Steamnocchio created with ZBrush and 3ds Max

Link via CGSociety

It was easier for me to bring an already posed mesh into ZBrush to tweak it. I made the goggles with box modeling and positioned it according to the first of Geppettos posed forms.

There was no special technique in making the goggles. I based it on some references taken from the web and started to model it from two cylinders. It was very fun to make. The eyes are very important for this character because they show his personality. He is crazy, so I wanted to make very big rounded eyes refracted by the goggles. Refracting the original eyes through the goggles looked weird, so I made a separated mesh for the eyes and eyelids, closer to the lens.

When this mesh was refracted, it made an exaggerated effect. Back in ZBrush I started to add more details on Geppetto.

When Geppetto was done, I simply exported the higher mesh back to 3ds Max. It wasn’t necessarily hard work with a displacement map. I think a very high poly is lighter to render than a mesh with mental ray displace. I made the teeth later in Max using box modeling.