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Behind the Scenes: Myrraissaahuakoia By Alina Khan on February 28, 2025 Behind the Scenes Discover the creative journey behind Myrrai, a unique character blending mythology, nature, and personal inspiration, as Clark brings her to life through a mix of hand-painted and semi-realistic art styles.INTRODUCTIONHi, my name is Marcus Clark, and I am a 3D artist and filmmaker from Baltimore, Maryland. My introduction to Blender came from taking up LEGO stop-motion animation as a hobby when I was a kid and being inspired by other LEGO animators using Blender and other programs to enhance their short films with CG elements. From there, I was introduced to the official Blender Open Movies and YouTubers like Dillongoo, who further inspired me to take the next step into 3D.After years of developing my 3D skills during my free time, I eventually landed a job working on a video game and a film. My goal is to be able to share my own stories and characters and hopefully inspire others to pursue their own passions.INSPIRATIONMyrraissaahuakoia, or Myrrai, is a major character from my fantasy worldbuilding project that I hope to develop into something larger in the future. She is, of course, loosely inspired by dryads from Greek mythology and popular fantasy depictions of plant people, but with my own little twists to fit the lore and character Ive developed.For her design, I drew inspiration from many sources, such as the Sylvari from Guild Wars 2, along with some art by Giselle Almeida and clothing elements from different real-world cultures. For example, the overlapping beads she wears were inspired by those worn by the Krobo people of Ghana. I am also a fan of the Horizon video game series and drew some inspiration from the outfits in those games. Besides these, I also drew from my real-life experiences, such as during a trip to Hawaii, where I photographed the strange Heliconia rostrata plants (lobster-claw plants). Pretty soon after, I began thinking of ways to incorporate these into Myrrais design. In terms of art style, I pulled from many different places. I was most inspired by the League of Legends cinematics and Arcane, which have a hand-painted style. However, I wanted to incorporate these painterly textures with semi-realistic PBR materials. Two other inspirations for me were Dishonored and the Airborn showcase by Airborn Studios, both of which have a painterly PBR look that Im very fond of.PROCESSModeling and Sculpting:I began Myrrai with a human base mesh that Id created previously, since my goal was to avoid spending too much time on retopology or having to make new characters entirely from scratch for my larger project, especially since I knew this character was meant to have a very human-like appearance. Using this base mesh, I went back and forth between Blender and ZBrush to do rough concepts of how she could look. I played around with her body shape and proportions for a tall and athletic look, while also trying to emphasize a slightly more non-human body shape and face. As far as sculpting her body and face, it wasnt anything too special. I carved grooves along her skin, taking some inspiration from real muscles but making whatever changes I thought would add a nice flow to the lines and give her an organic, plant-like feeling. I tried not to go too realistic, holding back on some details and using the pinch brush to sharpen some of the edges.I then used Blender curves and placeholder meshes to block out what the leaves on her head would look like. During this process, I did test renders constantly with vertex colors painted onto the meshes to further imagine how she might look when finished. At first, the heliconias were going to be very short, but I thought this wasnt making use of how unique the real plants are. So, I experimented later on with different variations until I decided to have them fully grown on one side, both in the front and back.As stated, Myrrais leaves were originally made with curves in Blender using an edited curve circle as the bevel object. To taper the points, I did so manually using Alt-S on both ends of the curve. From here, there was no real shortcut. I went on to place each leaf individually, mirror to the other side, and then tweak the shapes for some variation.When sculpting the leaves in ZBrush, I used these curves as base meshes and as a reference for where the leaves would be in the final model. I sculpted directly onto some of the curve leaves and then copy-pasted them. I then used the bend curve deformer option in ZBrush to reshape the leaves to match the original shapes I created in Blender. This was one of the most challenging and tedious parts of the process since at the time I wasnt sure of how to make high resolution 3D leaves like this in an efficient way without them looking copy-pasted.For the heliconias and beads, the process was similar. I started with Blender curves and just used the array modifier to duplicate the meshes for the beads and heliconia parts. I used the same Alt-S scale function to have the heliconias taper toward the tip, and then capped them off with a separate mesh. For the beads, I started with a simple tubular shape and then tweaked them so that they would overlap in a convincing way like Krobo beads before adding in the individual arrayed bead meshes. Later on, I sculpted a few of these beads and used those as the high poly for each one with variations so that I didnt have to sculpt every single bead. This process took a while to wrap my head around, but Im very satisfied with the result.The rest of Myrrais clothing was also blocked out in Blender using 2D planes with subdivision and the solidify modifier to wrap them around the body before eventually bringing these pieces into ZBrush for sculpting.After finishing some retopology, I brought the high-poly and low-poly meshes back into Blender and used the shrinkwrap modifier (and some manual re-sculpting) to add some high detail back to the low-poly meshes using the Multires modifier. This was done so that I could have low-poly meshes to pose and animate, while being able to increase subdivision upon rendering so that the meshes retain the depth of the high poly that wouldnt be possible with normal maps alone. Another method would be to use displacement textures, which at the time wasnt possible in Eevee.Texturing:Since this character is meant for animation, I unwrapped her using UDIMs so that the painterly textures would still look good up close. I then brought her into Substance Painter for texturing. An important part of the process for making any animation-ready character is to bake the textures using a version of the model where the eyelids are half shut and the mouth is slightly open. This is important for sculpting as well, but while texturing it allowed me to clean up the eyelids for when her eyes are closed. Since Id already done some vertex painting in ZBrush, I baked this onto the low poly and added the rest of my texture details on top.Original vertex colors/polypaint I painted in ZBrush and baked in Substance Painter to use as a base for the color map.The curvature map that Substance bakes from the high poly was super helpful for the style, as it allowed me to use a mix of procedural and hand-painted techniques, such as filling in crevices and edges along the body using curvature generators without having to do it all by hand. I also used the blur slope filter on these to break up the uniformity, which added to the painterly look. After this, I created a new fill layer and painted brush strokes into its layer mask along the whole model. For the major brush strokes, I used my original base color texture as the fill for this layer so that the brush strokes would have the correct colors along each part of the model. Then I tweaked the layers levels to increase the brightness and contrast and make the strokes stand out, with a sharpness filter added onto the mask to make the edges of the brush strokes sharper. Finally, I decreased the opacity by about half to make the strokes blend better. Hand painted brush strokes mask.Similarly, I painted black comic style pencil lines along some of the creases, primarily on her face. These were very quick and dirty, as I felt the imperfections added more character. Pencil lines mask.Later on I exported these as a separate black and white texture to control their intensity in the skin shader.The process for the rest was mostly the same: using the curvature generator and blur slope filter as a base and following this up with manually painted brush strokes. The process on the clothing was very similar, though I did a bit more manual painting to define the wrinkles more and to add scratches to the leather parts. For the leaves, I painted brush stroke masks in Krita and blended them in Substance Painter, with the bulk of my hand painting being mostly in defining the curvature generators.When building the shaders, I mostly used the Principled BSDF shader node. To give it a bit more of a cartoon look, I connected the base color/diffuse texture directly into a Mix Shader node with the blending controlled by a Fresnel Layer Weight node. I also will sometimes use the diffuse texture as a specular map plugged into the specular IOR level of the Principled BSDF, and then crank the black and white values close together using a Color Ramp. Ive found that this emphasizes the brush strokes more on shiny surfaces and highlights. However, this isnt super noticeable unless viewed from certain angles.Rigging:I primarily used Rigify for this character, simply moving the armature bones into place and generating the rig. From there, I created separate bone layers for everything else that needed to be rigged. This was one of the most difficult parts, since different parts of the model relied on different rigging techniques. I intended to make a rig that would be usable for animation, but soon realized that this was something that would need a lot of tweaking once I start doing animation tests. I ultimately decided to prioritize making her posable for stills and then later on make necessary tweaks to make animating her easier.I used a mixture of standard weight painting and the Mesh Deform modifier for rigging her clothing. Mesh Deform was most helpful on her skirt due to how much overlapping geometry there is. For those unaware, this means I could model a simpler version (a cage mesh) of her skirt that covers the real skirt, and weight paint that. Using the Mesh Deform modifier allows the real skirt to follow the weight painting of the cage mesh. Each leaf has around 1-3 bones, each individually parented so that I can pose them manually and use an addon like Wiggle Bones to have them react to gravity when animated. I simply parented these bones to the Rigify bones they would most likely be influenced by. For example, the leaves on her face were parented to the cheek and nose bones, which allows them to move appropriately when I change her expression. For facial expressions that needed to form creases and wrinkles on her skin, plus areas like her joints needing to be corrected when her limbs bend, I created shape keys that I either sculpted or tweaked in edit mode to make the correct deformation shapes. Then I set up drivers for these shape keys so that they could be controlled by specific control bones I added to the rig. The heliconias and the beads around the waist were rigged using spline-IK techniques. For her skirt, I followed Pierrick Picauts Dynamic Cloth Rigging tutorial, with some of my own edits, so that the skirt would adjust based on the characters leg position.Rendering:My rendering and lighting process can be pretty hectic since Ill do whatever I need to make the image look good. I actually rendered out a whole set of images to post, but right as I was about to share them online I went back and redid them all since I felt I could do better. I think this was one of the positives and negatives about this project. If something didnt feel right, I would go back and change it or take a break to think it over. However, I do have a tendency to be a perfectionist. So, there were definitely times where I had to force myself to stop making changes and just finish the project.This project was rendered in Eevee, primarily because of its real-time benefits and for a shorter render time, but also because I liked the slightly less realistic look that Eevee had in comparison. This did, however, come at a surprising cost in performance compared to Cycles. Another major aspect of this project was that I started using the addon Render Raw, which adds more options to the Color Management tab. This allowed me to make use of the standard color correction, which retains the colors from the textures more accurately.After posing, I took some old plant assets and downloaded dirt textures for the environment. I then started with a 3-point lighting setup and added extra lights as I went, to boost the rim lighting in areas I felt needed it or to brighten other areas I thought were too dark. I also added a volume behind the character to give the scene more atmosphere, and added some palm tree gobo textures along the edges of the camera to add to the composition.RENDER: Myrraissaahuakoia Thank you for reading! Please check out my social media if you want to see more of my work!About the Artist Marcus Clark is a 3D artist and filmmaker from Baltimore, Maryland. He is currently working on a world building project with a focus on telling stories through animation.Links
