Making Nick Wilde recreation more movie-accurate

Ducktor

For the past year or so, I've been working on a Nick Wilde recreation. The model itself was made by YiBoZONE on twitter. My contributions include:

* Fur and grooming

* New textures

* New rig

One piece of feedback I consistently get is that the colors of the fur isn't too accurate compared to the movie.

Here's a recent render:

My workflow for texturing is designed for quickly being able to modify the colors. I use a layer system made up of multiple masks that define the differently colored areas. I use this for both the body and fur materials which allows me to have different colors for both. I use geonode hair for the fur.

Here's a look at my fur shader(the nodegroup is nothing special, it just mixes the colors using the masks as factors):

For variation, I use a color ramp with a bunch of colors (usually just hue-shifted from the base color) with the factor being Curves Info random.

Here's a few references I've been using when working on this:

What would you suggest for me to do in order to get more movie-accurate colors? Is there something wrong with my workflow? How I do variation? Lighting? Would appreciate any help.

(also just a heads up, I've looked at pretty much every available Nick Wilde recreation online to study. Please do not post "Maybe you should have a look at this [link to model]", as I've most likely already done that)

Eric Chadwick

Looking great so far.

For the fir color, you have random blonde single hairs, but looking at your reference the character seems to have blonde “tufts” here and there, rather than single hairs.

Your model also could use more color variation along the length of each strand. Often animal fur will be different colors towards the base, and towards the tip also. 

Are you using anisotropy in your hair shader? This will help finesse the specularity.

Sheen might also be useful for backscatter towards the edges of the head.

Since you have a rig, I’d suggest posing the facial expression into a more natural pose. 

You could also try replicating the lighting of a specific key reference. This will help you identify differences. To do this, you’ll need specific lights for key, fill, and rim at least.