Creating Eerie Ghost Girl in 3D

Introduction 

Hello everyone, my name is Zeyu Rong, and I’m currently in my final semester at RUBIKA Supinfogame, studying game art.

During my time here, I’ve had the chance to try different parts of the game production pipeline. I started out focusing on props and texturing, and I also did some character and creature studies along the way. But earlier this year, I completed my first fully game-ready character, and seeing the character and texturing work come together really clicked for me. That moment made it clear that I wanted to grow as a 3D character artist.

Ghost Girl

I discovered the original concept by 孟祥宇, featuring a girl who appears to have been revived by a ritual. The design immediately caught my attention, so I decided to turn it into a small head-sculpt study. With this project, I wanted to practice my sculpting skills, try ZWrap for retopology, and explore the unlit workflow. Overall, it became a focused way for me to learn and experiment with an NPR-style pipeline.

I started from a basic head mesh and shaped everything in ZBrush. I focused on getting clean primary forms before moving into details.

Before sculpting the scars, I sketched their directions with masks and set a Morph Target so I could easily control their depth throughout the process. I first tested a set of alphas, but the result looked too clean and mechanical. I wanted the marks to feel like something a witch would carve with a shaky hand, so I switched to sculpting them manually with DamStandard, which gave me the irregular, uneven strokes I needed. Even though this is an unlit project and normal maps don’t contribute much, I still chose to sculpt the shapes. It simply felt right for the character.

After finishing the head, I used Transpose Master to pose the model according to the concept. The tool is extremely convenient because it lets me work on all the subtools at once without actually merging them. Once I was happy with the pose, I created the hair using Curve Tube. I blocked it out in four main groups first and then refined the shapes on top of that structure. For the braid, I followed Cobrabird’s ZBrush Braid Tutorial and created a custom braid brush based on the method shown there.

For the retopology, I started with a base head that already had clean topology and unwrapped its UVs in 3ds Max. I then brought that UVed head into ZBrush and used ZWrap to transfer the topology onto my sculpt. The tool is incredibly powerful. With just a bit of adjustment, I was able to get a very clean head topology. For the rest of the model, I relied on ZRemesher to generate the base topology. 

Texturing

The texturing stage was the main focus of this project, and all the textures were created in Substance 3D Painter. I used lighting tests in Marmoset Toolbag to understand how the shadows should fall, which gave me a clear direction for the painted lighting.

Because the project is unlit, all the lighting had to be expressed directly in the Base Color. I treated the texture like a 2D painting and built the volumes with a simple two-value structure, refining the form shadows and cast shadows, then adding midtones and a bit of occlusion to strengthen the depth.

For the colors, I used a glazing approach. I wanted to preserve the distinctive color mood of the concept, especially the contrast between the pale skin and the red tones that feel closer to makeup or bruising. The skin started with a bluish base tone, enhanced with red and green noise. I added subtle red tones to the thinner areas of the skin and kept them slightly different from the reds used for the lips and eyeshadow. I also left some visible brushstrokes to maintain a hand-painted feel.

Thanks to the sculpted scars from the modeling stage, the detailing was straightforward. I used the curvature generator to complete most of the color work, softened the result, and refined it with some hand-painting.

Lighting

I added a cooler reflected light across the model, which helped unify the colors and kept the image from feeling flat. The highlights further emphasized the volume of the scars and the eyes. Altogether, the lighting moved from a simple two-value setup to a fuller five-value structure.

One of the most challenging and enjoyable parts of the project was that I didn’t always follow the lighting reference I had established. That is the charm of NPR: the lighting doesn’t have to follow physical rules, and you can brighten areas that real light would never reach if it makes the image better.

When shaping the shadows, I focused not only on physical plausibility but also on making the shapes appealing. At the edges of cast shadows or where the midtones transition into the darker areas, I often had to decide whether the contour should be sharper or softer. It required a lot of testing and subtle adjustments.

Rendering

I rendered the final images in Marmoset Toolbag 5. Since this is an unlit project, I only exported two maps: the Normal and the Base Color. All lighting in Toolbag was disabled, and the material’s diffusion was set to Unlit with reflections turned off.

For the camera, I used the Reinhard tone mapping to keep the colors as close to the painted texture as possible. I also set the FOV to 30 degrees to reduce distortion and keep the proportions close to the sculpt.

Conclusion

This project allowed me to go through a full NPR workflow, and I learned something new at almost every step. 

One thing that stayed with me is a quote I’ve seen a lot recently: "Just make it exist first, you can make it good later." I think this is the best advice I can give to both myself and to beginners. Trust the process. Don’t get discouraged when your work looks rough in the beginning. If you keep working on it, there will always be a moment when everything starts to click.

Zeyu Rong, 3D Artist

Interview conducted by Emma Collins