Tamoghna Dey - Hidden Nature

It is my delight to share my final project for the 'CG Fundamentals' program at Think Tank Training Centre! This project is the culmination of 3 months of learning condensed into 5 weeks of recreating a 2D concept in 3D.

I began my 3D journey only last year through self-exploration in Blender. After feeling stagnant and unable to land a job or collaborate on film projects as a cinematographer, I wanted to make things and finally took the plunge. Well, I was hooked! This year, I decided to join Think Tank's amazing program, and I'm incredibly grateful to have created this piece because of it!

This concept resonated with me as it offers a perfect blend of storytelling and technical challenges. This was my first attempt at building a scene from scratch—from modeling to post-production—and learning all the new software. What I thought I wasn't capable of manifested itself over the course of 5 weeks.

The Building Blocks

To begin, I broke down the project into what needs to be modeled and what needs to be sculpted. The tree barks and branches were the only things that were sculpted in ZBrush as I was yet to get comfortable with sculpting and while I knew it was 100% possible to model them inside Maya, I wanted to take the challenge of learning the ZBrush UI.

Then came breaking down the project into main and background elements as well as building a reference sheet.

I began with a blockout and then focused the first week on modeling the robot. Modeling proved to be quite challenging for me, but I aimed to stay as true to the concept as possible. To help visualize the various parts of the robot, I added some color. I relied heavily on references to break down the robot's different components, such as the arms and neck, and tried to understand how they would connect with each other.

Once the robot was in place, I put in the background elements.

I then moved on to sculpting the hero tree. After many iterations and attempts, I was able to settle on a version that I liked with some tweaks made in Maya after exporting from ZBrush.

I blocked out the branches in Maya and then sculpted on top of the basic models in ZBrush. I used a brush set from Mohamad Fathi to add the final details.

(https://www.artstation.com/marketplace/p/Wxa5/60-zbrush-wood-brushes-tree-bark-alpha)

The Heart of the Project

Week 3 rolled in, and it was time for the most exciting part—texturing. I decided to go for a hand-painted look, emulating brush strokes and imperfections within Substance Painter. I created a smart material for the robot's body and then built the other materials using that as the foundation.

Here you can see the progress between the first day to the final texture.

Textured main elements render test

Breakdown of texture set-up for Robot material

Let There Be Light

Next came one of my favorite parts—lighting. What captivated me most about filmmaking has always been working with light and shadows. I strive to translate this into all my 3D work, focusing on creating a mood and, in this case, telling the story conveyed in the original piece.

This scene didn't require a lot of lights, but it needed more than just the light from the ceiling fixture. I used rectangle lights as fill and rim lights. Additionally, I added some planes to act as 'flags,' similar to those used on film sets, to cut the light and create shadows.

The Sprinkles on the Cake

To add the leaf details and not increase the size of the file by making heavy geometry and duplicating it, I used atlases from Quixel Megascans. 

For the moss, I did a rough sculpt of the shape in ZBrush and textured it in Substance Painter using the same method I described earlier. Since I was aiming for a stylized look, I embraced the bulky, opaque nature of the moss sculpts.

The image on the calendar in the back and the poster on the right are artworks by Goro Fujita himself.

Put a Bow on It

Finally, once everything was in place, it was time to render and bring the project into Photoshop for post-production. Using various render passes and some Photoshop magic, I brought the final look to life.

I used zDepth, Ambient Occlusion, Specular, and Atmosphere passes very subtly.

This was truly such an amazing learning experience and I'm grateful to my supervisor, Rusty Currier, and my supportive classmates for 'egging' me on as I completed this project. Special thanks to Goro Fujita for allowing me to take a stab at recreating this piece.

That's a wrap on 'Hidden Nature'!