NAUSICAA
OF THE VALLEY OF THE WIND
This project was my first exploration into the worlds of grooming and character texturing. It's inspired by one of my favorite films, Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind by Hayao Miyazaki.
LOOK DEVELOPMENT
In this project, I focused on stylization with PBR textures. I wanted the result to feel like a semi-realistic take on a feature film, so I spent a lot of time dialing in the Look of both characters.
I found that Nausicaa's groom needed more shape control in the viewport, so I built a tool that created guides out of geometry in Houdini, and then attached those guides to a Yeti groom. Teto's groom was done fully in Houdini, combining elements of a fox, a squirrel, and a cat.
Nausicaa's Textures
This was my first venture into Mari, which I used to texture Nausicaa's and Teto's skin, before taking the textures into Substance Painter for procedural detail. The displacement was built using XYZ textures.
The paint, blood, and bruising were all added in Substance designer, using anchor points to drive the realistic buildup.
Substance Designer
The final cloth required complex shading, so I set up a shader using masks to dial in fresnel in the viewport, combining multiple silks.
All of the cloth was done in Substance Designer. I made many variations before finding the right amount of complexity, so some of the materials weren't used in the final product.
Teto's Houdini Groom
Teto's groom was done procedurally in Houdini. This was my first creature and it was a learning process, but the results matched my expectations.
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