This creature design was inspired by the ethereal aesthetics of Princess Mononoke. The a deer adorned with coral-like growths on its head and back, blending organic elegance with a touch of the fantastical.

To achieve this, I used SpeedTree to generate staghorn coral structures for the horns. SpeedTree allowed precise shaping of the horns while ensuring a natural distribution of smaller details, such as tiny studs. Once the settings were fine-tuned, I exported the model to ZBrush, where I further sculpted the horns to integrate with the creature's anatomy. I also incorporated Scleractinian corals, a leaf shape coral 3D scan model found online. By enhancing the detail on the scans with image-generated alpha map, I created a highly detailed master leaf, which I then used to populate the rest of the model.

In Substance Painter, the detailed geometry enabled the generation of AO and cavity maps, providing control over color gradients and surface depth. Since all the elements were derived from a single master piece, allowing for a single displacement map to be applied across the asset. This not only maintained consistency but also optimized the model for rendering by reducing its resource footprint.