The Making of 'Smile' with Alex Alvarez

This "making of" demonstration and lecture began with the decision to create a new still image and record the entire process. Using Maya, UVlayout, ZBrush and Photoshop, "Smile" was created in ten hours over the course of a couple evenings. Observe and listen as Alex shares his workflow, thought process and techniques, covering everything from creating a base mesh and laying out UVs to creating a final comp in Photoshop.

Modeling a Base Mesh from a Sketch  

Laying out UVs  

Detailing in ZBrush  

Lighting  

Layered Mental Ray skin shader  

Creating a print res image  

Displacement Maps