Creatures
The creatures of max q
The planet where Max Q takes place is mostly covered with water and spotted with the occasional volcanic island. Both above and below the ocean is populated with a large variety of strange flora and fauna.
The alien Zepher next to the Desiderus
Design
We started with a team of 4 key 2D designers…
Sculpt
… and a team of 3 sculptors using zBrush …
Model and Rig
… who also worked on final models to be rigged and animated, with an additional 3 rigger / modelers.
The Scout
One of the first designs finished and sculpted, the Scout is the equivalent of an underwater fighter-jet in this universe.
Scout designs
Initially drawn by designer Caleb Nelson, the scout went from design to sculpt phase extremely quickly!
Sculptor Dylan Cooper jumped at the opportunity to take the sketches and translate them into 3D.
Process
Typically designs would start as silhouette drawings, then move into more detailed studies, and when approved, sculpting.
Here are some scout silhouettes by Caleb Nelson.
Examine the Details
During the sculpt process, we keep detail to a minimum to allow for easy revision and improvement.
Final sculpt
Here’s the Scout in its (mostly) final sculpted form.
Scale
And here we can see the scale of the creature, relative to the Pravarthak and a human character. The VR viewer should be able to really feel the size at this distance!
More Creatures
The world above and below the ocean
Here are some silhouettes, fleshed-out designs, and sculpts from various creatures in Max Q!
Many of these won’t be used in the film but there are a lot more not shown.
The final step of the design process (before rigging and animating) is creating the more efficient mesh. ZBrush creates geometry that is much too high poly to animate let alone show in VR, so all sculpts go through the process of “retopologizing”, which can be seen in the lower right corner here – manually creating every face. With such detailed, asymmetrical, complicated creatures it’s not an easy (nor frankly particularly fun!) process.
