3D Organic Modeling and Rendering Tips

Considering you already know the basics of 3d modeling, this article is focused on “what to do” rather than “how to do” that may help make your models more interesting for the viewers. So let’s get started with an example as a guideline.

Good Planning and Production Pipeline

Best way to work on anything creative is to plan first. A good planing can help create better thing in short time avoiding possibilities of situations like “oh I should have done that before”! The production path discussed here is not limited to any specific software or toolset. So to briefly start with, any modeling tool i.e. Maya, 3ds Max, C4d or Blender can be used to model the basic head with facial features with a good topology. From there on the detailing journey starts by switching back and forth from your favorite 3d modeling kit to your favorite sculpting kit (i.e. Maya <<to/from>> ZBrush or Mudbox). From sculpting tools, the final sculpted model comes along with generated maps and textures back to the original modeling package for final tweaks like hair and fur and gets ready for rigging and lighting and render. The render passes then goes for 2d compositing for tool like Photoshop. So here is the pipeline at a glance:

1. Modeling Tool << Retopology and UV back and forth>> Sculpting Tool

2. Modeling Tool — Load final sculpted low res model with maps/textures generated from Sculpting Tool

3. Shaders Creation

4. Hair and Fur (optional)

5. Rigging

6. Lighting / Stage / Environment

7. Render Passes

8. 2d Compositing

Let’s take a look at some examples: In the following 2 snapshots the low res (864 poly) stays in Maya and high res (9 millions) is linked in and sculpted in ZBrush and tweaked back and forth. At the top right corners high-res sculpts are shown.

The following snapshots are showing completed scultps and necessary maps are generated which will be applied to the low res to get details of high res inside Maya. Shaders are created and tweaked as necessary and applied to the low-res model.

At this stage sculpting tool is no longer needed. Depending on the requirement of the production, model can be rigged (if used for pose or animation). Otherwise next step is to work on hair / fur or alternative is to to use geo with textures for hair. For this model that I created several years ago, I have used Hair and fur plugin called shave and haircut which was popular at that time. See the following image:

This was a personal practice work so I didn’t rig or create stage / environment, so went straight to lighting and render settings for render passes. Following snapshot is to show the render layers:

Once render passes are rendered, all the layer stacks go into the 2d compositing tool like Photoshop and are color corrected and adjusted as necessary. Following image is a final render:

This article was written by Moback employee Russell Kawsar.