Breakdown: Stylized 3D Model of Odin
Thales Simonato, a 3D character artist with credits at Illumination Mac Guff, breaks down his stylized Odin model. He covers his sculpting approach in ZBrush (starting from scratch with no base mesh), forward-planning the beard as open-ended tubes for the Ahoge grooming tool, using Maya for flyaway strands and repeating plate geometry, Houdini for the braid base mesh, and XGen for fur on the crows and cape. The texturing workflow involves a BasicShader validation pass, Photoshop color exploration with ID passes, and Substance 3D Painter for final layering. Lighting used Arnold with 15 lights and a multi-light EXR workflow for post-production tuning. Key takeaways: design fundamentals outweigh technical skill, and modeling should anticipate the downstream tools you plan to use.