THE BIG BEAVER

ZBrush • Unreal Engine • Houdini • Substance Painter

Original 2D concept by Ihor Khomsky
Responsible for all aspects.

About the Project

This scene was inspired by a wonderful piece of concept art called "Bobr" by Ihor Khomsky. I wanted to challenge myself by taking a very stylized concept and trying to translate it to 3D while maintaining that style. Doing this piece helped me learn new techniques for achieving a painterly look in Unreal.

Beaver Character

The beaver itself was probably the biggest challenge of the project, it took a lot of tries to figure out the groom and how to make the fur look both fluffy and painterly at the same time. I experimented and ended up taking a bit of a strange approach by combining both a traditional groom as well as a card system for that painterly breakup along the body.

Groom System

Kuwahara Filtering

Getting the individual pieces to look painterly was one hurdle in itself, but getting the whole scene to be cohesively 'painted' was another challenge. I ended up researching and stumbling upon the Kuwahara filter. It smooths the image out and blurs the edges together, and gives things that blobby, painterly look I was hoping for.

Through a few tutorials I was able to engineer a post process material that would apply that to the whole render, and allow me to adjust the size and intensity of the effect. This helped integrate the more traditionally rendered elements in the scene with the painted cards for a more cohesive look.