Film/cinematic modeling
polycounter lvl 4
Hello guys! I'm relatively new self-taught 3D artist. I would like some advices about film/cinematic modeling from you coz I want to learn, practice and build my portfolio in that area. I use ZBrush, Maya as main softwares, and now I'm looking forward to use Mari as a texturing tool.
My inspiration is Blizzard's World of Warcraft cinematics, also something like Warcraft movie. Which doesn't necessary means that I want to work in future for Blizzard 
So my questions are simple...
1. How are cinematic/film models different from game models beside poly count and different mapping?
2. What should be max poly count for cinematic/film character/creature with all assets? And what maps are usually used?
3. Should I focus on learning and rendering my models professionaly using something like Vray or Arnold?
4. How small assets like chain, lace, etc. should be retopologized to not get high polycount?
5. Is there any decent online tutorial which can help me from start to finish making of cinematic/film character model?
6. Is Zbrush's fibermesh valuable for hair and fur?
7. How my portfolio should look like?
8. Is polypaint valuable? If it is, for what?
I guess that most of realistic modeling comes from great topology. I like to start my project from dynamesh or zsphere, but should I retopo my mesh after whole model is finished or after I make an mesh and before detailing same, and then lower subdivision from that and bake maps?
That's all I can think for now, and I know it's a lot of questions, so any reply, tips and tricks, would be helpful.
Replies
1. They really aren't incredibly different anymore, generally displacement maps are used as well as a wide variety of other ones. UV mapping is setup different (for hero assets at least). For instance, you might be texturing a part of a forehead on a single UV tile. Hero assets for films can some times have over 100 different maps to make them up. Another way a game artist and a film artist are different is that film artists generally have a more refined skill where game artists generally need to do a bit of everything (though this might not be the same in every studio). Generally for film, you will have specific teams doing specific tasks, you have modelers, and you have texture artists, and generally there isn't much overlap.
2. Well it really depends on how many polys are needed to get the character to animate properly. How close it will be to the screen. If I remember correctly, an asset like Godzilla in the most recent film was 500,000-700,000, but then they obviously do displacement maps and so on.
3. You should be using industry standard renderers or something very close to show that you know how to make proper materials/shaders for the render engine.
4. That really comes down to the project. And how you wants things to go together.
5. Might take some searching for that one.
6. I imagine fibermesh would give you decent looking still-frame. Though it wouldn't be dynamic should you want to animate it. I think most VFX companies have their own in-house teams and software to do most hair simulation and stuff like that.
7. Look at a portfolio of someone that does the stuff that you want to do in the film industry and match their level polish and skill
8. Polypainting is just like any other tool. You can paint your diffuse (albedo) maps with it and just about anything else if that's how you wanted to do it (though I believe Mari is somewhat industry standard in film these days)
Once again, I've never been in the industry so I could be completely off-base. But as far as I know that's not too far off based on what I have read and researched.
3. Can for example Keyshot finish that job instead some more technical and complicated tool?
I'll look more into topology and uv mapping for cinematics and films, hopefully I'll find something decent
For the portfolio just look at alessandro baldasseroni's
For the rest @samnwck is right,
gl !
@Burpee
Thanks both of you this was really helpful!
Also how important is PTEX for movie modelling / texturing?
I've worked in both games and film pipelines and I think I can answer some of your questions.
1. This totally depends on the game but for the part game models are approximations of real things. In other words we exaggerate details to make them easily readable on screen . (this also helps reduce polycount and fit what details we do add into the normal map because for the most part the texture sizes in games don't allow for correctly scaled detailing since there just aren't enough pixels.) UV mapping is the biggest difference though. We use UDIMs (several 0 to 1 space textures laid out in a grid) at sizes of 4K or 8K and mari allows 16K but I haven't seen anyone actually use that in production. Maybe they have over at Sony though. Not sure.
2. There is no max poly count. Although we often have to make a lower resolution version for layout and animation, but this version never gets rendered. It's only there so the animators can work in their scene without everything slowing down to a crawl. That being said, you should always try to be as efficient as possible with your topology and only make things as heavy as you need to create the shape. The lighter your file is the easier it is for you to make edits. Also you'll need to learn how to model with even spaced topology because when open subdiv is applied your mesh uvs tend to stretch like crazy on uv seams. Proper modeling with holding edges will minimize this.
3. In a film production pipeline if you are modeling, you probably wont be rendering or texturing. There are different departments for this because of the insane detail required for any given asset. (remember things need to look photo real!)
That being said, for personal projects go ahead and learn Vray, Arnold or perhaps the best yet because it's now free for non commercial use... Renderman! Of the 3 I personally think Vray is the fastest but also the weakest. It's not a full raytracer. And from my experience it's a little more difficult to get materials to look as good as they do in Arnold or renderman.
4. Those kinds of objects tend to get heavy quickly. Not much you can do about it
5. There are quite a few. You'll have to dig to find them and most of them are out of date because things change so fast in this industry. You'll find some great resources on the site cgfeedback.com. Also check this one out because MPC did an amazing breakdown of Godzilla and Arnold from terminator:
Also sites like this offer some nice behind the scenes videos that will help you gain an understanding of the vfx pipeline.
http://www.cgmeetup.net/home/tag/weta-digital/
6. Nope... not really for production anyway. Hair is done by the hair department which these days is usually Xgen or some proprietary plugin or software. Or Yeti. There's also Ornatrix for 3ds max. You can use zbrush to generate curves and then plug those in as guide curves in any one of these packages though.
7. If you want to create creatures/characters at places like weta then you'll need to have a good chunk of photo realistic sculpts or textured/look dev'd renders. (depending on the position you're applying for.) Here are the portfolios of working professionals. You'll need a portfolio just as good!
https://www.artstation.com/artist/mataerni
http://gionakpil.com/portfolio-gallery/digital-work/
http://www.antropus.com/artblog/?cat=53
http://nicolascollings.com/videogames
8. Poly paint is absolutely valuable. But chances are you wont be texturing anything in zbrush. Sometimes I ended up generating masks in zbrush to pass down the line to the texture department to use in mari.
You'll want to wait until the very end to create topology. In fact often times we wait until the client has approved the model design before we do any retopology. Also, the fine detailing is often done in mari with displacement textures projected from scan data like this:
http://texturing.xyz/pages/guide
Anyway I hope that helps. Feel free to ask any more questions if you like and I'll do my best to answer them.
Wow, this changes my pipeline for 180
Anyway, since uv mapping is most important I might have few questions more. I've heard that uv mapping are separated almost 1 asset per texture sheet so it can give really high resolution. So, first after modeling is done, should I use zbrush for baking displacement map? Is it giving good results? or in production artists are using something else for baking displacement? For textures I've seen that most people use diffuse and spec.. any advice?
Here's probably one of the best workflow / tips / tutorial about texturing in Mari
This one and This one
hf !
It's a very good question, I never thought about that earlier. My best guess is to put few smaller assets on one 4096 so u can balance density.
Thanks! Seems promising.
As for choosing your overall texel desinity. aka how much resolution you need for your asset to appear on screen and not be pixelated. You can figure this out by knowing your final render resolution and then making sure that the section on screen doesn't have less pixels in the texture then it does on the 3d model on screen. For instance... Films are done in 4K resolution so if a full cg character needs a close up then you'll need a 4K or higher patch for just the eye area. In the Legion cinematic the king Varian's face alone I believe was 10 or so 4K udims.
Also Burpee is correct. Mudbox is soo much better at playing nicely with pipelines. Only problem is that it sucks compared to zbrush when it comes to sculpting. My buddy who used to work at Sony said that they would sometimes go through the pain of exporting a character sculpted in zbrush into mudbox and bake displacements in there. But it was a massive time
sink.
And yes more important then wasted uv space is that everything is equal in texel density, in perfect size relation to each other and also oriented in the same direction. This way when you use procedural textures in UV space you wont get different sizes of your detail and everything will stay uniform. (like brushed metal for instance!)
It might be worth noting 2 things when it comes to displacement maps. First: Anything that effects silhouette enough to be a secondary form should not be in the displacement map but rather modeled in. Watch this video to see what I mean, all of gollum's features are present in the lowest resolution of the mesh. Also things like scars on Azog were build into the base mesh too. Displacement is only used for smaller details that won't need to be rigged. Second... because of this I see a lot of studios now painting displacements in mari.
As for Textures and materials, you'll really need to dive into a huge study of physically based materials. The great thing is that pretty much everything translates from game PBR workflow to offline rendering. (except in vray it's still pretty hacky so whatever.) But assuming you're using a modern stochastic ray-tracer like Arnold or Renderman (or even Mantra) then you're good to go. The disney principled shader is awesome and available in the now free Renderman. Your specular is something you wont need to mess with much. I typically think of it in terms of anything too small to put in the model itself. Things like Pores and such. I also leave this value at 1 and adjust the IOR and the gloss/roughness instead since this is a much more accurate workflow.
Have a look at this document to get started:
https://disney-animation.s3.amazonaws.com/library/s2012_pbs_disney_brdf_notes_v2.pdf
Also this set of slides are great, It used to be more artist friendly but recently got super math heavy. But the old stuff is still buried in there and it makes sense if you can kinda sift through it. It's important to understand in some form the physics behind the shaders. Thats how the best 3d artists make things look so real.
http://blog.selfshadow.com/publications/s2015-shading-course/hoffman/s2015_pbs_physics_math_slides.pdf
in general this site is awesome for learning how to texture/look dev assets:
http://blog.selfshadow.com/publications/s2015-shading-course/#course_content
Just check out these renders that use the Disney shader in houdini
http://forums.odforce.net/topic/20682-bsdf-bonanza-ggx-microfacets-disney-brdf-and-more/?page=2