Behind the Scenes: Totoro 2023

INTRODUCTION

Hi, my name is Liu Yang, though you can call me Seaway. I am a freelance 3D enthusiast from China. I like painting and animation, and I fell in love with 3D art in college. Before I met Blender, I had 14 years of experience in 3DSMax and 5 years of experience in Maya but due to health reasons, I no longer work in 3D, so my current 3D works are all personal hobbies.

After 3D creation became a personal hobby, I encountered the problem of software cost. Under such circumstances, I accidentally met Blender in the spring of 2013 (Hi Blender! It’s a great honor to meet you :))

At that time, Blender was still small in general, but I thought it would have a good future, so I started the journey of Blender.

INSPIRATION

I made a detailed but unlimited plan for learning Blender to make still-frame works.

In each work, I try to learn and master the Blender functional modules required for the process.

My Neighbor Totoro is the fourth work I learned from Blender, and I mainly learned Blender's particle hair production. In addition, I am a fan of Studio Ghibli and Hayao Miyazaki. The original image of "Totoro 2023" comes from the Totoro in the animated film "Totoro" under Studio Ghibli, which was directed and produced by Hayao Miyazaki in 1988.

Official website address: Ghibli

Here is the Totoro I made in 2016 using Blender 2.76 particle hair: ArtStation

Time flies to 2023. Blender has been with me for 10 years and I am honored to witness its growth. Geometry Nodes are one of the many highlights in Blender's growth, so I wanted to learn to use the function of GNHair. Therefore, I have this new work of Totoro remade now.

Thoughts on the production of Totoro

I did not intend to follow the idea of ​​real animal hair in the production of Totoro, but rather to focus on the feeling of the original animation. The primary goal of hair expression was not "realism", but to make hair on the basis of keeping the cleanliness of the animation. Therefore, the head and face of Totoro are more like a plush toy, and the hair on the lower body is closer to real hair tufts.

PROCESS

Tools:

• Blender 3.6 (the screenshot is Blender 4.1.1)
• Geometry nodes Hair (GN for short)
• Post-production synthesis AffinityPhoto

About plugins

I rarely use third-party plugins. The most used ones are the plugins that come with Blender, and some shortcut tools I wrote myself. (Note: My Python is very bad and belongs to kindergarten level. I just understand some logical methods of Blender calling code. My tool code is very simple, but it greatly improves my efficiency in using Blender. I rely heavily on these tools, without which I will be at a loss after starting Blender, haha)

Modeling

First, collect the reference images needed for modeling, and then model according to the reference. I use PureRef, which recently launched version 2.

The chinchilla is actually a rag doll with a very simple structure. I used Mesh modeling without sculpting.

Pose

The pose is achieved using ShapeKey, while Rig is not used. When posing, FaceSet of the sculpting module is used, and then the Pose brush is used to adjust the pose.

Texture Painter

The texture of the chinchilla is very simple, so it can be easily completed directly in Blender's painting module.

Geometry nodes Hair

Blender GN Hair is very similar to Maya's Xgen in terms of production ideas.

The limitation of Blender particle hair system: The clump depends on the number of guides, so you must have enough guides as the clump of particle hair cannot be randomly generated and freely controlled on the sub-hair. GN does not have such limitations. It is freer than the particle hair system and has more nodes to control the hair.

The production of hair is not completed by one group of hair but by several groups of hair from different parts. The advantages of this are: (1) Clear production and conditioning (2) Easy control (3) Save the number of hair.

First, make a Guide according to the shape and direction of the hair.

Then follow the instruction of Simon Thommes in the official YouTube channel of the Blender Foundation to make it. Introducing: Hair Assets in Blender 3.5!

You can learn almost all the ideas and methods of advanced GN hair production in this video, for which the files are also available for download.

GN is relatively complex and cannot be explained in a short time. I have screenshotted more content in the picture below to help you understand:

I am still learning, so please correct me if I make any mistakes.

Scene Layout

Grassland assets

I used the free 3D assets based on CC0 provided by Poly Haven, which covers many high-quality assets such as 3D models, materials, and HDR, which greatly helped me create.

After importing these assets into Blender, I copied, rotated, and scaled the trees according to the position of the camera and arranged them in the scene. The grass was quickly generated using particles. The scene layout basically follows the idea of ​​three areas: near, middle, and far.

Lighting

I personally don't like lights with strong contrast between light and dark, unless there is a need for it.

I like mid-tones with relatively sufficient light flux, so that I can maximize the details I have worked hard on, haha. I want to achieve what the human eye sees in a dynamic environment, rather than the static photo effect of a physical camera.

The lighting is very simple with nothing much to say—just the main light with HDRI to simulate the effect of outdoor sunshine.

The shadow on the chinchilla can be obtained by placing leaves and branches in front of the sunlight, which is very convenient to adjust the effect you want.

Rendering

I used Cycles, the unbiased physical renderer that comes with Blender, to render.

I like it very much, and with Blender's multi-channel, it almost perfectly meets my needs for rendering still frames.

AffinityPhoto

The rendering size is huge, and Blender's current Compositing module has poor performance after too many nodes are established, so I only do simple compositing in Compositing, and then export it to use AffinityPhoto to complete the final post-compositing and color correction work.

And that was it. Below are the final renders, I hope you like them!

RENDER: Totoro 2023

Partial:

Other angles:

Thank you for reading this article. If you have any questions, please feel free to reach out to me through any of my social media accounts. Have a great day!

About the Artist                       

Seaway is a freelance 3D enthusiast from China, currently working as a manager in a software development company.