How this 3D artist added a realistic touch to his DreamWorks-inspired character using ZBrush and Maya

Shuhang Li is a 3D artist from Chengdu, China. His character ‘Plant Pterosaur’ is inspired by the movie How to Tame Your Dragon. He used ZBrush for the model and Maya for the forest setting, as well as Arnold, Substance 3D Painter, Lightroom Classic and Photoshop.

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Shuhang Li says: This piece was inspired by the film How to Train Your Dragon. I wanted to make it more realistic, so I simulated a real forest environment in Maya, and for the dragon's wings I used self-luminous shaders to match. The body and skin used the Sub-Surface Scattering material effect in Arnold.

For the texture painting, I focused more on emphasising colour variation. There are rich colour changes in the whole green tone, and finally you can unify the colour tone through an HDRI so the painted colour won’t look cluttered. For the final compositing stage, I chose Lightroom and used filter effects to push closer to a photographic style, which better expressed my requirements.

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Check out Shuhang Li’s ArtStation.

This content originally appeared in 3D World magazine.