Spotlight on Thibault Mouton

Elisa
scantheworld
Published in
4 min readAug 25, 2022

Tell us about you, introduce yourself to the community

Hi! My name is Thibault Mouton, known as ‘mouton.cg’ on the socials, and i’m a digital sculptor based in Belgium. I’m currently 26 years old and relatively new to the art scene.

How did you get interested in 3D and motion design? How long have you been doing it?

To come to the point of creating 3d art, it has been a whole journey of different and ever evolving interests. what started as creating videos with vfx at 14 years old, later evolved into a passion for album design and working in photoshop and digital drawing.

Then i discovered the power of 3d software, being able to create very realistic artwork and objects, and i’ve been learning intensely for the past 2 years.

Do you think STW assets have changed the way you create? If so, how?

I first learned about scantheworld when i was searching on youtube for good websites that had good quality free 3d meshes to experiment with.

Needless to say, i immediately fell in love with the project! STW assets not only changed the way i work, but also the way i look at art. Every asset teaches me alot on a cultural level and has an interesting story behind it.

How do you usually get inspired?

A huge inspiration for creating my work are other amazing artists from which i take alot of reference and study.

Artists like for example Zhelong Xu can create very complex and beautiful compositions and sculpted pieces which are jaw-dropping to me.

They give such a energy boost seeing what these artists can create with the same tools and their imagination. I also take in alot of elements of these works for example the beautiful curves and flow of the pieces, or the stunning realistic texture work.

In regards to the latest creations using STW assets, how did you pick them and what is the idea behind the work?

When i’m browsing the STW catalogue, i tend to look for something animal related because they give alot of room for adding stuff, since they are organic creatures. I really like the feeling of something mythological and mysterious.

I’m also very interested in ancient artifacts and giving my own little spin to it.

There’s something magical about “restoring” or recreating famous artifacts and putting them in a different spotlight than people are used to.

Can you tell us a bit more about the modeling and texturing process?

I usually start from scratch in Zbrush, gathering a ton of reference for the sculpting as well as the texture work. Over 2 years i think i perfected the workflow which suits best for me, focusing on details and organic shapes and focusing on the realism aspect of the texture work.

When i feel like i have finished up my sculpt in Zbrush, i will export to blender to get good uv’s (UDIMS) for high quality textures a,d then bring everything into substance painter.

The texturing process is based on a ton of refence as mentioned early, but the big secret is perfecting in post. I will take about 10 renders from the same camera angle but with totally different lighting and moods,

take everything into photoshop, and mask off all the best portions of each render to get a final result.

Then starts the color grading process for which i use both photoshop and boris FX Optics, which can change the entire aesthetic of the piece.

If you had to choose your favourite artefact we have digitised, which one would it be and why?

It pretty much impossible to choose a favorite, but for some reason the seahorse statue really hit home for me. It has that mythical creature feeling to it which really stands out and with which you can take endless approaches with when it comes to sculpting. Def. one of my favorite pieces so far!

In any case i still have about 30 meshes from STW downloaded that i’ll def. turn into a project sooner or later!

I’m currently working on my biggest project so far and it also includes a few meshes from the STW project, and i can’t wait to show people what i’ve been up to! :)

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Elisa
scantheworld

Scan the World | Digitisation of cultural heritage