How to model a character for animation

05. Lighting process in Arnold is very straight forward as everything reacts in a very physic way to the lights. Using shaders
For the shaders, I tweak all the assets in a neutral environment with the same HDR for all the props in order to be able to combine them at the end and having them react all the same way to the light. The project took a year to create as Jean-Michel modelled the entire figure for animation as well as paying attention to the finer details. I soon realised it was too much and that it was slowing me down, not much for the rendering but more for the iterations I was able to do while painting, exporting both my textures and displacement maps in three steps was taking far too much time. «It provided me with a base to start modelling in ZBrush while staying very close from the original. [The result] still requires quite a lot of cleaning and detailing to be usable for rendering.»
01. 07. I pose the character, touch up the pose for some of the elements in ZBrush then the scene is ready for the final lighting and rendering! Displacement maps
Once your uvs are done, you can start to export all your displacement maps once you details have been re-projected. You could use 3dCoat or topogun as well. I comb one patch at the time in order to have more control. 3D scanning with photogrammetry helps quite a lot but doesn’t provide a complete solution. The UV stage
After the retopology has been finished, you have to open proper uvs. The concept was devised on paper by Camille and then Jean-Michel realised it in 3D, from modelling to compositing. In the case of my character I had to separate the nose from the rest of the face in a disgraceful uv cut around it otherwise the amount of stretch would have decrease a lot the effective resolution I would have been able to use for it. 06. 04. First I wanted to have a lot of details so I used 3 UV patches for the head with each 8k maps. You can do it in zbrush or benefit from the new modeling tools in maya. It is great as I can make iterations very fast in order to find the best match for the drawing in 3d. Even the hair is having the same light setup which didn’t always used to be the case with other rendering engines. After many iterations I or the team settle on one drawing in particular and I start to model. 02. I paint different layers of details in ZBrush and combine them in Photoshop or nuke based on the projects. Artist Jean-Michel Bihorel shared the character design of Georges Henri de la Poudrière with fellow artist Camille Campion. Whereas in Zbrush it move fast and it is easier to stay objective on your own work. Personally I use some exr 32 bit float maps in order to keep consistent settings across the scenes and have the same result than in Zbrush without having to play with numbers. Here is the drawing from Camille Campion we finally settled on after many versions. I use Advance Skeleton for that. Retopology
Once the model is approved you just need to do a good topology for the character. After that, a little bit of touch up in compositing and the picture is finished! Combing hair
Combing the hair was a quite time consuming process. So I switched back to one uv patch at the end. It is a great free plugin for maya in order to speed up tremendously the time required to do a rig. ZBrush concept
I started the model in ZBrush in order to move freely without the need for a topology.