I modelled the alien Lego® figure in Maya using poly modelling techniques. I enjoy Lego® in real life so creating one of my favourite figures of all time in digital form was a really fun project to work on. Overall the Lego® figure's forms were pretty simple but getting them to be accurate to actual Lego® proportions was key to matching the authentic minifigure look.
I modelled this Lego® minifigure off of the purple space alien from Series 22 of the collectible minifigures, shown below.
Reference minifigure (Design belongs to the Lego Group).
Texturing and Process Work
After I finished modelling the figure, I spent some time UV mapping the character. It took a long time and was challenging to fit everything into one square. Once done, I transferred a screen capture to Photoshop to paint on the textures. I painted each channel manually, base colour, roughness, metallic value, transparency and bump mapping.
I think that doing all of it manually was educational for me as it forced me to better understand how each of the layers worked and what their grayscale values translated to at render time.
I think that doing all of it manually was educational for me as it forced me to better understand how each of the layers worked and what their grayscale values translated to at render time.
