Troll

The picture was made as a school project this spring at

Nackademin Digital Graphics in Stockholm. It was not only
our fist individual project but also the first where we could
choose subject ourselves. So i decided to do something fun,
a troll. At this time i had only studied 3d for about ten months
so there was heaps of stuff i didn’t know. I think more than
half of the time spent on the project was research, and of
course a lot of trial and error.

Figure 1. Sketch
Figure 2. Mesh
Figure 3. Mud box
The concept
For a while now I have been doing illustrations for a sort of Swedish version
of dungeons and dragons, called Drakar och Demoner Trudvang. A game
much more influenced by Nordic folklore and fairy tales. One of the big dif-
ferences from other fantasy worlds is that this one doesn’t have the clas-
sic orc, instead there is numbers of strange and fun troll species. When
I did this sketch I got inspiration from other illustrations made for this
game, especially some from the artist Alvaro Tapia, a true master of draw-
ing trolls. And of course from the old paintings made by the great Swedish
fairy tale illustrator John Bauer. I didn’t put very much time into the sketch-
es (as you can see), just enough to have something to start from. I know
now, that i should have given them some more work, it saves you time in
the end and it would have been nice to have something better to show you
guys. As you may notice, at this time I still thought I would have the time
to make a hat, hair and beard. It turned out to be a bit optimistic.
Low Poly mesh
Even though I wanted to have nice topology I knew I didn’t have to make the
edge loops perfect since the final product would be an image without any
need of blend shapes or other deformation. There are no big secrets in this
part. I just tried to get loops that didn’t go to much on the diagonal and that
concentrated the amount geometry to where it was needed. I was not trying
to hard to create the perfect mesh from the beginning, it usually works out
when you start to sculpt the shapes and see what kind of loop you need. Af-
ter that, I began solving all the problems that I had created, adding and shift-
ing loops to make the mesh as clean as necessary. I finally ended up with
something that was good enough for the next step, the fine sculpting.
www.gomotionmag.com
TROLL
Figure 4. Testrenders
Figure 5. Texture
Mudbox scupting
I had a quite strong vision of how I wanted it too look and that always makes
the work a lot easier. I just tried to create a fairly realistic looking creature,
where you can sense the thick skin and the skull underneath. Like always
I finished all the big shapes in the first levels before even starting to look at
details. Something that can be applied to almost every creative work. And
though I tried to achieve some level of anatomical realism I knew somethings
were not hundred percent correct, like the corner of his mouth sticking out
and that he got a fat lower lip even though he is smiling widely. But i chose
to keep them anyway, since this was for a picture only I could get away with
stuff that might have looked ridiculous on a animated creature. Our teacher
often tells us you are never better than your reference material, its true. I
used some reference material for the wrinkles and other details, pictures of
old smiling people with thick leather like skin. Two tools that really help you
give the wrinkles the right feel is the pinch and bulge tool. When I considered
myself finished with the sculpt i extracted a 32bit map for the displacement.
And also a 8 bit bump map from the last level to help me create the fine de-
tails without having to tessellate the mesh as much in Mentalray. Although
the bump map was 8bit I figured out that I got more control if I baked It as a
32 bit to later turn it into a 8bit in Photoshop. Like many other things i don’t
know if its the right way to do it, but it works for me.
Texturing
I started off painting a simple base color, when I got that right I proceeded
adding texture. The ones I used was two different rock textures that I liked,
and an adjusted version of my displacement map. Although it dosen`t
sound like it, this was one of the steps that took the most time, trying dif-
ferent methods in photoshop and creating infinite numbers of testrenders,
before I got what I wanted.
Shading
For the shading i used the Mental ray Subsurface scattering shader,fast-
simple for the teeth and gum, and Fast-skin for the head. I think I could have
managed with only the fast-simple one though. A lot of tutorials has already
been made in this subject so I wont go into details.
One thing worth saying is, before you start to tweak the other parameters
make sure you get the shader as good as possible by only adjusting the
scale. I have seen many different ways of using the fast-skin shader, some
59
CHARACTER ANIMATION

Figure 9. Color test

where you use different textures for the different layers of the skin. What I
ended up doing was just having one texture plugged into the over all color,
only using colors in the underlying layers. I think it worked out nice, no need
Figure 6. Teeth texture to make it more complicated than necessary.

Additional details
Even though I didn’t have the time to do the hair, hat and other props I still
wanted something that turned the troll into a fairy tale character instead
of just an ordinary beast. I figured the earring would do the job and still
not be to complicated. After some studies of old viking and Celtic jewelry
I pretty much designed it in Maya and Mudbox. I am quite happy with how
it turned out after adding a Photoshop generated bump map and a simple
color and specular texturing. This test render is done with a point light in
Maya software.

Final rendering
At this point I didn’t have much time left. I tried with some more advanced
lighting but I didn’t have time to make it work nicely. I finally used a more
simple lighting, similar to what i used in the test renders. I simulated a
simple diffuse light from above with three slight blueish directional lights
for a night sky and one slightly from underneath with more yellow tones,
to look as it came from a fireplace or a flashlight.
Figure 7. Teeth
Photoshop post
The background was done really fast the night before deadline. I used
pieces of photos and paintings, corrected the colors and painted away
the seams just enough so it wouldn’t be noticeable when I blurred it. And
after some fake depth of field with the blur tool it was pretty much done.
After deadline I still had some thoughts about creating hair, and I did try,
but to get it the way I wanted demanded too much work. I was already
involved in too many other projects.

by Jonas Persson

Figure 8. Gum network Figure 10. Troll ring Figure 11. Occlution

60 www.gomotionmag.com