Devil in the detail

During this tutorial, I will be explaining how the demonic character above was textured. The character is based on my Diable rouge image – which was created for a French CG portal, and has featured in several books, websites and magazines – and was reworked specially for 3D World.

The model was created at low resolution using 3ds Max’s native tools, subdivided, and the resulting mesh adjusted in ZBrush and Silo. The completed model is included in the project files for the tutorial in OBJ and 3DS formats. Since UV unwrapping is an important part of the texturing process, I’ve unwrapped the model ready for use. The project files also includes three photographic textures from the excellent free online library Mayang’s Free Textures (www.mayang.com/textures).

The article assumes that you are already familiar with basic texturing concepts, such as the use of separate colour, bump and specular maps, and that you have reasonable traditional art skills. Since the process of painting textures is very similar to that of painting on canvas, using a graphics tablet will help you obtain much better results.

During the walkthrough, I will focus mainly on the process of painting textures, using photographic elements, and manipulating layers. For this, I will primarily be using Photoshop, although some of the bump maps are created in ZBrush. If you don’t have ZBrush, the completed maps are included in the project files.

The final image was rendered in 3ds Max and mental ray. The shader used for the skin was a mental ray SSS Fast Skin shader; all the others are basic 3ds Max shaders. The lighting consists of three mental ray Spot lights with Area Shadows enabled, and a Max Skylight with Final Gather enabled to fake global illumination.

If you’re a 3ds Max owner, the final MAX file is included in the project files, with the settings adjusted to provide decent render times on an average PC. Using this version will still provide a result very close to the one used to create the main illustration. However, since all of the completed texture maps and base models are also provided with the project files, you can recreate the final scene for yourself in any 3D application you prefer.

Click here to download the support files (~69MB)