Mad Maude, Post-apocalyptic animation / concept of proof for a 3d animation project

August 20, 2017

It’s typical for artists to hesitate showing early work, and maybe I should too, but I prefer to put my skill development journey out there. This was a massively ambitious undertaking squeezed into a tight timeframe. Let’s chalk it up to history. My expertise has grown considerably since then through learning a lot, but I genuinely had a blast working on this project; it was fun.

This was a long study/animation project made in 1 and a half month during the summer semester of MSc Animation and VFX course in University of Dundee, DJCAD, UK, Scotland.

Mad Maude animation project - baby character digital sculpting process part 1

My first sculpt of the baby was completely off – made him look too adult. Then I started tweaking the proportions.

Mad Maude animation project - baby character digital sculpting process part 2

More sculpting!

Mad Maude animation project - baby character digital sculpting process part 3

Changing proportions.

Mad Maude animation project - baby character digital sculpting process part 4

Legs were way too long. Added some goggles, modelled them really quickly in Maya.

Mad Maude animation project - baby character digital sculpting process part 5

Some final changes and proportion fixes.

Mad Maude animation project - baby character digital sculpting process final preview

One of the final sculpts, but I changed the proportion of the limbs later on.

Mad Maude animation project - baby character UV-mapping process

Here’s some sneak peek of UV mapping after the retopology process.

Mad Maude animation project - baby character haircard placement part 1

Hair was done manually by placing different polycards.

Mad Maude animation project - baby character haircard placement part 2

More hairсards.

Mad Maude animation project - baby character haircard placement part 2

More haircards, little eyelash action here.

Mad Maude animation project - baby character skin basecolor and normal map baking

The baby’s base color was painted in ZBrush. Then I exported the normal and base color maps, tweaked them in Photoshop, and sent them to Substance Painter for additional texturing. This is one of the tests.

Mad Maude animation project - baby character assets texturing process

Texturing some assets in Substance painter.

Mad Maude animation project - baby character lookdev pre-render shot

Testlook of baby in Maya, render used - Mental ray. It took 4 days to make the whole character.

Mad Maude animation project - Granny character old design lookdev

This is the first Granny’s design made in January, when I only started learning character modelling. Overall I had 3 months of any 3d experience by that time…

Mad Maude animation project - Granny character redesigned and remade from scratch part 1

New Granny character. Completely resculpted from scratch.

Mad Maude animation project - Granny character redesigned and remade from scratch part 2

Granny with assets, some were made in Maya, some were first simulated in Marvelous Designer - like this quivered leather jacket and sweatpants.

Mad Maude animation project - Granny character insides, digital sculpting process

I made characters extremely detailed, got mesmerised by the process.

Mad Maude animation project - Granny character haircards preview part 1

Granny’s hair made using polycards.

Mad Maude animation project - Granny character haircards preview part 2

Look-dev tests and tweaks of Granny’s hair.

Mad Maude animation project - Granny character haircards preview part 3

Granny’s hair closeup.

Mad Maude animation project - Granny character retopology process

All models were manually retopologized.

Mad Maude animation project - Granny character reprojected details part 1

Retopologized model has been exported to Zbrush where sculpt details were added and finalized.

Mad Maude animation project - Granny character reprojected details part 2

Hipoly detailed mesh was used to create normal maps and other PBR-workflow texture maps.

Mad Maude animation project - Granny character lookdev part 1

Checking how normal maps look.

Mad Maude animation project - Granny character lookdev part 2

One of the iterations of leather jacket.

Mad Maude animation project - Granny character lookdev part 3

One of the iterations of leather jacket.

Mad Maude animation project - Granny character lookdev part 4

Testing how granny will look like in Maya.

Mad Maude animation project - Granny character lookdev part 5

This lady has 47 texture sets at 4k resolution! I used displacement maps for her skin and the leather materials. (Way too many textures for a model of that scale. I was so clueless back then XD)

Mad Maude animation project - Granny character lookdev part 6