Skin Texturing And Shading In Mari And Arnold For Production

When you first start out, the process of painting and shading skin in CG can be a daunting undertaking, riddled with both technical and artistical challenges.

This course will take you through the entire process from A to Z, teaching you a production proven workflow for creating skin textures and shaders used by professional vfx artists in studios all over world. We will delve deep into both the technical aspects of the workflow, as well as the creative thought process behind our decisions.

This workflow for texture painting is one that I have personally used on anything from small local commercials to Hollywood blockbuster feature films.

My hope for this course is to leave you with a thorough understanding of how to paint and shade CG skin for any type of character, as well as the confidence to undertake whatever personal or professional project you wish going forward as a character artist.

Main Topics

• Introduction to Mari's powerful painting tools and node graph
• Using skin scan textures to projection paint detailed skin displacement and color maps
• Hand painting control and utility masks in Mari for added shader complexity
• Whiteboard lessons explaining file formats, displacement technicalities and the UDIM workflow
• Building a complex node based skin shader in Arnold from scratch

While I do try to cover every part of the tools and techniques we use throughout