The Xenomorph

The Xenomorph

This project was also an excuse to embed my own xenomorph into existing shots. This exercise mainly allowed me to work on color grading, setting up depth of field and focal length, and even the smallest details like the grain in the image, in order to match the result with the existing shot. All this work is primarily done in Nuke, after setting up lights in Maya and rendering. Thus, the three shots below show my integration into the shot, followed by the original image.

INTEGRATION SHOTS

REFERENCES

The reference work was kind of a mess since the xenomorph looks different from one movie to another. I ended up mixing some features of multiple xenomorphs to create my own version of the alien.

LOOKDEV

I first sculpted the whole body but ended up focusing on the face and shoulders since the integration shots were all close-ups. Additionally, I found it more interesting to work on the face than on the rest of the body. This is why the lookdev turntable only shows the xenomorph’s bust.

AOV Passes

Here are the main AOV passes I used  to get to the final result of the alien

SCULPT

I worked on the base mesh before sculpting, then started the retopology in maya. After reimporting the "clean" mesh to Zbrush, I increased the SubDiv level to about 5 in order to get a nice resolution to work on the displacement.

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