Hi my name is James Ku, I'm one of the character leads at Blur Studio. Recently Paul and Jaime from Pixologic stopped by Blur and gave a presentation to show us some cool new ways to work in Zbrush. They were also kind enough to stay for quite a bit afterwards and answer questions that we had. We were able to show them some of the stuff we were working on and they asked if the character team at Blur could share some of our work on the forums and talk about how Zbrush is used in the Blur pipeline.
We had recently completed a game cinematic for Ubisoft's upcoming title Farcry 3.
I thought that this project was a great one to share. I thought the characters were very compelling and had some great personality to them. Our client, Ubisoft, was kind enough to grant us permission to show some art from that cinematic. Thanks Ubisoft, we hope to work with you again in the future!
On this project the Blur character artists were: Mathieu Aerni
Alessandro Baldasseroni
Nicolas Collings
Francisco Cortina
Chris Grim
Alex Litchenko
and myself
I thought that the team did a great job and I feel very fortunate and humble to be able to work with such great artists everyday at Blur.
Zbrush is a critical part of our character pipeline at Blur. It is the preferred sculpting tool of all our character artists. In our pipeline we create the poly model first so that the rigging team can start working on the model and hand it off to animation asap. While the rigging team is working on an early version of the character and the animators have started their work, the character artists are sculpting, detailing and texturing the character.
This is where Zbrush comes in. I know there are many options for sculpting programs nowadays, but everyone here prefers Zbrush because we love the feel of the brushes and the richness of the tool set. For example UV Master is a tool that most of us use in our uv'ing process.
The ultimate results of our sculpting are displacement maps that we generate from Zbrush. We then create all the textures and shaders. Finally we do our character renders for approval in Vray. When the character is complete and the client has approved the character, it is sent back to the rigging department where they update their rigs with the final character geometry and pass that on to animation.
Zbrush is also part of our process for creating facial morph targets / shapes. We use the move topology brush and we also use the masking and blur mask features to isolate certain shapes that need to gradually fade off.
Anyhow I think this post is already getting way too long. :)
I want to thank Ubisoft again for being such a great client and for the privilege of being a part of an exciting project like Farcry 3. Thanks to Paul and Jaime at Pixologic for stopping by Blur over the years I've been here and always willing to help us. And finally thanks to the character team here at Blur - you guys inspire me everyday.
Thanks for checking out this post, I hope you enjoyed the Farcry 3 cinematic.
If you have any questions the team and I will try to answer them as best as we can.
-J
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Below are some of the sample character images that we sent to Ubisoft for approval during the various work in progress stages of the character creation process.
08-31-12
kuman
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Here are some production stills from the cinematic. All the departments at Blur were part of the process to create the cinematic these images come from.
08-31-12
kuman
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more
08-31-12
Mahlikus The Black
As always, AWESOME!
08-31-12
eklettica
questions for James ku :
-How did you figure out how to post on ZbrushCentral ?
-What kind of difficulties did you experience in the process?
Thanks,
Ale
08-31-12
Webhead
Beautiful work! I would expect no less from Blur.
08-31-12
nielot007
Hello
of course great work guys !!
only one crit from me is that i dont like Vaas's face specially in cinemaric here on screens looks nice ;) and bald head its preety cool (much better than with hairs )
Few questions:
-why clay heads are blured ?( i know Blur studio but.... hehe)
-Did you have one topology for male bodies and for female bodies ?
and what about heads ? all heads had different topology ?
-Could you show some wires ? specially head wires ? I'll be really grateful :)
-How many polygons did you have on one heads ?
-Did you make rig setup for heads or only blendshapes/morphs ? or maybe you mixed it and using blendshapes and facial rig ( if i say facial rig i mean some simple rig nothing fancy)
-How long did you have on one character (for model(hp, zbrush etc.) and with texture) ?
-One modeler made full character (model and textures) or some modelers made only model without textures ?
-Where you did hairs ? (hairfarm, ornatrix...etc.)
ps. eklettica--> I would love to see some new stuff from you !!
ps2. sorry for my english :o
08-31-12
Etcher
Thanks so much for taking the time to post this -> great sculpts / texturing (beautiful cloth!!!):cool::tu::tu::tu::tu::tu:
08-31-12
Santis
This is just outstanding work guys!
Top row, no doubt. If you blur (no pun intended) your vision while watching, there's really not much of a hint that it's CG! :tu:
08-31-12
slocik
Great works man.
Only question, whats wrong with Vaas head in the final head renders ? His scull is collapsed, while it looks normal in the full body shoots. You shouldnt have cheek bones so much wider than rest of his scull. Did someoen mess up or was it intentional ?
08-31-12
ncollings
slocik: In the full shot it's the blur version before the client's feedback. They wanted specifically that head shape for some reason.
08-31-12
slocik
Strange, those kinds of design chooses push models way too much into the uncanny valley, which i doubt anybody likes ;f
08-31-12
siamak_cgm
great stuff here! cool job!
08-31-12
eklettica
Quote:
Originally Posted by nielot007
Hello
of course great work guys !!
only one crit from me is that i dont like Vaas's face specially in cinemaric here on screens looks nice ;) and bald head its preety cool (much better than with hairs )
Few questions:
-why clay heads are blured ?( i know Blur studio but.... hehe)
Probably because those heads were just placeholders and not close to the final ones.
-Did you have one topology for male bodies and for female bodies ?
yes, generally speaking ,pretty much
and what about heads ? all heads had different topology ?
we tend to use one specific topology that we refined along these years when it comes to human characters, for creatures it might differ a little according to the design.
-Could you show some wires ? specially head wires ? I'll be really grateful :)
I don`t have any recent one at hand but you can browse my website and there are plenty of wireframes, heads included. They might not be the latest ones but they`re not that far in terms of topology/density.
-How many polygons did you have on one heads ?
Not really sure...maybe a little less than 20.000 tris?
-Did you make rig setup for heads or only blendshapes/morphs ? or maybe you mixed it and using blendshapes and facial rig ( if i say facial rig i mean some simple rig nothing fancy)
-How long did you have on one character (for model(hp, zbrush etc.) and with texture) ?
Depends on the complexity of the character, but nowadays as an average it takes around 30 days for a main character including modeling (zbrush included) , texturing and shading.
-One modeler made full character (model and textures) or some modelers made only model without textures ?
As a general rule each modeler takes care of a given character in all the production aspects which almost always includes both modeling and texturing/surfacing
-Where you did hairs ? (hairfarm, ornatrix...etc.)
We are using ornatrix + vray, lately
ps. eklettica--> I would love to see some new stuff from you !!
Me too :)....soon hopefully :)
ps2. sorry for my english :o
08-31-12
cascardi
Just awesome!! Now I have a reference, a new quality level to (try to) reach!! Thanks for sharing!:tu::tu::tu:
08-31-12
danpants
Amazing! Whenever I start a new character I look at the quality that Blur Studio artists produce and try to reach that professionalism. Great job!
08-31-12
davidness
Wow too good!
09-01-12
sculptor.zb
WOW!! SUPERB WORK!! :tu: :)
09-01-12
SolidSnakexxx
Way cool.. Love the characters from the game. Amazing quality! :tu:
09-01-12
rudymassar
Thanks for sharing, great shots. You guys did an awesome job... as always.
09-01-12
OpticSilver
Wow, i am blown away ! fantastic work!
09-01-12
Rikk The Gaijin
Stunning work Alessandro, did you make all those characters?
09-01-12
sandpiper
Duuuude. These characters look amazing! The life in the faces with the asymmetry and imperfections is really top notch. The clothing and accessories work is flawless too. Congrats on a fine piece of work!!
I'd love to be part of something like this in my future! ;)
Jesse
09-01-12
rodia
Incredible work...you have some kind of dream team in your character artist deparment...keep making this kind of post when possible!!
cheers!
09-01-12
Freewaldo
Good, good work guys, but make sure the review some of the anatomy of nostril on certain character.
i mean do you have 2 holes floating like that ... first image ...Bhahahahaha !!!
09-01-12
sam10bw
Outstanding, the work that comes out of Blur is one of the reasons I aspire to be a character artist. I also have a few questions that I would like to ask too. It doesn't really matter who answers them, thanks.
1. What is the typical poly count for the base mesh of a character before it goes into Zbrush vs. the final character after retopology?
2. What are some of the brush that the character artist use on their characters?
3. And this is one that I've been curious about when dealing with video game characters vs. cinematic. Is the whole body used once the body is completed? Meaning do you get rid of the torso if the character has a shirt or the legs if they have pants?
09-01-12
weirdy
How did you do the pore texture?
1. AMAZING! Stunning work!
2. How do you do the skin pore texture?
Thanks for sharing!
09-02-12
qoyun
Awesome :tu:
09-02-12
ido
Beautiful models,
You are inspiring artists!
09-02-12
3mm
nice new models From Blur Artists!Always great to see new Works From you guys!:tu:
09-02-12
jack999
Totally mind blowing. I want to play
09-03-12
sovietsteel
The faces look phenomenal, although to me they look a tad unrealistic. You could improve them by giving them a bit more asymmetry and tertiary form. A few subtle tweaks could make them look very realistic.
Great work, and please post more. I'd love to get to this skill level someday.
09-03-12
kuman
thanks and questions
hey guys,
thanks for all your kind words. i'm really glad you liked our work and i know the other guys were really happy that we got such a nice response. :)
in the future, if the client allows it, we will try to share our character sample stills more often.
thanks again,
-j
there were a few questions i'll try to answer:
@nielot007
ale answered most of your other questions but you asked -Did you make rig setup for heads or only blendshapes/morphs ? or maybe you mixed it and using blendshapes and facial rig ( if i say facial rig i mean some simple rig nothing fancy)
we have a few ways to do facial animation, on this show we used morph targets / facial shapes. i'm not a rigger but i believe that they mix a pretty fancy facial rig with our morph targets. for example the animator can dial in the eye brow up shape for surprise but they also have controls to maybe exaggerate it further or tweak its position.
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@sam10bw
1. What is the typical poly count for the base mesh of a character before it goes into Zbrush vs. the final character after retopology?
we generally avoid retopologization if possible. it's slow and our schedules are tight and we avoid it if possible. usually we try to have pretty decent topology before we zbrush. having this decent topo early also lets us pass it off to rigging and animation early. poly counts aren't really relevant for us, i guess just an amount that is reasonable, say less than 500k usually.
2. What are some of the brush that the character artist use on their characters?
as far as i know we don't use anything fancy - clay tubes, standard, move/move topo, inflate, and some dam standard.
occasionally we have to do a creature and we might use the fancy scale brushes etc. we use a bunch of alphas most of which you can download off zbrush site. in general i don't think we are doing anything too fancy in zb.
3. And this is one that I've been curious about when dealing with video game characters vs. cinematic. Is the whole body used once the body is completed? Meaning do you get rid of the torso if the character has a shirt or the legs if they have pants? most of our hero characters will get cloth simulation - so the cloth department often asks us to put in an under body that they can use to sim with. this under body doesn't need to be fancy but it should have good proportions that fit the character. we are also very careful about mesh penetrations on things that will be sim'ed. it's just another one of those things where a character that will be animated and in production has a lot more rules and technical limits than one that maybe you will just do a single render with.
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@ weidry
1. AMAZING! Stunning work!
thanks we apreciate you saying :)
2. How do you do the skin pore texture?
for realistic faces we will often project photos for textures from 3d.sk or photos that we took from a model.
i prefer to use mari to do the projections, from there we get our texture base that we massage and modify to something we can use in the vray skin shader. we also derive other maps for things like reflection and gloss. long story short we actually texture heads first then sculpt. we then sculpt very carefully to match the texture so we get parity between the color maps and displacement maps.
09-03-12
weirdy
Thanks for the insight! Interesting that you use Mari. I saw a demo of it at Gnomon which was cool, but it seemed sluggish even on a hyped up machine. But the end result is amazing to say the least!
09-04-12
Dride
No Retop????
You say you avoid retop as it slows the process down. So for organic objects, especially the heads do you box model and then use zbrush's move/move topo brushes? As I have seen a couple of gnomon videos with guys that have worked at Blur (Ian Joyner and Sze Jones) and they have used a combo of retop (3DS Max graphite tools) and zbrush move brush on heads and other objects of characters etc. Has that all changed now then?
Cheers.
09-04-12
samuraiwu
Fantastic!:tu::tu::tu::tu::tu:
09-04-12
harapuzo
Simply amazing! your team did a first rate job on this cinematique. I'm really impressed, but Blur puts out solid art all the time.
09-05-12
wangpeng
ewewe
wowowowowowowowowowowwowowow
09-05-12
tez
Quote:
Originally Posted by Dride
You say you avoid retop as it slows the process down. So for organic objects, especially the heads do you box model and then use zbrush's move/move topo brushes? As I have seen a couple of gnomon videos with guys that have worked at Blur (Ian Joyner and Sze Jones) and they have used a combo of retop (3DS Max graphite tools) and zbrush move brush on heads and other objects of characters etc. Has that all changed now then?
Cheers.
Personly I avoid retopo also, as by the time iv worked out my retopo, and done it, I could have built a new mesh from scratch with good topo to begin with. Remember you can re-use parts like heads, hands, feet, or tweak a character you have done already. This is how I work, but others may choose different ways.