PKD

Another project done using Mudbox (yay!) and 3DS Max (Boo!)!!! As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, Mudbox is a wonderful 3D sculpting tool that is as enjoyable as it is challenging; while 3DS Max is just… challenging. The assignment for this project was to create a polycystic kidney and a “normal” kidney and create a 2D editorial piece incorporating the 3D models.  The project began in Mimics which is an image processing software that creates a 3D image from multiple, stacked, 2D images (in this case, CT scans). Once the 3D model was extracted it was imported into Mudbox where it was automatically retopologized. Here I sculpted a polycystic kidney from the normal kidney then painted and textured it.  Once it looked beautiful and gross I imported it to 3DS Max to light and render. Along with the model, a normal and displacement map were imported from Mudbox which contain the paint and bump layers.  This allows you to tie them into the material editor in Max and edit them to get them to look the way the did in Mudbox.  So after hours of playing around with different settings on my normal and displacement maps in the material editor  I got a 3D model that was almost as nice as the one I had created in Mudbox.  Next, I lit the scene with a few standard target lights. Once the lighting gave the right effect I rendered it using different layer passes that I then brought into Photoshop to layer and manipulate some more.  I also added some glossy highlights in Photoshop that weren’t showing up well in Max. The intended use for the editorial is to accompany a journal article discussing the genetics of polycystic kidney disase (PKD). So, I went with a family tree theme. Here it is!