Cinematic / Film Workflow

Alex1

Hi guys,

Can someone please help me out here?

I'm trying to create a feature film quality type of character and despite carrying out extensive research into this type of workflow I can't seem to figure out exactly how to achieve certain things. I already have a bit of experience in creating game ready characters and assets and I'm aware that most of the processes from that are carried over to the cinematic workflow, with the exception that for film, the polygon count can be much higher, displacement maps are employed and textures are usually projected / painted in software such as Mari.

Anyways. I'm trying to understand the process that would be employed for creating mainly hard-surface objects such as the ballistic face shield in the image below:



I realise for a game, the process would be something like: create a high-poly version, sculpt in high frequency details, retopo to a low poly version, UV, bake normal and AO maps and feed them into Quixel / Substance to create textures and so on.

So, my question is, what would the process be for a high quality film asset such as the one pictured above - especially in regard to displacement maps? What would the process from start to finish look like? For example, for the strap lock/release mechanism, would one start from basic shapes / low topology, then add support loops, take it into ZBrush and sculpt in the super fine details (plastic / metal bumpiness, edge bevels, indents etc.), then retopo / ZRemesh and bake out the displacement, or in this case would it make more sense to use a normal or bump maps, or a combination? Or is all of this unnecessary and one could simply model the mesh as it would be in its final state and instead paint the high frequency detail in in Mari?

I hope it makes sense as to what I'm trying to figure out and I would greatly appreciate if someone is able to provide some guidance. Thank you!

musashidan

For VFX assets a lot of the final look will come from the shading and texture work. So extensive use of displacement map painting, a lot of custom mask maps, procedural maps in the shader, Udims for very high-res textures, and complex multi-layered blended shaders. Modeling would be dense polymodeling with perhaps render time subdivision. An asset like this might or might not even get a pass in Zbrush.
So the shading is going to be a very important step. There might even be a team of look-dev artists working on just this theme of shader.

Alex1

musashidan said:

For VFX assets a lot of the final look will come from the shading and texture work. So extensive use of displacement map painting, a lot of custom mask maps, procedural maps in the shader, Udims for very high-res textures, and complex multi-layered blended shaders. Modeling would be dense polymodeling with perhaps render time subdivision. An asset like this might or might not even get a pass in Zbrush.
So the shading is going to be a very important step. There might even be a team of look-dev artists working on just this theme of shader.

Thank you for your reply Danny.

Just a follow up question if I may; In terms of texturing, what kind of maps are likely to be created for an object such as this? I know for sure that it will need a diffuse, specular and gloss, but what about the rest? Would a bump, normal or a displacement map be produced? I know it's all very much dependent on how much quality is aimed for and like you say, it's usually a much more complex workflow involving extensive shader development... but if you or someone else could point me in the right direction I'd really appreciate it.

By the way, awesome work and tutorials you have there! Cheers.

throttlekitty

For this asset, I wouldn't worry about displacement unless the camera is going to get macro-photo close. Bump vs Normal, the nice thing is that you can mix both, so you can have your geometry normals and surface detail separate if you want. Or even blend two normal maps in the same fashion. Bump is almost exclusively fine detail. But otherwise displacement is A-OK, especially for rocks or some DOOM like monster.

Any other maps comes down to specific uses and shaders. I don't have any links to good examples or tutorials, sorry. I'm more of a tinker/read/tinker kind of learner, so I end up looking for information about what i'm doing and usually pick up tricks along the way.