Mai Vu Chi - Viper Dragon, Forest Witch & Egyptian Sphynx Cat

Hello everyone!

I am Mai Vu Chi and I have a big passion for modeling and texturing, especially for creatures of all kinds.

My 18-month education at PIXL VISN will end soon in October 2024. Therefore I am currently working on my demo reel. Throughout the course of my training and the number of projects I have created in this context, the shown 3 projects show how my works have improved with increasing experience and the progress I have made in terms of technique and overall quality. 

Let´s dive into the first project!

Viper Dragon

As I have shown above, the first project of the 3 projects I created, is the Viper Dragon. The project is an endterm of mine, for which we had 1 week for. Including modeling, texturing, shading, lookdev, rendering and compositing. Our theme for the endterm 300 was super hero VS super villain. I knew right away I wanted to model a dragon, since they´re often the super villain in most stories.

References

As I searched for dragon concepts and references I found the amazing viper dragon created by Kurtis Dawe. I loved the idea of mixing a viper snake with a dragon.

Modeling

The first step was the blockout of the dragon. Getting the general shape done until it was ready for the retopology, so I can add details afterwards.

Dragons have lots of details and the majority of them are the scales. Scales make the most of the appearance of a realistic dragon. As a result I spent a lot of time creating them with the help of brushes.

Wireframe & UVs

Texturing

I textured the dragon in substance painter. The file was definitely heavy which was caused by the number of udims. I still managed to texture the viper dragon in one day. 

The viper dragon is the first project that was created from the 3 student projects. Looking at it, there is still a lot of room for improvement. Despite the mistakes I made, I am amazed on how it turned out and I can proudly say that I´ve done this project in one week!

The Forest Witch

The next project is my one week midterm 400. No theme was given for this midterm. I wanted to model a bust of a high detailed human character. I decided to practice on wrinkles and what´s better than a scary grumpy looking old witch who has enough wrinkles to learn from!

References

References were really important for this project because I modeled an old character who had lots of wrinkles and other details all over their face. That´s why I spent lots of time on researching for images of wrinkles, wards, veins and other details of a scary looking character.

Modeling

Modeling was definitely a challenge with all those wrinkles. Overall it was a fun task creating a scary looking old witch! I really enjoyed making her look frightening with her big nose, warts and teeth.

Hood Cloth

I created the hood in Marvelous Designer. For that specific clothing I chose a simple pattern and I attached the form with lots of pins for it to stay in place. 

UVs

It was really important for me to showcase the witch in a high resolution because she had a lot of details that I wanted to show. For this reason I had a total of 14 udims for only her bust.

Grooming

The eyebrow and eyelash grooming was done in maya xGen. Since my model was an old witch I wanted the groom to look bushy and unorganized. To archive this look I spent some time playing with the noise and clumping modifiers. 

Texturing

The hood was textured in adobe substance painter and the skin textures were done in mari. For the skin basecolor I used XYZ textures for projecting. For the warts and veins I looked up images and projected them also, so as the eyes and the displacement.

The witch was my first human and there are definitely parts that could´ve been improved. I had to rush a lot of parts because of our 1 week deadline. Even though it was a stressful week, I have learned a lot in this progress and am really proud of the end result.

Egyptian Sphynx Cat

The last project is the Egyptian Sphynx Cat. This project was an production training project of mine for which we had 3 weeks in total. We had a few topics to chose from and I chose the category: Sphynx Cat.

References

The search for references was a big part to archive the realistic look of a sphynx cat! Sphynx cats have a lot of details that have to be matched up as realistic as possible. For example the known wrinkles and the clogged pores caused by their oily skin or their eyes since they're a different from humans. So far this project was the project where I searched the most references.

Modeling

I modeled the sphynx cat in zBrush. After I got the face shape and proportions to look right, it was time for the wrinkles. I wanted them to look realistic, therefore, a lot reference material was needed. Since every cat has different wrinkles, I had to understand the similarity of the direction of each cat. Then more and more details came on the way. 

The scarab an chains were modeled in zBrush. The pearls were added later in maya.

Retopology & UVs

I have done the whole retopology progress by hand with the quad qraw tool from autodesk maya.

Scarf

The scarf was made in Marvelous. A simple pattern of a scarf was used.

Grooming - Peach Fuzz

The majority of sphynx cats have fur on them and they can look different in length or place. The most have a kind of peach fuzz grooming all over their body. That´s the reason why I decided to do a simple peach fuzz groom with xGen.

Texturing

The texturing was done in mari. I have spent a lot of time on the texturing and learned new tools and methods because the workflow is different from the other projects. I went for a dark sphynx cat with a blue/purple undertone.

The egyptian sphynx cat project is one of my personal favorite projects. Not only because I am satisfied with the look, but also because I learned a lot while I pushing myself to the limit. The progress I made after my one year 3D education is pretty satisfying to watch.

That was for me! I hope you enjoyed my entry and could follow trough each step. I am thrilled to participate at the Rookies Awards in 2025 with my demo reel! 

You can find me on:

LikedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/mai-vu-chi-b97654274

E-Mail: [email protected]

Instagram: @mai_v_c