (Fig.10).

Fig. 10_

For rendering I used the V-Ray renderer with GI on, Irradiance map set to High for the final render and Light Cache Subdivisions at 500. The Environment was on with a multiplier of 0.6. Here is the final render with and without materials (Fig.11); V-Ray Lights with subdivision 32 (Fig.12).

Fig. 11_

Fig. 12_

The final picture was rendered with a resolution of 6000 pixels. The challenge was to generate depth from a frontal, symmetrical composition. I used Render Elements to render a VRay ZDepth picture (Fig.13). With After Effects and a Frischluft Lenscare plugin, I rendered the ZDepth information in my final picture.

Fig. 13_

Post-production was very simple; only 2 extra layers with some colour variations were used (Fig.14).

I hope you have found some useful information here. Thanks for reading. You can find more of my work on my website, or contact me by email with any questions.

Fig. 14_

Final Image