Tutorial: Creating Creature Fur Using XGen & Arnold
The Gnomon Workshop has released Creating Creature Fur Using XGen & Arnold, a guide to current grooming workflows, recorded by Sony Pictures Imageworks creature effects artist Bruno Tornisielo.
The workshop, which provides over two and a half hours of video training, explores how to create production-quality fur and hair using Maya’s XGen toolset, and render it using the Arnold renderer.
A guide to grooming hair and fur in XGen for both newcomers and experienced artists
In the tutorial, Tornisielo sets out his workflow for creating hair and fur for VFX and animation projects.
He begins by demonstrating the fundamental principles of XGen, Maya’s built-in instancing system, often used to create hair, using a simple sphere as a demo ‘character’.
The training covers how to create curves and modifiers, and how to create clumps, cuts, noise, and curls.
Tornisielo then moves on to creating a full hair groom, discussing the importance of separating the groom into layers for complete artistic control, and demonstrating the modifiers required for each layer.
He then explains his light rig and shader set-up – as a bonus, also covering how to paint maps in ZBrush – before moving on to the final render in Arnold, and how to create an interactive groom for your portfolio.
Viewers of the tutorial can also download Tornisielo’s XGen expressions .txt file.
About the artist
Bruno Tornisielo is a senior CFX artist at Sony Pictures Imageworks. He began his career as a CG generalist for commercials studios, before specialising in character modelling for games and hair grooming for movies.
Films and game cinematics he has worked on include Middle-earth: Shadow of War, Total War: Warhammer, The Emoji Movie, Smallfoot and Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse.
Pricing and availability
Creating Creature Fur Using XGen & Arnold is available via a subscription to The Gnomon Workshop, providing access to over 300 tutorials. Subscriptions cost $49/month or $490/year. Free trials are available.
Read more about Creating Creature Fur Using XGen & Arnold on The Gnomon Workshop’s website
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