How I made an Orc like BLIZZARD 

Hey, I am a 3D Environment Artists with 6 years pro experience under my belt I can say that this video, young fellas, is GOLD. Especially for those starting you can see many of the steps necessary in the 3D world. This video and the quality of information is giving it is just amazing it is for free. What a beautiful era we are living. Thanks J HIll. Keep it up!!

and that's how Blizzard found their newest artist

Holy Balls, I love when a piece makes me stop, take a deep breath and prepare myself to experience the art. Great job! This has been a massive help when understanding workflow thanks!

Looks great dude! Theres a few things you mentioned in the groom section that I could give some tips on :) . - "Xgen doesn't support udims" is quite a common misconception. Xgen actually doesn't care about udims since it uses ptex for its maps (Guides use UVs, but udims are fine). The actual issue is the maya paint tool not supporting udims, if you are happy to leave maya a commonly recommended workflow is to just paint ptex data directly in mudbox! . - when your region map was not parting properly for the ear it could be a few things. The region mask looked like it was set to 1 so what I recommend is to have your guides visible while painting regions maps with the solid brush alpha and pen pressure turned off in the tool settings. The reason to have guides visible is just so you know for sure that you have correctly painted every guide in the region. Missing just one guide that is on a different side of the parting makes the region map basically useless. . - "I think they split grooms like this in production" We do split grooms all the time in production. primarily grooms are split if the hair properties are completely different or if there are specific requirements in simulation or shading :) (my personal record for one digi double in a film was around 28 grooms on just the head) . When you're showing the eyelashes I notice that the mask looks very low res in the maya paint tool. Something you can do to help control this is go to the tool settings and find "assign/edit textures", in there you can bump up the resolution of the map you are painting and later convert to ptex in xgen. If you don't want to do that I personally like to UV the eyelids as their own shell and give them a larger texel density than the rest of the head. For the sake of groom maps this is perfectly fine to do :) . Last thing, when doing large characters you may notice that the cut modifier is not very sensitive or has very little effect. Thats because the cut modifier works based in real world units (cm) and does not factor in the length of the hair. Something I really like to do is: "rand(0,0.4) * $cLength" Adding the multiply by cLength makes it so that the cut modifier adjusts to the length of the hairs it is cutting. So the numbers in the rand become the percentage of the hair you want to cut off. with 0 being cut nothing and 1 being cut all the way to the root. . Hope this helps mate, the results were looking great!

I was not expecting this thorough of a video about every part of the process. This is immensely insightful and will help me mimic an effective workflow. Thank you!

Dude, really awesome work! I’ve been working on a personal project whilst juggling art school work, and you’ve just saved me about a week of working on xgen guides with your tips. Also, you’re a very clear and precise teacher so thanks, learnt a lot! Don’t know if you did it already but I’d love to see you review/give pointers on showreels!

We are all lucky we get to watch this art work for free

Amazing sculpture work, super cool! Thank you for sharing.

Thank you for doing a longer version! This Video was so helpful and at the same time entertaining for me :) The result is looking perfect

These breakdowns are really great thanks for this cant wait to see more.

5:09 - Interesting you talk about starting center and then radiating visuals outward with some clumps happening. This is very similar to Mind Maps, which are diagrams used to organize info and current thoughts. The similarity between the two is interesting.

Polgalm! This is inspiring to see and makes me want to take another crack at 3D. Fantastic work.

You are the best bro, showing how you do it really helps out people. Thank you

I've been waiting for this one! Some of the content you've been dropping lately are top notch, keep up the good work!

Awesome video. I'm an environment artist but still found this video fun to watch and very informative. Character pipelines looks super fun, although more tedious haha. The quality is so good. Props to you for making art videos like this enjoyable to watch, that's hard in itself. The knowledge to learn from this is gold too. Any aspiring character artist is lucky to have people like you releasing videos like this for free :)

Awesome video bro! Thx for sharing the details

I live in the middle of nowhere in Russia, and this type of content is just true inspiration for me bc I want to start a career in game industry as 3d artist. Great work man!

Really enjoyed this video! Well made and well explained. I work in animation, and I'm not expected to ever texture, but I do on my personal work, and trying to find a nice workflow, this video was very helpful. Thanks alot!

This video is so sick man! I keep saying that the way u give info is amazing bro! Not heavy headed at all, time pass so fast i didn’t even noticed! Always big fan of how u explain things, iam an athlete , who went in different world , world of 3d and thanks to you , i can learn and have fun my man! Very easy ,light, everything on point! Hey since the first time when i watched ur video i keep saying this dude is baddest in the game!!! I wish u all best J and keep killing it my dawg !

Jay thanks so much for sharing your workflow! You keep leveling up non stop! This baddy turned out so awesome man.

Proud of your progress dude.. keep it up.. and keep inspiring the community.. Great efforts... really appreciated

You are a phenomenal artist! Nice work)

Polgam! Dude, I always find so many little things I can use whenever you show your full workflow! It's so damn helpful to see how you give yourself as much breathing room as possible while still moving forward. I always have trouble locking things in and moving on. I can't tell you how many times I've re-imported highres meshes into substance. Excellent job!

One of the Lurtz reference images (the one where he's looking to the left with a green background) is super nostalgic for me because I used to use it as a forum avatar pretty much everywhere when I was a teenager. Great video!

Fantastic work! I entered the world of 3D since 1 year and half and still studing know in academy. I know how difficult it is, but at some point when u see results it all becomes so good! Thanks for the video and for all the high experience tips u Share with us!!!

Great inspiration, thank you, mate!

thanks for all your videos man! always a pleasure to watch and learn a ton of new things from you! much love!

Pogalm! It's been a while since I've seen a whole video this long in one sitting, really cool work! got many tips from watching this.

Woooooaa, nice! Another video to watch over the weekend. Your tutorials are amazing btw! Thank you so muuuuch!

Must be satisfying seeing your years of hard work come to together into such a beast of a piece

I have no words as to how beautiful this work was. Nice job J! I really loved the video other than the part which is that I get demotivated when I see such spectacular work as this level of skill probably took several years of skill. Nonetheless, keep up the good work, I can only wish to be this good.

nice breakdown, thanks for sharing man :) the final piece looks sick!

omg so detailed and awesome!

Pogalm!!! This came out badass af. Very inspiring stuff. It was cool to finally see someone do stuff in nuke outside of movie breakdown. I just want to ask, have you ever tried Mari? Any way keep up the good work. Some things I would like to see in the future are anatomy stuff or even a video on brush economy in zbrush. I'm a noob finally taking a leap into 3d from 2d so this kind of stuff is always fun to see.

What an amazing hour and 43 seconds! Will definitely be using a lot of these amazing techniques in my next project! Thank you!

I cannot stop wondering every time I watch your videos!!!!!! Incredibly grateful for all this you are sharing with us!!!!! I hope one day I could be at least half as good as you!!!!

Pogalm ! I've been wanting to see this video for a while but haven't had a chance until now. Thank you for the video J ♥

thanks for these videos! they are super informative and give an amazing insight into the workflow keep up the good work! :)

Thanks, for making video of this artwork.... I really loved it and its very informative. Thanks alot

amazing man

Pogalm! Thanks for the awesome content J, it's really helping me stay motivated and is super educational. Cheers!

Pogalm! Hella cool video also,love the calm narration!

this was really great, and at a very comfortable pace! Thank you

Pogalm! Absolutely incredibly. Hugely inspirational (and more than a little intimidating...heh)! Thanks for taking the time to share your process.

Damn thats awesome! great work

It's awesome work!!! A lot of thank to your incredible content!!

Pogalm! Amazing work and such detail, thank you so much for this!

So professional!!!!

POLGOM! loving the workflow!

Beautiful work mate

Thank you very much for this❤❤ We can never thank you enough, now I'm gonna go use these techniques in my char.

Wow! this is so cool man

love this guy videos

awesome work man !!

These techniques I got to try; never used noise maker for instance. Very Inspiring! ^^

Amazing and thank you from the bottom for this share. You're god tier and humble enough to share your amazing skills, really appreciate that.

thanks my dude, this was really helpful

Awesome breakdown! You make the best character breakdowns on youtube hands down! Good to see you are getting into Nuke too. By the way check out ACES color space in Arnold and in Nuke also and it will make your highlights and color look even better. Will let you blast more light into the Arnold scene which will give better GI also. POLGOM! :)

Another absolute banger. Thanks a ton for this!

my god you are a great teacher.... amazing video!

Pogalm. Would pay for a slowed down, in depth, tutorial series based off this. Amazing skill and work man!

Sir you are doing awesome work... Best of luck ❤️👍👍

the hair step with blendshape is a treasure especially since Xgen is so finnicky. Thanks for inspiring everyday!

I HAVE BEEN WAITING FOR THIS ONE!!!

amazing! thank you for doing this video :)

I would love to see your work on the "The Rings of Power"! This sculpt/paint/render is incredible (like all of your work)! As a seasoned ZBrush user myself, I still learn a TON from your videos, and this one is no exception. Thank you for all you do, homie. 🤘🤘🤘

39:31 Assassins Creed Unity Memory Backing up ! Thank you for the video so inspiring !

My guy.... holy damn. I learned so much in just an hour! I might need a nap after all that lol. Can’t wait to try all these techniques!

man you are a monster congratulations, your work inspires me a lot!

I've always loved the aesthetics of the Lord of the Rings armor. Incredible work done!

POGALM!!! now im going to sleep. but man you have to really love what you do to spend this much time learning/doing this kind of art.

pogalm! nice breakdown J!

You are real master!I really want to learn from you!!!

Yo man, you are really good at this! I am jealous and inspired at the same time lol Keep it up, very nice channel!

J Hill, you are A Hill of Knowledge thank you soooooo much for this video

Impresionante trabajo

Dude, AMAZING! I'm impressed! Thank you for sharing cool content with us ;) Keep it up!

Amazing video. Thanks for sharing! Pogalm!

Really cool that you gave a shot to the substance workflow! Would like to see you playing around with Mari later on 😎🤙

Awesome as always man!

thanks for sharing

Hi J, great breakdown. Can you talk a little bit more about how to take the geometry HD pore details and got the full displacement map and just that process. Did you have like a sub lvl 2 as a low and how many polys was the high bake etc.. thx

POLGOM! Quick question, how long does the whole process take you in days? or perhaps hours? Since what we see is an edited version. Great video btw! So inspiring and so helpful in getting to learn the workflow for something as amazing as this!

Wow this is great man! Thank you!! Btw, how long did it take you to finish it?

Amazing bro

thx for this awesome content

Polgam! Great video man, learnt a lot !

You're a beast dude! Great video! Pogalm

hey j, you should also try out the "bokeh" node, wich is also in nuke, i think it makes much nicer depth of field than the regular zdefocus

awesome man....

a fibermesh to Xgen hair with the curves tutorial would be so amazing for character designers I think, I know it would help me a lot :D

Great workflow! One thing I didn't understand is did you used normal map + displacement map for the surface details generally or only used disp for face and tongue?

Really amazing video. Any way you can share how you manage not to project information to the other pieces with out exploding the mesh??

This is just amazing! Thanks for sharing, I am learning a lot with your videos! I have a question I hope you could answer, did you do the retopo of the model in Maya? Or did you export like a low poly version from zbrush (don't know if It is possible)? Thanks!!!

Polgam! For an entry level like me, this is sweet stuff you are sharing with us!

Polgalm! haha that's AWESOME! I'd love to be able to create game characters like this... Too busy working though to learn this stuff... Some day.

I was one of the question askers in the last video lol. This is great info, thanks!

Pogalm! You rock dude 🤘🖤

37:15 "so I don't have to do it all again" repeated idk if that was intentional but it was perfect😂

Hi, I'm a student, you inspired me alot and I learnt alot from you, thank you so much! Is there like a class or tutorial on every part you did ? Basically like a full version of what you did without cutting part to part. Thank you again for the video and keep up the good work!