The Mammoth Project
The Mammoth Project is a personal portfolio piece created for the PixelMentor 5-1-30 Challenge, under the mentorship of CG Supervisor Cristian Spagnuolo.
The challenge was to deliver a photorealistic, production-ready asset in 30 days, starting from a real-world 3D scan and following a complete CG pipeline.
Beyond the final result, this experience helped me consolidate a clean, efficient, and production-ready workflow, improve my material realism, and strengthen my ability to manage time, feedback, and visual quality under tight deadlines.
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The asset is based on a mammoth skeleton scan from the Smithsonian Museum. I handled the full process: automated and manual retopology in Maya, UV preparation and organization into 6 UDIMs, baking of all primary maps in Substance, and final mesh optimization, reaching ~150k quads with consistent texel density.
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The most demanding phase was texturing in Substance Painter, with a strong focus on material readability, surface breakup, and realism. Multiple layered materials were used to describe porous, reflective, and weathered bone surfaces, aiming to tell a believable story through aging and fossilization. This stage alone required 100+ hours.
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Lighting was kept clean and intentional, relying mainly on point and spot lights with subtle HDRI support, while final compositing was done in Nuke, selectively integrating AOVs, depth, volumetrics, grain, and color grading only when needed.
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This project helped me strengthen a solid, production-oriented workflow, improve visual consistency and realism, and practice time management and feedback-driven iteration under tight deadlines.
Grateful for the mentorship and the learning process.
Feedback and connections are more than welcome.
Cheers,
Simone
The goal was to create a new portfolio piece within 30 days. More specifically, I focused on preparing an asset starting from a 3D scan, presenting it in a photorealistic and believable way.
This project includes multiple stages and skills: from the initial retopology to the final render, I was guided with passion and great attention to detail by a true professional in the Computer Graphics industry as Cristian Spagnuolo.
It was a challenging project, not without setbacks, but I truly hope you enjoy the final result.
Feel free to leave a comment or feedback, it would be greatly appreciated.
Turntable showing the asset in all its glory, with visual references on the sides and lighten using an “exterior outcast” HDRI.
This presentation style, using references balls and machbet charts and showing beauty, clay, UV, it’s a production-ready setup.
I also decided to upload some backstage images on ArtStation, as this pureRef tab, I hope you will find them interesting. But let’s start from the beginning.
The first step was finding the right subject for the project. Together with Cristian, we discovered the incredible 3D scanning work carried out by the Smithsonian Museum on many archaeological artifacts and museum pieces.
I downloaded both versions of the scan. Using the high poly, I baked the main maps in Substance, including normal, curvature, ambient occlusion, and height. From the low poly, I obtained the final production-ready mesh.
The retopology process was initially done automatically in Maya, but first I had to quadrangulate the mesh and then manually fix several holes and imperfections inherited from the original 3D scan.
A massive texturing phase in Substance Painter followed, and this is where the real challenge began. After extensive reference research, I focused on material definition, starting from a believable base color and pushing the surface breakup using rock map
The hardest part was making the asset truly believable, pushing the level of photorealism as high as possible. As you can see, my workflow involved many layers, probably too many, and sometimes a bit chaotic, i know.
In the lighting phase, I worked with temperature and exposure to achieve a more natural and realistic visual response.
I also generated several utility passes, useful both for final compositing and for presenting the model in clay, with UV checker and wireframe views.
Every small adjustment was aimed at bringing this mammoth skeleton to life, every lighting choice designed to highlight the work as much as possible. Thanks a lot for watching!