Designing a Miami Vice-Inspired Futuristic Police Officer

Introduction

Hello, my name is Julien Lafragette, and I'm a France-based 3D Character Artist. I've always dreamed of working in video games. As a child of the '80s, my first games were Mario and Zelda on the NES, and they sparked a lifelong passion for art and video game culture.

After several years working mainly as a 2D Graphic Designer, I began learning 3D in 2018 through online tutorials. In 2021, I had the opportunity to join the indie project FAIRYMM: The Insomniac Beauty with the Epidemika team, an amazing experience that strengthened my commitment to the game industry.

In 2023, I decided to put my freelance career on hold to fully dedicate myself to 3D character art training at Artside, which I started in January 2024. This program helped me refine my workflow and artistic eye. I also attended workshops by Glauco Longhi, Andrew Ariza, and Sefki Ibrahim, which greatly enriched my understanding of various aspects of character creation.

Sonny "James" Crockett

At the time, I was watching numerous GTA 6 trailers, and I thought it would be interesting to design a character set within the GTA universe. During my research, I revisited Miami Vice, a show that heavily influenced the GTA franchise. I watched it occasionally as a kid, and I vividly remember Don Johnson's performance as Sonny Crockett.

What I love most about video games is the stories they tell and make us live. Writing this character excited me just as much as creating him in 3D, so I took a few days to imagine how he could fit into GTA's world. In GTA 6, Raul Bauptista immediately struck me as the perfect antagonist for Sonny Crockett.

The initial goal was to create a likeness of Sonny Crockett and capture one of his iconic poses. I started by sculpting Don Johnson's face from a sphere in ZBrush, then applied and adjusted a 3D Scan Store displacement map for the secondary and tertiary details.

For each detail type, like wrinkles, skin pores, or facial asymmetry, it's important to use separate ZBrush layers to keep the workflow non-destructive. I aged Sonny Crockett beyond his Miami Vice appearance so he would better fit Raul's generation and reinforce the nostalgic 1980s atmosphere surrounding the character.

Clothing

For the clothing, I used Marvelous Designer. I first searched for sewing patterns matching the pieces I wanted to create. The more solid references you gather beforehand, the faster you achieve good results during character production, a step often overlooked by beginners.

In Marvelous Designer, you can import these patterns into the 2D workspace, cut them, and then have the pieces in the 3D workspace ready to adjust. Adjustments are always needed afterward, and many can be done by eye, it's one of the reasons I love working with Marvelous Designer.

The garments were then refined in ZBrush to add additional details, though part of the work was done in Substance 3D Painter. It's often useful to get a quick preview in ZBrush to see how the asset might look once final textures are applied.

For props, you can start with a model built in Maya and refine it in ZBrush, create it directly in ZBrush using ZModeler, or sculpt it and then perform clean retopology if needed. I encourage beginners to try different approaches to find the workflow that suits them best and to get comfortable moving assets back and forth between programs.

To speed up this exchange between software, several plugins can help, such as Styx by Daniel Molnar, which is very easy to use, or GN ZBrush by Gabriel Nadeau.

Retopology & UVs

Retopology and UVs were done in Maya. When creating UVs, there are several key points I always pay attention to: UVs' orientation, UVs' direction, and texel density. Orientation matters because ignoring it can lead to aliasing in certain areas.

Direction can affect how a repeating pattern behaves on the surface and may result in unrealistic stretching, though this can be adjusted later in Substance 3D Painter. Texel density of your model should remain consistent and high enough in visible areas. If you're interested, and you should be, there are great resources explaining this, such as the PDFs by Leonardon Lezzi and Timothy Dries.

The clothing and props were skinned in Maya, using ngSkinTools to refine the weight painting after we bind clothes to the metahuman skeleton. I also tested Unreal's Chaos Cloth, and the results were impressive, but I lacked the time and deeper knowledge needed.

Especially since I had to edit the garments for different scenes, which I handled in Maya. If I were to redo this project, I would perform all of it directly in Unreal using its built-in tools for skeleton editing, rigging, and weight painting.

Xgen asks a lot of trial and error, especially when it's your first time, like me, for the groom inside Maya and Unreal, but it's a really enjoyable process when you start to get it. I began by blocking the hair in ZBrush, then brought the sculpt into Maya to use as a guide for defining the overall volume and flow.

It's also important to get familiar with XGen's Expressions, and fortunately, there is plenty of content available online to help with that. I separated the different parts of the hairstyle to maintain full control in both XGen and Unreal Engine, since sometimes certain sections need to move differently or have a different texture than others.

The workflow involved frequent back-and-forth between Maya and Unreal Engine to adjust the groom. Export was done using the MetaHuman Groom Exporter from the MetaHuman To Maya plugin to ensure a clean and fast import from Maya to Unreal Engine.

MetaHuman

During the project, I closely followed the development of MetaHumans. I love exploring technological advancements, especially in Unreal Engine. What started as a simple likeness project with a single pose quickly became a full technical adventure.

I aimed to adapt my project to the MetaHuman workflow, even though I was still learning its details. This requires major adjustments: adapting the mesh, using MetaHuman-specific textures and shaders are essential steps from the start. To achieve this, I used the Maya MetaHuman Extra Tools plugin to convert a MetaHuman DNA into an editable .obj in ZBrush for re-export to Unreal.

I then used ZWrap to conform the base MetaHuman mesh to my sculpted face. Other approaches include using the MetaHuman Identity tool to generate a basic mesh from your sculpt for MetaHuman topology, or editing a MetaHuman from scratch directly in Unreal and refining it in ZBrush afterward.

Today, several workflows are actively explored, supported by plugins that simplify the process: MetaHuman for Maya, MetaHuman Extra Tools, PolyHammer for Blender, which is impressive and affordable, and 2DNAX. These tools allow customization of blendshapes and smooth integration of characters into Unreal Engine. I'm excited to continue exploring them to define my final MetaHuman workflow.

Texturing & Baking

Although I usually use Substance 3D Painter for the entire character, Unreal Engine now offers increasingly advanced shaders and textures for skin, clothing, and hair. It's important to explore these tools, as the engine provides more precise options over time, detailed adjustments for facial areas, normals, roughness, specularity, and new parameters for editing maps.

For this project, I didn’t keep the original MetaHuman textures, as I wanted to practice creating textures from scratch, like in my previous project. I replaced some of the MetaHuman maps with my own. For the face, I used a Normal Map exported from my ZBrush sculpt and corrected minor artifacts around the mouth corners and eyelids using the base MetaHuman Normal Map in Photoshop.

I then refined the roughness and diffuse in Substance 3D Painter before finalizing everything in Unreal Engine using the skin shader, saving time while keeping it fully editable. Additional maps, like AO or curvature, were baked in Substance 3D Painter or Marmoset Toolbag to enhance detail during texturing. For the skin diffuse, I work in layers: subdermal, epidermal, and surface.

For other elements, all texturing and baking were done in Substance 3D Painter. During texturing, I like to organize by part: within the same Texture Map, I create a color-coded folder for each element, one for the jacket, another for the scarf, or any other elements, as long as separating them makes sense.

Then, within each folder, I organize by material (type of leather, aluminum, iron, plastic, etc). I find this method the simplest and most efficient. It's important during texturing to carefully analyze all collected references and identify which details and colors stand out, even the very subtle ones. Grease stains, wear marks, and weathering, all of these small touches help tell the story of the objects.

Trailers

I had the idea to create trailers to engage with the community on Instagram. While it didn't work as well as I hoped, I'm still glad I tried. Each trailer, or 2Relic", was meant to explore a specific aspect of the character's universe, paired with a theme-related song and a short text, inviting viewers to guess the identity of the upcoming character.

Creating these trailers was a refreshing break at a point when the technical aspects of the project were becoming very demanding. It also served as a personal motivator to produce the props: in any project, it's easy to lose momentum, and setting small challenges like this helps stay motivated and maintain a steady workflow. You can check them here with music.

Pose & Storytelling Render

All scenes were rendered in Unreal Engine and then composed in Photoshop for the backgrounds using royalty-free images from Unsplash.com. Working with cameras and the Sequencer in Unreal Engine is a real pleasure, but it takes practice to use them effectively.

For example, you can create a "Master" empty level, then sub-levels containing only the elements needed for each scene: decor, lighting, and characters, making it much easier to stay organized. Unreal's documentation and recent project examples provide clear guidance for this workflow.

For lighting, I keep it simple, using two or three lights. I drew inspiration from Film-Grab.com, as lighting references are just as important as modeling references. Camera setup includes choosing the right focal length and depth of field. It's useful to know that Unreal allows a second viewport, where you can directly manipulate lights while seeing the final view in real-time, making it easier to shape the scene's lighting.

One of the main advantages of MetaHuman is access to the Control Rig, which allows posing the character easily, recording keyframes, and holding a pose during rendering. As with most Unreal tools, extensive documentation and tutorials are available online to guide the process.

Conclusion

The main challenge in this type of project is always achieving accurate modeling and likeness. Patience and careful study of references are essential. The technical aspect also took quite some time and was really challenging, but I preferred to fully understand each tool available to me.

It's equally crucial to constantly export your models and textures into the final rendering engine, as perception in ZBrush or Substance 3D Painter can differ significantly from the final result in Unreal Engine.

Take the time to carefully create each part of your project, and always use video game or CG target renders, real-life references, and artists' artwork you love as guidance for sculpting, texturing, and lighting. Remember that practice is at the heart of our craft, and by constantly pushing each of your artworks a little further, you’ll notice your improvement very quickly.

Also, don't hesitate to ask for feedback from peers or mentors, it's really important if you can, and remember to take breaks between work sessions. Using a Pomodoro timer can help maintain focus and prevent burnout.

Julien Lafragette, 3D Character Artist

Interview conducted by Gloria Levine