Breakdown: Modeling a 3D Fantasy Character Based on a 2D Concept

Introduction

My name is Artem Bieliakov, and I'm a 3D Character Artist. I currently work on game characters while also developing personal projects for my portfolio.

I mostly like creating game characters. Usually, I find a concept that catches my attention and start thinking about how I could make it in 3D. I get a lot of inspiration from concept art and from looking at the work of other Character Artists.

I got into 3D in May 2023. Before that, I had spent about a year studying UI/UX design, but eventually I realized that I didn't want to continue in that direction. Around that time, I came across a YouTube video of an artist creating a character in Blender. After watching it, I decided to try 3D myself. For the next few days, I mostly watched other artists' videos and was amazed by the characters they were able to create. 

That was also when I found Hooman Raad's course, The Dwarf Warrior: 3D Character Creation for Games. I started it with almost no basic knowledge. At first, a 30-minute lesson could take me up to eight hours to complete. Still, after about three months, I finished the course and knew that I wanted to keep creating characters.

After finishing the course, I went on to create three characters of my own: Blacksmith, Dragon Knight, and Neferu. Each took around four to five months. Blacksmith was my first independent project, where I worked through the full character pipeline without step-by-step guidance and tried creating hair for the first time.

I started Dragon Knight almost immediately afterward. It was my first female character, so I spent a lot of time revisiting the forms and adjusting them until I was happy with the result. With Neferu, I focused more on modeling and texturing, especially the metal, since I wanted it to feel hard rather than soft.

I used Marvelous Designer in all three projects, but complex clothing was never the main focus. For my next piece, I wanted to find a concept built around a layered costume, which eventually led me to The Widow of Feathers.

The Widow of Feathers

I used a concept by Jocelyn Liu to create The Widow of Feathers. The project started quite spontaneously. One evening, I opened Marvelous Designer and began building the outfit directly from the concept. I wasn't planning to finish the character at that point. I simply wanted to practice and see how it would turn out.

I didn't have a specific story in mind for the character. What interested me most was the design itself, especially the layered clothing and all the smaller details. I also wanted to spend more time working with clothing in Marvelous Designer, since I hadn't really focused on that in my previous projects.

Early clothing blockout and pattern layout in Marvelous Designer:

I created the initial shapes by eye, using the silhouette and the visible layers of the costume as a guide. Then, as I started to see some progress, I began gathering more references for the clothing and smaller details.

Once I had started working in Marvelous Designer, I began gathering additional references for details that were difficult to understand from the concept alone. I mainly looked for examples of garment construction, small accessories, and the way different fabrics form folds. 

I started with the large shapes and the overall silhouette. Once the proportions felt right, I gradually added the cape, the jabot, and smaller elements. At this stage, getting the silhouette and the main folds right was more important than working on details. 

After that, I lowered the Particle Distance to create a denser mesh and moved on to smaller folds and fabric details. For the jabot and ruffles, I used internal lines and fold settings. This gave me a more regular fold pattern, which I then adjusted during the simulation. 

ZBrush

I brought the finished clothing from Marvelous Designer into ZBrush to prepare the mid-poly and high-poly versions. First, I added thickness using Extrude Keep Subdiv, which allowed me to keep the existing subdivision levels. 

In ZBrush, I refined the folds from the simulation and added a few more where needed. I created the seams with dedicated brushes and added a subtle crumple alpha at the end so the fabric wouldn’t look too smooth after baking. 

For most of the hard-surface and decorative pieces, I started with the base shapes in Maya and then moved them into ZBrush. After adding subdivision levels, I used Layers to try out different ornament variations. Some of the patterns were sculpted by hand, while others were made with alphas and dedicated brushes. 

I placed the smaller decorations along the sides of the belt using IMM Brushes. For some of the ornaments, I made several versions, tested them on the character, and kept the one that worked best with the rest of the design.

High-poly character and detail overview in ZBrush:

The mask took the most time. Since it sits directly on the face and immediately draws attention, I wanted to get its shape and details right. I went through several versions before settling on the final design.

Creating the Bird

I created the bird from scratch in ZBrush, starting with a simple sphere. Using DynaMesh, I gradually built up the main body shapes. I kept the wings as separate meshes at first, which made it easier to adjust them without affecting the body. 

Once I was happy with the wings' shape, I merged the wings with the body using DynaMesh and moved on to detailing. I added wrinkles, refined the feet and claws, and sculpted the scaly surface of the legs. The feathers were created separately at a later stage. 

Main references for the bird and its feathers:

 For placing the feathers, I used XGen. I first positioned the guides manually to define the overall feather flow, then created density masks for different parts of the bird. This gave me more control over where the feathers appeared and made it easier to separate them into different groups, since their shape and length change depending on the area of the body. I also made the primitives a bit wider so I could see their placement more clearly.

Once the primitives were ready, I exported them using Create MEL File and imported them back into Maya as curves. Then I used GS CurveTools to add the feather cards to those curves. The UVs of each card were already set up to match the correct area of the feather texture.

I baked the feather texture maps from the high-poly model. I prepared several texture variations with different feather lengths and densities, since different parts of the bird’s body use different types of feathers.

After baking, I adjusted the Alpha mask and then moved on to the Base Color. I used the baked maps as a foundation and added color layers on top. I made the lower part of each feather slightly darker and the upper part lighter, which helped give the feathers more volume and depth.

Feather texture variations baked from high-poly models.

Retopology 

I did the retopology in Maya. For the belts and some parts of the mask, I used the first subdivision level from ZBrush as a starting point and then refined the topology in Maya. The rest of the elements were retopologized from scratch.

After that, I created the UVs in RizomUV and baked the maps in Marmoset Toolbag. The character ended up with six texture sets, one of which was dedicated to the feathers.

Texturing

I created the textures in Substance 3D Painter and split the character into several projects to keep each one lighter and easier to work with. I made the metals, adding small surface variations rather than making them look too clean or uniform. I used different Roughness alphas, but kept them fairly subtle. I didn't want the metal to look heavily scratched or damaged, because that wouldn't really fit the character. 

I made the cape rougher and more matte, while the skirt was slightly smoother. For the light-colored jabot, I used a finer fabric texture with a decorative pattern. During the process, I regularly checked the Base Color and Roughness separately to make sure the materials were different enough from each other.

Creating the Hair 

As a starting point, I followed Hazel Brown's Advanced Realtime Hair Tutorial, adapting the workflow to fit my character’s hairstyle. I created and adjusted the textures and materials myself.

I made the hair textures in FiberShop and placed the hair cards in Maya using GS CurveTools. I started with the main cards to establish the overall volume and direction of the hairstyle. Then I added a second layer to build more density, and finished with smaller cards to break up the silhouette and add variation.

Building the initial hair-card structure and overall hairstyle silhouette in Maya.

Hair material setup and final result in Unreal Engine.

Final Presentation in Unreal Engine

I posed the character in ZBrush using Transpose Master, then brought the model into Unreal Engine. For the renders, I wanted to keep the presentation simple and avoid adding an environment, so I placed just a single plane behind the character. It created a brighter area around the silhouette and helped separate it from the darker background.

For the lighting, I used a standard three-point setup and added a few extra lights for specific areas. I made the upper part of the character brighter to draw more attention to the face and mask, while keeping the lower part darker. I kept the scene very simple, so I didn't use any extra environment assets or scattered details.

Conclusion 

The project took me around five months to finish. The mask was probably the part I spent the most time on, since I went through several versions before I was happy with it. Working on the bird and its feathers was also something new for me.

By the end of the project, I had a much better understanding of Marvelous Designer and felt more confident working with clothing. I also learned how to create and place feathers, and got more experience working in Unreal Engine. For my next project, I'd like to take that further and present a rigged character directly in Unreal Engine.

For beginners, I think it helps to choose a direction early and focus on the skills you actually need for it. I'd also recommend trying new things, asking other artists for feedback, and learning to notice what could be improved in your own work. Having someone who can guide you can also save a lot of time.

Thanks for reading! I hope you found this breakdown useful. 

Artem Bieliakov, 3D Character Artist

Interview conducted by Stephanie Almogabar