Enrico Insero 2024

HI EVERYONE!

I'm happy to share with you the result of the last month at Skyup Academy, during the photorealism module. 

This is my personal project,  based on a photograph by Signe Pierce, which gave me the opportunity to create a colorful environment.

I took care of every aspect for the realization of this project, from modeling to texturing, up to the final render. For that I used maya, substance painter, vray and photoshop. It was my first time using any of these softwares so I can say I'm very proud of the final result.

1) References

The first thing I did was gathering a bunch of references regarding the environment that I had to reproduce, such as laundry machines ( I decided to go with a different brand, which is Speedqueen, cause I couldn't find the exact same machines that were on the concept), materials for the tiles, led lights, plants and vases.

This was when I realized that the photo I had as a concept was mirrored: after confronting with the personal at Skyup, I decided to maintain the same view that the concept had but with the machines in the right orientation.

2) Modeling

After collecting the references it was time to start modeling. I started with a very simple blockout, using real dimensions for the washing machines, in order to match the camera with the concept. This was the hardest part of the modeling phase, cause it wasn't easy to find the right focal lenght that could give me the same distortion as the concept, which I found out to be 20 after various attempts.

I had no real trouble during the modeling part,  but I had some in the final stage of this section: UV mapping. We had a limited amount of udim we could use, so in order not to lose too much detail I scaled every shell that couldn't be seen and also reduced the ones that would have been in the background, cause my assets were small if compared with the environment. 

3) Texturing

It was finally time to move my scene to substance painter in order to create materials. You can see al the maps I made during this phase below. 

4) Lighting and finalization of the project

This was by far the hardest part and the one that pushed me more. I had to use a lot of lights in order to get close to the reference, helping myself with light links to make some lights affect just a few meshes. What made it even more difficult is the reflection of lights that metals have and the fact that the color of the laundry machines of the concept is given entirely by the reflection of all those lights. In the end I used photoshop to lighten the floor and give my scene a vibe as close as possible to the original one

Here is my first project made at Skyup Academy. "Her" name is Nihal.

Our task was to create a character based on European Mythology. After some reserches I decided to take inspiration from the banshee and trying to turn it into a more human-like figure. The reason she was born this way is cause of a curse that his father, a famous explorer from their village in Ireland, had brought upon himself.

This will lead to a life full of suffering, mostly for others cause Nihal can't feel any emotion, even if she cries.

Here are the final renders:

01) References

The first step of this process was to collect enough references to design the character. My problem here was that  I couldn't find anything related to a banshee that could help me, cause they are ghosts,  so I focused on demonic female figures and I decided to give her a weapon, specifically a scythe, and a bucket which recalls the legend of the banshees, even tho her's full of blood...

02)Character design

After collecting the references, I did some sketches of the character, the t-pose and then the pose I wanted for the sculpt, in which Nihal stops running after seeing an interesting prey...

03) Maquette

The next step was to move from 2d to 3d doing a maquette of the character with monster clay.

This was my first time ever doing something like that and I had some issues cause a human character is never easy to create, also I had trouble with the dress but I managed to solve it adding more wire beneath.

In this phase I also decided to change her hair and go with a braid, and added shoes. Unfortunately, due to timing issues I wasn't able to make the scythe, also cause the first attempt went badly.

4) Digital sculpting

Finally it was time to move to Zbrush. I never used this software before, and doing an humanoid character as a first time was challenging but also hardcore, especially in the short time we had to complete it. 

The first thing I did was a quick blockout using zspheres, from where I started adding more detail.

I then modeled the head and hands separately from the body, and lastly the bucket and the scythe after discovering and learning a bit about zmodeler.

The most difficult thing, besides female proportions, was the dress. I tried and tried using zbrush simulations and brush for clothes, and I arrived at the point where the skirt is one of the things I'm more proud of, even if my first idea of the dress was different but I still couldn't go that far with the time I had.

5) Lighting and rendering

After putting all of this together and finalizing with the details, I went on maya for the lighting and, after a few attempts with different backgroung colors, I decided to go with red and I did the final renders,