From Zero 2 Hero

What makes this course different

There is no shortage of tutorials for any single one of these topics. What is genuinely hard to find is all of them applied to the same object, in the right order, by someone who has had to deliver the result. Five things set this apart:

• One asset, start to finish. Every one of the 135 lessons is the same motorcycle. You are never asked to imagine how the modelling chapter connects to the lookdev chapter, because it is the file you are already holding.
• It starts where real jobs start, at a CAD file. The first two modules cover MOI, Fusion 360, Autodesk Showcase and 3ds Max, and getting engineering data into a DCC without it falling apart. That is the actual front door of automotive, product and commercial work, and it is the step most courses skip by handing you a clean mesh.
• You capture your own lighting data. Module 13 shoots and builds a custom HDRI, including the on-set data capture kit and the grading. Module 14 scans the location with 3DF Zephyr and sets the correct scale. You end up lighting the bike with the same light that was in the room.
• Colour management is taught before it can hurt you. Linear workflow, gamma correction, ACEScg and OCIO all land in module 8, before a single texture is painted. This is the thing that silently ruins renders for years, and it is covered as a foundation rather than an appendix.
• The pipeline is compared, not preached. Retopology is shown five ways, Maya remesh, QuadRemesher, ZBrush AutoRetopo, Topogun and by hand, and the trade-offs are stated. You learn to choose, not to follow.

What you will actually build

A production-ready motorcycle, retopologised from CAD, with a garment built in Marvelous Designer, UVs laid out properly, textures authored in Substance Painter, shaders built in Maya and Arnold, rendered in layers with custom AOVs, and composited into a real photographic plate in Nuke with shadows, lens effects and depth of field. That final frame is the portfolio piece.

The tools, and why each one is there

Sixteen applications appear in this course, each used for the job it is genuinely best at rather than out of habit:

• CAD and ingest: MOI, Fusion 360, Autodesk Showcase, 3ds Max
• Modelling and retopology: Maya, ZBrush, QuadRemesher, Topogun
• Cloth: Marvelous Designer
• UVs: UVLayout, Unfold 3D in Maya
• Texturing and lookdev: Substance Painter, Photoshop, Arnold
• On-set and scanning: 3DF Zephyr, HDRI photography
• Compositing: Nuke

The 16 modules

Getting the asset in (modules 1 to 3, 15 lessons). Working with CAD files, importing into your DCC from four different sources, then scene setup: hierarchy, naming convention, checking size and position, and a final check before anything else begins.

Building it (modules 4 to 7, 42 lessons). Autoremesh versus retopology compared honestly, then modelling proper: skin wrap, lattice and blendShape modifiers, quad modelling, screws and bolts, and a speed-up session. Garment modelling in Marvelous Designer from avatar export to a quad mesh finalised in Maya. Then thirteen lessons on UVs, tri-planar projections, seams, unfolding, layout, and copying UVs across multiple objects.

Making it look right (modules 8 to 12, 48 lessons). Lighting and shading foundations including turntables, multiple HDRIs, linear workflow, gamma, ACEScg and OCIO. Shaders in Maya and what every parameter does. Substance Painter from first project to smart masks, anchor points and normal detail. Then lookdev in earnest: baking and fixing maps, procedural textures, decals and stencils, leather, stitching, welding, and layered shaders in Maya and Arnold using curvature, occlusion, sampler info and round corner nodes.

Shooting, rendering and finishing (modules 13 to 16, 30 lessons). Build a custom HDRI from scratch, photogrammetry-scan the location, then prepare the scene for rendering with render layers, overrides, and custom AOVs. Finally eleven lessons in Nuke: cleaning the backplate, shadow and beauty passes, 3D tools, integration, wireframe passes, lens effects, depth of field and the final grade.

Who this is for

Artists who can already model and render something, and who keep hitting the same wall: the render looks fine on its own and falls apart the moment it has to sit in a real photograph. It is marked intermediate to advanced because it assumes you know your way around a viewport, not because the explanations are thin. If you are starting from nothing, the free courses on this site are the better first step.

It is also for anyone moving toward automotive, product or commercial work, where the job begins with a client CAD file and ends with an integrated plate, and where nobody is going to hand you a clean mesh.

What you need

Maya and Arnold are the spine of the course. Nuke, Substance Painter, ZBrush, Marvelous Designer, UVLayout, Topogun and 3DF Zephyr appear in their own modules, and most have a free, trial or non-commercial version that is enough to follow along. A camera and a tripod if you want to shoot your own HDRI and scan your own location, though the captured data is provided so you can do those modules without leaving the desk.

Project files

52 GB of project files, divided per module, so you can start from any point rather than being locked out because one earlier step did not go your way.

Included with the course

• Lifetime access, including every update to the material
• A private Discord channel for questions
• All 135 lessons and the full 52 GB of project files

Topics covered

CAD to render pipeline, hard surface modelling in Maya, retopology with QuadRemesher and Topogun, garment modelling in Marvelous Designer, UV unwrapping with UVLayout and Unfold 3D, texturing in Substance Painter, lookdev in Maya and Arnold, custom HDRI photography, on-set data capture, photogrammetry with 3DF Zephyr, linear workflow, gamma correction, ACEScg and OCIO colour management, Maya render layers and custom AOVs, and CG integration and compositing in Nuke.