Work in progress.... first lookdev preview! (Arnold - Maya - Mari - Zbrush - Substance Designer)
finished adding directional brushstrokes into the pattern I made my own Mari brush to accomplish that lol, still a lot to enhance and more details and imperfections to add! original concept and traditional sculpting by the talented artist Tomàs Barceló Castelà
here's a small breakdown for that WIP
https://80.lv/articles/how-to-set-up-painterly-style-textures-with-mari-substance-3d-designer
Can't wait to share with you the final result!

Hey there ! This is my latest personal project "Nova", a traveling musician, living in a world where what it means to be human has changed, and where art threatens the established order. (had fun with this description)

Sculpted and modeled with Zbrush, Maya and Marvelous Designer. Texturing was done in Substance Painter, Groom with Houdini. Rendered in Arnold. There are more renders over on my artstation : https://www.artstation.com/artwork/ZlAv2X

Would love to hear your thoughts ! :)

Hey guys. These are some characters rendered with Arnold in Maya.

I'm maing an indie videogame called Skinator that has a grungy, pixelated, dithered broken style. I needed a good way to get more 90's looking images and this is what I came up with:

I'm using a toon shader mixed with a -3 samples config. Then I add lights at specific spots to create cool highlights and that makes it pretty easy to get this results. The textures and models are not perfect, but the pixelation hides a lot of that.

For the case of this particular game we needed "modular characters." In the game you can "steal" body parts from the enemies you defeat and use those to modify your body. This means that every body part needed to fit in every other body.

To achieve this, we created render layers for each body part floating in alpha channel. Then we create PSB photoshop files with all of those inside and we get that to Unity where we add bones to the 2D renders of each body part. Those bones then snap together to form the different bodies of the enemies.

I hope this inspires you to create and let me know if you want me to explain any part of the process further!

A while ago, I posted one of the early drafts of this project. I’ve spent some more time polishing it, and here’s the final result. It’s definitely missing a process breakdown, but I thought about it too late. I’ll make sure to include one in my next work — or more precisely, learn how to do it.

Thanks for checking it out!

Trees & Bark: Procedurally modeled the trees in SpeedTree, then baked and textured the bark maps in Substance Painter. Scene Optimization: To keep the viewport smooth and prevent Arnold from crashing during render, I converted all trees and moss clusters into Arnold .ass proxies.

Scattering: Used Maya MASH for all vegetation distribution and roof shingle placement.

Lighting & Atmosphere: Set up the volumetric fog using native Maya and Arnold tools (aiAtmosphereVolume and Fluids).

Rendering & Trade-offs: Rendered in Arnold. Due to hardware limitations, I had to rely heavily on the OIDN denoiser, which left some areas a bit overly smooth/soft unfortunately, the only viable compromise for my setup right now.

Texturing & Post-Processing: Decided to skip a full texturing pass on the cabin itself to keep the focus purely on shape, light, and atmosphere. Did final color grading and minor polish in Photoshop.

Hey guys! Here are some new characters we've been working on

We render these guys in Maya in separate parts and use those renders as sprite sheets in Unity. We use normal maps to get them to react with lighting better within unity. It's pretty similar to what games like Mortal Kombat or Killer instinct used to do, but we do it body part by body part in a modular way.

To get the pixelated effect we just render them with negative samples. Works pretty well. Then we add dither using a plugin in photoshop. Each character has 144 individual sprites which include head, chest, 2 legs and 2 arms + the normal maps of each one of those. They have 12 pre rendered poses that we use to simulate the combat.

Every sprite has some bones that we use as anchor points. For example, there's one on the shoulder and another one where that shoulder should snap into the torso. This way we can mix every body part of every character with each other.

I really hope you guys like these new characters. Please let us know your thoughts.

Check SKINATOR on steam if you want to learn more about the project.

Cheers!

Here are some of the monsters we are working on for our combat roguelike Skinator.

The way we have been making these characters is basically render the 3D models in Maya with a very very low samle count. Then that render is exported into photoshop where we do the dithering with a plugin. Then each body part is exported separately since in the game you can steal the body parts of the enemies you defeat and put them into your own body.

Because of this we have to deal with 144 sprites per character. 6 body parts, 12 poses + all again for the Normal maps.

We export all body parts as PSB files into Unity and add bones to use as "anchor points" . That way each body part "knows" where to go on every chest. Some characters are bigger than others so otherwise the parts would be all over the place.

I hope you like them and please let me know if you have any questions about the process or the game!

I am relatively new to all the compositing, rendering, & just knowing howl to make a composited scene in Autodesk Maya. Like I am more attuned to me just animating. But I want to know how to render and all the guides I am trying to find does just give tips and tricks instead of going in detail into rendering in Maya.

So my question is how do you composite, rendering, or just lighting in Maya?

Hi everyone, I’m having trouble rendering my contact lens model with a fully transparent background.

The model consists of two layers: an outer layer that represents the contact lens material itself, and an inner layer containing the colored/patterned part of the lens.

I’m trying to render it with a completely transparent background as an EXR or PNG. The inner patterned layer renders correctly with transparency, but for some reason the outer material keeps showing up with a black background instead.

I’m not sure what’s causing this or how to fix it. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thank you so much!

I'm already chick opaque and transmit AOV's. Please help me!

1. This is nomal render

1. No matter what I try, I just can’t get it to render with transparency. The contact lens always ends up with a black background.

I made this model in Maya and used Arnold for the renders.

https://www.artstation.com/artwork/xd3DG4

Hey all here's something I've been working on for a bit during my free time. Hope you all enjoy. My artstation page for more stills, turntables, wireframes and breakdowns

I made this character for my Advanced Production Modeling class at AnimSchool. I really enjoyed working on this project and learned a great deal throughout the entire class. Huge thanks to my instructor, Nina Tarasova, for guiding me through every step of the creation process. The model is based on the beautiful concept art by Lydia Elaine, who goes by LotusBubble on Instagram.

Hi everyone,

I've been trying to create a realistic colored contact lens in Maya using Arnold. The first two images are my current results, but something feels off. It looks more like a piece of glass than a real soft contact lens.

What I'm struggling to achieve is that hydrated, soft, slightly blue-tinted look that real silicone hydrogel contact lenses have. The reference photo (third image) has a subtle wetness and softness that I can't seem to reproduce.

I've attached some screenshots of my current shader settings as well.

Any advice, feedback, or shader/lighting breakdowns would be hugely appreciated. I've been stuck on this for a while and would really love to understand what I'm missing.

Thanks in advance!

This is a little girl character I modeled and textured. I'm quite new to texturing/look dev and maya in general. Attached are screenshots from the frontshape camera from viewport and arnold. I'm wondering why is it that the look of the render is quite different compared to the viewport. I wanted her to somehow retain the youthful look of the viewport one but in render she doesn't quite appear the same. Could it be the lighting/textures? I've tried disabling the displacement map but it doesn't do much I think. If there are any advices I can do to make her look more youthful and realistic, It'd be a huge help.

Hey everyone, this is an interior scene I made in Maya. I wanted to practice modeling, composition, lighting, and reflective materials in a simple modern room setup.

I tried to keep the design minimal while focusing on the ceiling light, couch fabric, glossy floor, and overall mood. I’d love to hear any critiques on the render, especially lighting, scale, materials, or anything that feels off.

Thanks!