LogInÍcaro Ariel showed us how the Boruto Uzumaki project was created using Unreal Engine, explaining how the animation was set and the half-stylized, half-realistic style was achieved.
Introduction
Hi, my name is Ícaro Ariel, I'm 25 years old, and I'm a Brazilian 3D artist with a passion for characters. I started my journey in the field 6 years ago when I decided to quit my bachelor's degree in Science and Technology at the Federal University of ABC, where I live, and take a general 2D/3D art course.
Without the help of my loving parents, none of this would have been possible. It took a long time for me to acquire the skills I have today. The course I took at the beginning was certainly a good start, added to the years of study that followed, but I feel that I really consolidated the fundamentals of 3D better after I started working at Miagui Studios, a company that has been active in the 3D market for several years, both here in Brazil and abroad. I took part in a few projects at the company using offline renderers such as Corona Render and V-Ray, as well as real-time renderers such as Unreal Engine.
Uzumaki Boruto
Creating the 3D model of Uzumaki Boruto was a very rewarding challenge, as I've been wanting to bring the anime characters I like to life with my own style for a while now. My inspiration comes mainly from the Final Fantasy models that are used in the franchise's cinematics.
The quality and realism of the characters always made me very excited when I was little, especially at the prospect of doing something similar one day. In my references, I tried to bring all the possible positions and expressions of the character that are in the Boruto: Two Blue Vortex manga. I also looked for lighting and photography references created by other artists here in the real world, and finally, I tried to look for 3D models of characters already created that were in the style and graphic quality that I wanted for this project.
The main idea for creating the model was to use Unreal's Facial Mocap feature independently and cheaply, using the Live Link app on the iPhone as a tool. I also planned to use Marvelous Designer's clothing simulation for the project, where I would only be involved in the design and quality of the model, leaving all the magic of bringing the character to life to Unreal.
For this project, I used Unreal Engine 5, MetaHuman, Metapipe, Live Link, Maya, XGen, 3ds Max, Adobe Substance 3D, Marvelous Designer, ZBrush, Adobe After Effects, and Adobe Photoshop.
First of all, I would like to say a huge thank you to my friend and supervisor at Miagui, Ismael Ramos, a 3D character artist. In many stages of this project, I had the help and teachings of years of studies, which were passed on to me because he simply believed in me; thank you, master!
Modeling
I searched for and organized good references, always thinking about quality rather than quantity. I think that too many references can hinder the artist during the project rather than help.
I started with a generic male model created by the MetaHuman system and generated a base file for Maya by Quixel Bridge. Carefully respecting the vertex count and topology of MetaHuman's meshes, I sculpted the anatomy of the face and body as I saw fit in ZBrush.
To detail the face (skin and pores), I followed the texture projection workflow using the displacement maps created by TexturingXYZ and the ZWrap plugin within ZBrush.
Grooming, Clothes & Accessories
To deal with the character's grooming, such as hair, eyebrows, eyelashes, and peachfuzz, I used the XGen plugin within Maya.
To create the accessories – the bandana, necklace, bracelet, glove, kunai, and katana – I used the traditional modeling method, going from low poly in Maya to high poly in ZBrush.
As for the clothes that I planned to simulate, I tried to be very practical and objective; I did a search in the ArtStation store for potential free or paid Marvelous models that were pretty much what I needed to dress my character. Since it was impossible to get exactly what I wanted, I evaluated the ones that most closely resembled the design I had in mind for Boruto and customized them manually with my knowledge of the program.
For the sneaker, I looked up a scan of the model I wanted on Sketchfab and redid it all with a clean topology.
Topology, UV & Texturing
After generating all the high polys of the clothes and accessories in the software I needed, I retopologized them poly-by-poly inside Maya, giving importance to the loops and the number of polygons that would be appropriate for the character not to be too heavy inside the engine.
I also opened the UVs of each model within Maya, thinking of making the shells that needed more resolution larger in relation to the others but always striving for optimization and organization within the UDIM. An interesting point about the UVs of the clothes generated in Marvelous Designer is that since their retopology was done on top of the same apartment meshes they have in the layout panel, I made a simple UV snapshot on one of the axes inside Maya instead of cutting out the edges and unwrapping the shells, which really saved time.
When the models were ready to be textured, I did the baking process in Adobe Substance 3D Painter. This new version of the software gives me excellent control over the bake stage. I used some free materials from the Substance Share website to get a basis for the materials I wanted to texturize the models, from which I built the lookdev in the way I thought best, already thinking about the final output of the textures in PBR.
For the export, I used the albedo, ORM (Occlusion, Roughness, and Metallic splits in the RGB channels), and normal map systems. To texture the character's skin, I used the TexturingXYZ maps within Substance 3D as a base, customizing them to achieve the result of a somewhat realistic and stylized human skin. The skin's normal map was taken from ZBrush.
Rigging & Metapipe
With the character practically ready, it's time to associate the facial and body skeleton from the MetaHuman system with my custom character. I used the plugin in the free version of Metapipe within Maya to make this association, and the results are really impressive.
This part may be a little challenging and not very user-friendly, but there are many videos from the community and Metapipe itself that show how to use the plugin. Once the rigging is working, it's time to export all the meshes, textures, and grooming to Unreal Engine. The process is a little delicate and requires care to preserve the .dna file that makes the MetaHuman work. There is an excellent video made by the Rivers School:
Now, on to how to use Metapipe in the free Maya version:
Assembly, Materials & Lookdev
Now that we've got everything right, it's time to import each part generated in the previous steps into the Unreal project. Before that, I created an empty project in Unreal and enabled all the plugins needed for MetaHuman and Live Link to work. Organizing folders is essential to avoid getting lost and save time at this stage.
After importing a generic MetaHuman via Quixel Bridge into the project, I duplicated its blueprint, and from there, swapped the assets for my character's, so that everything was in the same place. After that, I created the materials with the textures imported for each asset, thinking about Boruto's overall lookdev, including hair, clothes, skin, and accessories.
I imported the skin and eye shader from another project that was already created by Character Creator – Kevin. I thought these materials were closer to the quality and aesthetic I was aiming for, so I just customized them using my textures. As for the mouth shaders, such as teeth, saliva, and tongue, I used MetaHuman's own shaders, which are very high quality. All the other shaders were created from scratch.
Lighting
This stage was really delicate and laborious. At first, I couldn't find the right lighting to see my character in the best possible light due to my lack of experience, to be honest. Fortunately, I had the help of my friend Ismael, and we achieved clear, clean lighting that simulated a photographic studio perfect for building a quality lookdev.
After that, I avoided fiddling with the set lights, always calibrating the shaders according to the black-and-white tones of the scene. For the stills I created of Boruto, I thought of different scenarios based on references to photographs of real people on Pinterest, from which I tried to make the scene as realistic as possible with a more cinematic lighting intention.
Having learned a bit about photography during my time working at Miagui was very important in terms of knowing how to set up and adjust the post-processing features on the Unreal camera, such as blur, FOV, light exposure, ISO, and much more. This really enriches the image and makes it more realistic.
Mocap & Walk Cycle
To record the facial capture shot, I used the Live Link app on my iPhone 11, where I selected the MetaHuman Animator option and exported the generated files to my computer. After that, I imported the capture data into Unreal and refined the animation generated for Boruto in the Sequencer that I would use for the final render. As the quality of the iPhone capture using MetaHuman Animator is really good and clean, I didn't need to refine much, but there were moments of flicks that needed to be adjusted to maintain the naturalness of the facial expressions.
As for the walk cycle, I used a pack of character animations from Epic Games' own store for free, where I retargeted the character animation for Boruto. After that, I also needed to refine the animation that was generated in the sequencer using the MetaHuman controllers.
After refining, I exported the animation from Unreal, imported it into Maya, and finally exported a new Alembic of the animated mesh. Now with the character's Alembic animated, I simulated the clothes created earlier inside Marvelous Designer with the same frame rate as the shots.
In 3ds Max, I imported the simulated mesh from Marvelous Designer. Accessories such as zippers and the like were attached to it, too, as they hadn't been simulated before. I used the Skin Wrap modifier to transfer the animation of the mesh exported from Marvelous to the one I was going to use in Unreal with the retopology and UV I had created. Once everything was ready, I exported an Alembic of the animated clothes back to Unreal. I had to synchronize the geometry cache of the clothes with the animation of Boruto's body inside the Sequencer so that there would be no desynchronization.
Rendering
For this project, I used Lumen, Unreal's standard global illumination and reflection system. After finalizing all the stills and animations within each sequencer in Unreal, it was time to render the cameras. I created 2 presets of renders, one for stills and one for the videos I was going to generate (mocap and walk cycle).
There are lots of cool videos on YouTube and in the Unreal documentation on the Epic Games website explaining each of the engine's rendering parameters, so it was crucial to know a bit about them in order to extract the best possible render for each situation. The renders in Unreal are very fast. I used my RTX 4060 8 GB VRAM video card to render, but having configured the parameters correctly was essential to achieving the desired quality without wasting too much time in the tests I did. It's always good to create folders of render versions so you can compare them and get a good result.
After generating all the final renders, I processed and refined the stills in Photoshop and the videos in Premiere. For this stage, I had to enable and use Unreal's Object ID so that I could have greater control of the masks when editing both the mocap and the walk cycle. I used Adobe After Effects for post-production.
Although Unreal brings great results in the renders, it was essential to correct and treat the raw materials such as color, light, exposure, post-processing effects, and unwanted artifacts. At these times we see how important it is to know a little bit about everything in order to achieve good results in any field we work in.
Conclusion
This project started in November 2023 and ended in October 2024, totaling 11 consecutive months, almost 1 year. I believe that for almost any project, the easy part is getting started, but the hardest part is finishing! Certainly, my biggest difficulty was polishing all the aspects of my character, which began to bother me in the final stretch. I stepped away from the project for a while to take a breather, and I confess that it was a dilemma to stay away from it. I did this so that I could look at it with a more critical and relaxed eye, seeing which parts were bad and needed tweaking, but staying away from the project for too long can also be extremely harmful.
One of the reasons for this is that you end up being a little oblivious to what was going on while you were in full swing, which hinders the resumption of the project and can lead you to different results than you had planned.
I learned from this project that learning things different from what is expected of a 3D character artist can be very valuable in bringing richness to the project, all knowledge is valid and can one day be used for something in the future. I never imagined being able to do my own facial capture and transfer it to a character in real time, being able to simulate clothes within Marvelous Designer, improving my animation skills, and finally studying more about lighting and photography.
Respecting our limits and simply resting when we're racking our brains to close or resolve some stage of the project is also important; often, we artists don't respect our own physical and mental limits. If we don't know how to discipline ourselves, the quality of our work can be compromised.
If I were to give advice to anyone starting out, I would address two issues. The first is about simply starting out and remaining constant regardless of what lies ahead. No one starts out very good at what they do, some may do better and others may not, but I can say with certainty that consistency in practicing and acquiring knowledge is above any previous talent.
Everyone who has made it far has faced countless difficulties, and none of us is free from them. I guarantee that if you don't compare yourself to those next to you or above you, which is totally unfair to yourself, your evolution will be real! Don't be afraid to make mistakes and post your work on the internet, try to surround yourself with supportive friends and stay away from those who hinder you on this journey with unconstructive criticism. Never be satisfied with your work and know how to absorb criticism.
The second is that there is a prejudice against those who use “shortcuts” to build a project. For some people, the end result only has merit and recognition if it was developed 100% by yourself, creating all the parts of the model from scratch. What matters in the end is whether the final quality of the piece matches the expectations of the artist who created it, and certainly giving due credit to the creators if you have used third-party resources. What's better: a bad model that's 100% your own or an excellent one that wasn't partly made by you?
I've been that kind of person, and I see many artists taking a long time to get out of the same place because they get frustrated when they see and compare their models with other more experienced artists. It's certainly important to do your own studies on your own in order to evolve, but the unspoken truth for those starting out is that in many excellent works that have been created by veteran artists, not everything has been created from scratch.
There is a lot of value when you simply produce and achieve quality results regardless of the medium. Worry about being conscious and knowing exactly what you're doing at every stage of your project, prioritize quality and acquiring knowledge, not things that feed your ego! Don't focus so much on being perfect in one area and forget about the rest, it's better to know a bit about everything before you become an expert. Always evolve a little every day in what you want to be good at; it's only a matter of time before you become what you want.
That's it. Thank you very much, 80 Leve, for the opportunity to share a little of the process of this project and for those who have read this far! Keep going, guys, and don't give up on your dreams!
Find the complete Boruto project in ArtStation.