A Quick Guide on creating 3D Character for vfx

In this article, I’m gonna walk you through on my personal project, which I recently completed, to show the process and techniques involved.

From sculpting and texturing to lookdev, we will explore the key elements involved for creating a realistic 3D character. Whether you’re a professional modeler or just starting out, this guide will give you a deeper understanding of 3D character modeling workflow. Lets begin with modeling.

Modeling

Before working on the model, I always search for some similar references which exist in real life. Also, add CGI created characters on the reference board. This gives a basic idea of what my character major shape will be, so that sculpting process will be easier ahead. Below are the main references I followed while sculpting.

After collecting the references, I work on blocking of the character. If you see any interesting images on internet that match the character look, you can add up on the reference board.

Blocking

After gathering references, I start with very basic shapes in Zbrush. I used sphere for this blocking, and move tool for shaping. This will give you an rough idea of the character’s proportions and overall shape.

I used: move, standard, clay, buildup and dam standard brushes on dynamesh so far.

Retopology

After I am done with overall shape in Zbrush, I used zremesher for base retopology, before starting retopology in Maya, which is just a process of creating low-topology model that is better suited for animation. Finally, I did some manual fixes on the areas where needed like: mouth cavity areas, hands, eyes, etc. Make sure those fixes result into an animatable mesh.

Uv Mapping

The next step is to unwrap UVs, for which I used maya for cutting seam and mapping. 3D cut and sew UV tool is very useful to cut seam in 3D space. It is the best practice to make all of the UVs symmetric, since the character will be symmetric in most of the areas, which makes easier to mirror textures on symmetric UVs.

Detail Sculpting

Once UVs are completed, I imported the model into Zbrush again, and project the earlier sculpted model into this.

To add extra secondary and tertiary details like: veins, scales, shell details, etc., I revisited sculpting along with alphas and brushes. It’s also important to keep in mind that, detailing a character sculpt in ZBrush can take a lot of time, so be prepared to put in a lot of work.

I used: Drag Alpha, Dam Standard, Morph, Clay buildup and Standard brushes to create these details. I have used flipped normals skin kit alpha and costume alpha. In addition to drag alpha, I worked on manual sculpting to make sure details look good.

After the detailing is completed, I test rendered on Maya and fixed if anything was necessary, with couple of back and forth between Maya and Zbrush.

Now, it’s time to go on to Mari and work on more displacement map like: project lizard skin on neck and, project grayscale map of wood to make a crease on horns. You can find displacement maps for projection on: texturing xyz.

Texturing

Now, we need to create textures for the model. For texturing, we should collect the references, and define what materials and color should look like in the final result. Planning before painting is very vital.

We need to breakdown the texture details, and work on them one-at-a-time without making it too complex, by trying to do all at once. Normally, I work on diffuse(base color) map at first, and then create other supporting maps using the diffuse. I recommend node base system in Mari to make scene management simple, which has more features than layer system.

Resources for learning texturing:

• Introduction to Mari by Tom Newbury
• Pixel Peeping by Tom Newbury
• Texturing a character in MARI — with Sam Alicea
• Artruism Digital
• Zack boxall corcodile tutorial

Lookdev and?Lighting

This is the final stage of creating materials from textures, and testing them with different HDRI lighting conditions to make sure everything looks good. You can find free HDRIs in polyhaven.

I have rendered this using ACES color space in Arnold, and I recommend to switch to ACES if you haven’t switched yet.

You can see above in the shader graph how its setup. I have used rgb layer node with color correct node, “RGB MASKS” from textures to control roughness and SSS values.

After lookdev is completed, Its time to setup lights for final look render. Below is the light setup and its render.

Final Renders

Lets see some final renders:

In summary, creating a realistic 3D character takes time, effort and a lot of attention to detail. From developing their backstory and personality to understanding their motivations and goals. Remember to consider the character’s physical appearance, as well as their place in the story and how they interact with other characters. We can also add depth and complexity to the story, and make it more interesting.

Thanks for reading this article. Hope this was helpful for your character creation workflow. Also, don’t forget to give feedback on the article and character too. I always seek to improve my artwork and share knowledge. You can connect with me on Artstation, Instagram for more updates.

Thank you?:)