Snorri - Character Development

Project: Snorri Character Redevelopment (2020–2021)

Back in 2020–2021, I was responsible for the redevelopment of a character named Snorri, through a local contractor for MACK Media & Brands GmbH & Co. KG (Germany).

Before sharing any of the work I did for this project, I want to clarify that all rights belong to MACK Media & Brands GmbH & Co. KG. Long before this publication, I contacted company representatives to request permission to showcase my contributions — including the tools I used, the tools I developed, and my overall role in the project. I was granted permission under the condition that I always credit the rightful owners, which I fully respect and appreciate. I am sincerely grateful to MACK Media for allowing me to present my work.

I take non-disclosure agreements and corporate privacy very seriously, and I always respect the confidentiality of any company I’ve worked with. This is especially important nowadays, as the definition of authorship in entertainment continues to evolve with the rise of machine learning.

My Role and Responsibilities

Initially, I joined the project to assist with character look development, focusing primarily on shading and animation. However, after a major pipeline shift toward Houdini, my responsibilities expanded significantly.

At that point, I had already completed grooming work for two creatures, using both V-Ray and RenderMan in Houdini (before Solaris was introduced). This prior experience gave me the confidence to handle Snorri’s look development entirely within Houdini.

Once the new pipeline was established, I took on two major roles:

Character Development – transferring Snorri’s mesh and textures from the Maya/V-Ray pipeline into Houdini/RenderMan, rebuilding shaders, and reestablishing lookdev.

Environment Work – reconstructing large parts of the water park environment, which came as a heavily flawed CAD file. As many know, CAD data can be extremely challenging for CGI work. I remodeled, textured, shaded, and lookdev’d nearly everything from scratch.

The park’s concept art arrived barely a week before the advertisement deadline — an intense but valuable experience. Looking back, I can say I was five years younger, five years more naïve, but eager to learn.

Character Redevelopment

Snorri required substantial rework. The original model suffered from poor topology, which led to texture and rigging issues. To resolve this, I had to:

Remodel the character with proper edge flow and deformation-ready loops

Create a new rig-compatible topology

Rebuild UVs and reproject displacements and normal maps from ZBrush

Retexture the character from scratch since the old materials couldn’t be reused

Maintaining brand consistency was essential — Snorri’s visual identity had to remain true to previous commercials. However, the original texturing files were unavailable, so I rebuilt everything by hand while ensuring the final result matched the established look.

During this process, Brian Tindall’s “The Art of Moving Points” was an invaluable resource. His work helped me refine my understanding of topology and character deformation principles — knowledge that made all the difference.

Final Contributions

For the character development, my responsibilities included:

Refining the sculpt and topology

Baking displacement and normal maps from ZBrush

Retexturing the character

Establishing materials for the Houdini/RenderMan pipeline

Animating large portions of the final scenes

The client was satisfied, the contractor was happy, and so was I. It was an intense but deeply rewarding project — one that taught me a great deal about production pipelines, character fidelity, and technical flexibility.

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Thank you for reading, and I wish you success and inspiration in your artistic endeavors!