Sam - 3D Character/environment

Hi everyone!

My name is Sam Motaung, I am currently Doing my first year at The Animation School. I am very pleased to share with you my entry to the Rookie Awards 2024. During the three years of studying I've learnt a lot about the 3D industry from my amazing lecturers and the inspiring guest speakers that have come to our school and share their knowledge with us.

Not too long after I started studying I fell in love with 3D modelling and animation, everyday I try to push my limits and apply everything I have learnt from the people around me into my projects. So without further ado, here is my work I've done in the past two years.

I hope you enjoy!!

Silas - You've Got Mail

Silas is a recluse who has been avoiding the outside for many years. During this he has become quite the inventor and has built machines to help in his everyday life. However, when his mechanical arm malfunctions and throws his mail into the depth of his garden, he is thrown out of his comfort and panics. He has no other option but to go outside. He equips his hazmat suit and steps outside having no other choice but to conquer his fears. 

This is a character sculpt I've recently done for our upcoming short film "You've got mail". I've always loved making 3D models and I've put everything I have learnt in character modelling thus far into this character. With the style we chose I tried pushing the quality of some areas to truly make it pop, this was inspired by the famous Tim Burton style so I incorporated some of the lanky features often seen in Tim Burton's characters. It had its  challenging moments but overall I had a lot fun making this character and I am really proud of how he turned out.

Process Breakdown

                                                       Reference

I created a mood board in order to organize my ideas and what the team wanted from this character. The concept was done by my talented friend Neo Kgasu, we worked closely together to create a character that could translate well from 2D to 3D. The model was rigged by our highly skilled  team members Katherine Rawlings, we  worked together to ensure the model reached the optimal rigging requirements and not struggle too much when it came to weight painting and deformations.

Zbrush Process

I first sculpted the character in Zbrush then after I retopologized him in Maya. Before I started sculpting the character, I first analysed the proportions giving to me by the concept artist. I went on and blocked out the character using very low poly and insuring that I get the proportions down first before moving on to the finer details. I focused a lot on anatomy but also making sure not to overdo it since I was going for a more stylised look. Getting his long limbs to feel right was tough in the beginning but having Tim Burtons character Jack Skellington From "The Nightmare before Christmas" helped a lot for whenever I got stuck I'd always just refer back to my reference. I left the hair in blocking cause I knew I'd be using Xgen to make the hair. The hand was quite interesting to model, you need to pay a lot of attention to details you never even thought your hands had. The hand was challenging at  first but I was able to overcome that battle and move on to other parts.

The sculpt kept changing throughout the process as you can see in the picture above the clear difference betweem the first image and the last, which shows my learning  process and fixing my mistakes as I went on. I aim to keep on improving my sculpting skills since there is still so much I have learn in order to become a better artist one day.

Maya - Retopology and UV Layout

Once I was satisfied with my sculpt it was finally time to move on to retopologizing in Maya and unwrapping. From this step onwards I was working primarily in Maya, I tried to ensure that my topology was animation friendly as possible, to ensure this I worked closely with my rigger and applied whatever feedback I got from them. For the UVs I made sure to lay them out in the most sensical way possible and make it easier to paint and texture them. I layed them out in a way that each tile was its own material which resulted in  UDIMS for the face, body, clothes and eyes.

Grooming

For the hair I used Xgen to create my groom. I started off by creating tubes that I later used to make my guides, this method is called the tube groom method. This process made it so much easier in terms of sculpting the guides since half the placement was already done for me as long as I placed the tubes resembling the hair in the concept closely. Since this was my first time working with Xgen, it was very challenging at first, especially trying to get the shape feeling right. I worked with clumps and noise to get the hair flowing in the direction I needed it to go. As hard as it was in the beginning I saw that the first couple of tests were promising so I didn't give up and I persevered until I got a result I was satisfied with. Once I was done I applied an Arnold shader on the hair so I can get the same results in my renders as I did in my viewport.

Textures and Renders

Silas Turnaround

Now comes my favourite part of the process, at this stage I used Substance Painter to create the textures and once I was done I plugged them back into maya. I surfaced the textures to better enhance the look and I set up the shaders for Arnold to create the final look. For the Hazmat suit was textured to resemble shopping bag plastics which goes with the aesthetic of homemade items built by a shut-in inventor. 

Silas Hazmat Suit Turnaround

I definitely learned a lot during this project and gained good knowledge and a reasonable skillset for any projects I will be doing in the future. Shoutout to my lectures Mike Hlatshwayo and Tanya Blaeser and to all the people that helped me with completing this character.

Character Study - Split

This is my character study project I made in my 2nd year and the longest solo project I've ever worked on. This was the first time I modelled and rigged a full character, I remember being so happy seeing her move for the first time it made me want to work on more characters in the future and continue to polish my skills. In this project I combined everything I had learned thus far like modelling, texturing, rigging, lighting and rendering. This was truly one of my most challenging projects but it marked where my skill set lied at the moment  and how far I pushed myself to do the best work I could do. 

The goal of this project was to assess where our skill set was and teach us how to use composition to make your project stand out.

Raw Render

Clay

Reference

For my reference I leaned towards Luca for the style since I found it visually appealing in terms of modelling and textures. My goal was to try to create an awe inspiring whimsical scene. Once my research was complete I started working on concepts to help visualize even further. 

Breakdown

I started out by blocking out my scene and as I went on I modelled my props 1 by 1 in its own scene. I continued to work on the layout using proxies and visualizing the final scene, of course I still didn't have a clear image at this point. Once I got to a good point with my models I begun to start working on poses for my character to see what works. With the textures, I started with the character then moved on to the environment trying my best to match the concept but also improve on its imperfections. The process I enjoyed the most in this process was the lighting process, I really think the lighting brought everything together and made the environment feel whole.

Thank you for taking the time to check out my work! Big shoutout to all the people that have supported me to through every step of this journey, I wish to continue creating work that inspire and move people. Bye!