Creating Old Detective Character In 3D With Subtle Storytelling
Quentin Casse joined us to discuss his process behind creating an elderly detective inspired by L.A. Noire, showing how shapes and textures help tell the character's story.
Introduction
My name is Quentin, and I am a 3D Character Artist specializing in characters for films and cinematics. I currently live in Paris, France. I am a big fan of the painter Caravaggio, and I have always been passionate about art, as well as film and CG.
Originally, I was studying engineering. During the pandemic, I had time to step back and seriously think about what I wanted to do in the long term. This period made me realize that character creation was what truly motivated me. I first joined a 3D school in France, which allowed me to build a strong generalist foundation, before specializing in character art for films and cinematics at Think Tank Training Centre.
Today, I would like to talk about one of my personal projects, The Old Detective, which represents an important step in my artistic and technical evolution.
The Old Detective Project
With this project, my main goal was to work on an elderly character, with life experience and a story visible through his face. I wanted to move away from idealized faces and focus more on imperfections, age, and subtle storytelling through shapes and textures. As I mentioned, I am a fan of Caravaggio and his use of chiaroscuro, how light can be used to reveal the soul of a character and his darker side... this is what I tried to achieve.
I had in mind a concept inspired by the video game L.A. Noire, and it immediately felt right. The atmosphere, the era, and the detective archetype perfectly matched what I wanted to explore. From that moment on, I knew this was the direction I wanted to follow.
Modeling
I started the character from a simple sphere in ZBrush. Since I wasn't following a specific actor or celebrity, I relied on scans of elderly people as anatomical references, then adjusted the proportions and features until I reached something that felt right to me.
When sculpting a face, the most important thing for me is to feel the presence of the skull beneath the skin. That's why I always keep skull references from different angles visible throughout the sculpting process.
Once I reached a certain stage, I exported a ZRemesher version of my model to Wrap, using a MetaHuman mesh to transfer the topology. This workflow saves a huge amount of time and provides a clean topology very quickly. I then reused Wrap to transfer textures from VFace for the face and 3D Scan Store for the body.
Clothes
Once the anatomy was validated, I moved on to the clothing. Since the garments were relatively simple, I chose an efficient approach using a modular library combined with Marvelous Designer. This allowed me to create the shirt, trench coat, and pants quickly.
Once the clothes were finished, I retopologized them in Maya using the Marvelous Designer retopology tool by Derrick Sesson, then exported everything to ZBrush to start working on the high-poly.
Texturing
For texturing, I mainly used Mari for the face and body. This allowed me to clean up artifacts related to the texture transfer via Wrap and to add more life and subtlety to the skin.
The most difficult part was giving a real story to the textures. For the face, I relied on references of elderly people with a lot of life experience: age spots, redness, visible capillaries, and fatigue. All these small details are essential to enhance realism.
For the eyes, I used 4K sclera textures found online, which I simply projected in Mari. I applied the same method for the iris, this time using Texturing XYZ iris textures. One trick to make the eye look realistic is to significantly lower the sclera roughness to make the eye shiny and alive.
For the clothing, Substance 3D Painter is, for me, the ideal tool. The smart masks and built-in procedural textures save a lot of time while achieving a believable result. I relied on real-life references of trench coats and fedoras to observe how fabrics age, wrinkle, and react to wear.
Hair Grooming
For grooming, I used XGen with guides. I will focus a bit more on the beard, as it is probably the most unique groom I have done on this project.
I split this part into two distinct areas to simplify the process: the moustache and the beard. When grooming, the most important element is the guide work. If the guides are not correct, no matter how many modifiers you add, the result will never look realistic. That's why it's essential to carefully analyze references and follow the natural flow of the hair.
Regarding the shader, the process is relatively simple. I based it on Sefki's video about Pedro Pascal on YouTube. I created a custom shader, applied a dominant color, and then painted different areas with color variations.
You then simply need to connect an aiUserDataColor to the base color and the diffuse of your shader to get the final result. In the end, I used seven descriptions for my character in XGen: eyebrows, eyelashes, peach fuzz, moustache, beard, hat fur, and nose hair.
Lighting & Rendering
Once all the steps were completed, I posed the character directly in ZBrush using Transpose Master, in a very rough and instinctive way.
For the lighting, I wanted an atmosphere reminiscent of old detective films: warm tones, strong contrast, and a slight presence of noise. I also created a close-up to showcase the modeling and texturing work.
To enhance the cinematic feel, I used depth of field (DOF) directly in the Arnold camera settings. Lighting is one of the most important stages for me: it not only enhances the work done, but also helps tell a story and create a strong atmosphere.
Conclusion
The Old Detective was an extremely formative personal project. It allowed me to improve my understanding of anatomy, especially by starting from a simple sphere, and to deepen my approach to texturing and visual storytelling.
Beyond the technical aspects, this project taught me to consider each step, modeling, texturing, grooming, and lighting, as an essential part of a whole. It is the balance between these elements that brings a believable and expressive character to life.
Above all, this project reminded me why I enjoy character art so much: the ability to create a strong human presence and tell a story through details.
