Art Department - Spring 2025 - Digital Art - Ronaldo Kiel
ARTD 2823 - Digital Clay - 3D Sculpting and Modeling
Code: 36499 Section: TQ2L - T 02:15 - 05:55PM - 5102 BH - Jan 28 to May 20, 2025
Course Description Class Projects Schedule Important Dates Contact Index
The four projects are:
Project 1: Sculpt from your imagination - 3D sketches to create 2D Concept Art
Starting from one of the default Mud Box meshes, sculpt some ideas for a 3D asset. The default meshes provided inside Mud Box are: Bull, Car, Cube, Human Body, Basic Head, Plane, Sphere, etc. You can also model the basic forms in Maya and use the "send to Mud Box" command. The correct placement of edge loops will help the sculpting process.
For example: You could model a character head from a Mud Box Sphere. But it might be easier to do it using the Mud Box Basic Head mesh or a basic model you create in Maya. If you plan to use Blender you should be aware of the difficult task of designing workflows that are reliable.
You should experiment with a pressure sensitive pen. I have been using an old iPad connected via USB-C running Yam Pad. I hope to have Wacom tablets available for studio work in 5102. You can also bring yours. We might have to ask Mitch for help to set up.
Assets used in animations or game production begins with “sculpts” like yours.
The last step on this project is to create a few art boards from your sculpts for class presentation. Please make these 2D sketches as interesting as possible with lots of Procreate or Photoshop or what ever you are comfortable working with.
Your Art Boards should present your Concept Art as appealing and informative as possible.
You will be the artist crafting the 3D asset.
The second, third and fourth projects will focus on creation and production of 3D assets.
Please upload your work as PNGs or JPEGs to the Assignments page of the Black Board class site.
There are many Mud Box videos on YouTube. Take a look at the link below if you have time.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wxTt8xjsFgg
https://www.artstation.com/artwork/dy8681
Project2: Your Concept Art Used in Production - Turn Table from Mud Box - "Second Sculpt"
In Mud Box, work from your art boards, you can also continue to sculpt on the model that you use to create the concept art. Add detail like you did on your Concept Art boards. Or create a new "sculpt". This is the model that you will retopologize on Project3.
In Mud Box: Render-> Create Turntable Movie Resolution 1280x720
File Format: QuickTime
All other default settings are fine. Your assignment is to upload one Turn Table Animation. Use the instructions on the Black Board assignments page. Students’ work will be published from the Blackboard web site of the class on to the Yuja streaming platform.
Project3: Retopology - UV maps - Vertex Color - Maya Turntable
The longest and more complex part of your course starts here. You will model a low-res poly of your asset in Maya, create UVs and assign vertex color (for Adobe Substance Painter).
Step by step pipeline:
You will build a mesh using polygons with four sides and placing edge loops strategically to facilitate texture mapping, sub-division and deformation (if the asset will be used in animation).
For example: If you sculpted a creature in Mud Box. Your model will have a very dense mesh tessellated in triangles and no usable UV map.
For production you will need a low-res mesh. The use of displacement maps and normal maps is a very effective way of adding detail to the low-res mesh. And you will need to create those in Project 4.
The workflow I propose in this class will continue in Mud box and Maya. We will retopologize the mesh using the Maya Quad Draw tool. You can start Project 3 from Mud Box and use the "send to Maya" command: as a new scene.
You can also export the Mud Box sculpt as a FBX file. Don't forget to "Set" your Maya Project and from now on make sure you use the file directory that Maya created.
The use of the Quad Draw Tool - Retopologize
Retopology is the process of simplifying the topology of a mesh to make it cleaner and easier to work with. By creating edge loops that follow the general shapes of your sculpt, you will make the texturing more precise and deformations, in case of animation, possible.
Also in Maya, you should address all other modeling details. If you are working with a head: eyes, teeth, tongue and any clothing if necessary.
It is important to organize all the geometry, combining and naming all parts. In the example files (on top of the Black Board page). I included images of the UV layout and the Vertex Color allocation.
The next step is the UV layout. The UV layout should include all the model parts. You can use several UV tiles but the workflow will be more complex.
The Maya Materials (sometimes also called Shaders) at this point, are not important. But the UV layout is necessary to finish Project3.
You should only UV map your model after all modeling is done. And DO NOT CHANGE THE MODEL after you finish the UVs. Delete all history of the Maya file and Freeze Transformations.
The creation of UVs, Vertex Color, the discrete parts of the model and Maya Shaders will all influence the workflow in Substance Painter. I suggest that you use "vertex color" from Maya and just one or two Maya Shaders. It requires experience and organization to make choices in this part of the process and it will affect Substance Painter work.
This is it. Project 3 will be complete with a Turn Table animation from Maya of the low-res mesh. It is a good time to set a “sky dome” and test a few image base light options in your Arnold renders.
An example of the Turn Table animation is included in the sample files on the Black Board page.
Project3 Play List: Link to videos
There are 7 videos on the Project 3 play list. The total duration of all clips is 47 minutes.
02_2823_Project3_retopologize_Head.mov
03_2823_Project3_retopologize_Head_Eyelids.mov
04_2823_Project3_Eye.mov
05_2823_Project3_Inside_Mouth.mov
06_2823_Project_UV_Layout.mov
07_2823_Project3_Vertex_Color.mov
08_2823_Project3_Maya_Turntable.mov
Project4: Geometry maps - Physical Based Rendering
Maya, MudBox and Substance Painter Work
This is the last phase of your Asset creation.
We will explore the development of geometry maps and textures using Mud Box and Substance Painter. We also will employ Physical Base Renderings workflows (PBR).
The work on this project will utilize many software tools. Besides Mud Box, Maya and Substance Painter we will experiment with Arnold, the Maya rendering engine that we have access to in the computer studios.
Adobe Substance Painter has been providing new work-flows, that makes the "Photoshop" methods look a bit basic. But the integration between "Substance" and the "Arnold" renderer in "Maya" is not straight forward.
We will explore the use of .usdx files to create assets that can be distributed for use in 3D platforms like the Augmented Reality (AR).
USD - Universal Scene Description is a software architecture developed by Pixar and has been integrated unto Maya. Apple is using the usdx format to distribute 3D assets including textures and material properties that behave interactively.
We will build the shaders that will determine the look of your character. Many of the decisions here are “art direction” decisions. You can aim for a more realistic look using subsurface scattering and bump or normal maps or you can develop an "illustration look" using hand painted textures and Toon Shaders.
Not only the color maps (textures) will be created in this part of the process, also geometry maps will be baked.
The process of generating geometry specific maps that will aid the texture creation like curvature and thickness maps is called "baking".
Geometry maps can be calculated from one single mesh or comparing the low and the hi density meshes. Maps like Displacement (also called Hight Map) and Normal have to be calculated comparing one low-res model and one hi-res model sharing the same UVs.
Your low-res model with UVs was done in Project3. Now we need to create the hi-res.
Steps to finish your asset:
1. “Send to Mud Box" the low-res mesh:
You can work from your Maya file. Make a copy of the file and name it. The easiest way to start is to use the "send to Mud Box" command. But before you do that "Freeze Transformations" and "Delete all History".
2. Increase the mesh density and add sculpt layers: In Mud Box, increase the resolution of the mesh. On the Mesh menu>"Add New Subdivision Level" and sculpt the detail in a new layer.
3. Sculpt all the detail: This will be the hi-res mesh.
4. Extract the displacement map from Mud Box (bake displacement): The "Extract Texture Map Operation" is under the UV&Maps menu.
You can: Transfer Paint Layers or create Ambient Occlusion Map, Displacement Map or Normal Map in Mud Box. Let's just calculate the displacement.
You have the low-res mesh that came from Maya. The hi-res sculpt that you just finished sculpting and both share the same UVs. In Mud Box the baking of the displacement map is called “map extraction”. It is most often a 16 or 32 bit floating point image. We can use a TIFF file format.
There is a 9 min video of how to do this here: https://brooklyn-cuny.yuja.com/V/Video?v=11287590&node=50217630&a=169344608
5. Start to build your Shader in Maya: The displacement map applied to the low-res mesh in Maya should look quite close to your detailed hi-res sculpt (and you do not need geometry with millions of triangles).
After you extract the displacement map. You can test it in Maya, This will be the start of your Maya Shaders.
6. It is time to work on the texture set in Substance Painter: We will bake the more geometry maps and generate the Texture Set for your asset.
You can work from one mesh but if you want to calculate some of your bakes comparing 2 meshes like we did in Mud Box, you will need two FBX files. One with the hi-res from Mud Box and one with the low res mesh from Maya.
Exporting from Maya the FBX requires that the "File specific options" under Geometry don't have the Smooth Mesh option checked. UNCHECK IT if it on.
Substance Painter will import Maya Materials (Shaders) as Texture Sets. I recommend that you use only one Material in Maya to simplify the process.
The vertex color from Maya will become color IDs during the baking and the model parts can be used to isolate into geometry masks to help on the texture creation.
The layer system in Substance Painter looks very similar to Photoshop but it has much more functionality and it is more complex to work with.
Some useful details of Substance Painter workflows will be discussed in class.
Here there is a video about setting up the Substance Painter work:https://brooklyn-cuny.yuja.com/V/Video?v=11287593&node=50217633&a=44019200
Before you can texture your asset you will have to bake the geometry maps. Here is a 6 min. video about baking: https://brooklyn-cuny.yuja.com/V/Video?v=11287595&node=50217635&a=19787329
After you finish texturing. Export all maps at the desired resolution and build the Shader in Maya.
Here is a 3 min video on exporting textures:
https://brooklyn-cuny.yuja.com/V/Video?v=11287601&node=50217655&a=28591680
7. Finalize project 4 in Maya with Shaders and the Turn Table rendering:
The last step is to render one Turn Table Animation from Maya of your asset now with all textures and upload your work on the Assignments page. The building of the shader in Maya is in this 4min video:
https://brooklyn-cuny.yuja.com/V/Video?v=11287604&node=50217658&a=20904528
You can also create a USBX file to pack your asset in one single file for distribution.
NOTE: Before you commit yourself to a long rendering make sure you have already done as many test renderings as necessary to create your final animation.
Project4 Play List: Link to videos
There are 7 videos on the Project 4 play list. The total duration of all clips is 41 minutes.
09_2823_Project4_MudBox_Displacement.mov
10_2823_Project4_Prep_for_Subs.mov
11_2823_Project4_Subs_Bake.mov
12_2823_Project4_Subs_Layers.mov
13_2823_Project4_Subs_Export.mov
14_2823_Project4_Maya_Turn_Table.mov
15_2823_Project4_Maya_Subs_Connection.mov
The play list for this class is also on NJVID: https://www.illumira.net/showcollection.php?pid=njcore:204323