How to Make Cozy, Realistic Portrait of Woman in 3D

Introduction

My name is Quentin. I am a character artist specializing in film and cinematics, based in Paris, France. I originally studied engineering before fully transitioning into 3D and character creation during the pandemic. I later specialized in character art at Think Tank Training Centre.

Today, I would like to share one of my personal projects: The Café Portrait Project.

Café Portrait

With this project, my goal was to translate a 2D concept into a realistic 3D character. The concept was a drawing by one of my favorite concept artists, Pavel Hristov.

What really attracted me to this concept was the expression. I usually create renders with neutral facial expressions, so this project gave me the opportunity to work on a smile and explore facial expressions more deeply.

A book that helped me a lot while working on expressions in general is Anatomy of Facial Expressions by Uldis Zarins.

Modeling

I knew from the beginning that I wanted to pose the character later, so I started with a MetaHuman mesh. I sculpted in ZBrush to achieve the head I wanted, then exported the mesh to Unreal Engine to create a custom MetaHuman. This allowed me to export the character with his rig into Maya, where I could pose it properly.

Once the proportions were correct, I created the clothes in Marvelous Designer. I like to keep the shapes simple and rectangular, as it makes the retopology process much easier later in Maya.

Texturing

The texturing process for this character was not extremely complex. I used Mari for the face and makeup, and Substance 3D Painter for the sweatshirt and the hands.

For the face and hands, I transferred Texturing XYZ face scans and a hand scan from 3D Scan Store using Wrap.

In Mari, I cleaned the wrapped textures and added subtle color variations to the face. I also slightly reduced the number of freckles. For the specular map, I used the VFACE cavity map, which I adjusted in Mari using Levels.

For the sweatshirt, I kept it simple. I used a base texture with noise and then added value variations based on my references to give it a more natural fabric feel.

Lookdev

To have more control over the makeup inside Arnold, I used an aiLayerShader. This allowed me to tweak elements such as eyeliner, eyeshadow, and lipstick directly in lookdev without having to go back to the texturing software. Having real-time control makes the process much more flexible.

I applied a similar principle to the roughness. I used two aiLayerRGBA nodes connected to the roughness of the shader, along with ISO maps provided by VFace.

Grooming

It was the first time I created this type of hairstyle, so I searched for references on Pinterest to understand the haircut from every angle. Then I created the grooming with 6 different descriptions.

I also added fuzz to the sweatshirt to enhance realism.

As in the original concept, I split the hair into two distinct parts: the left side brunette and the right side red. To achieve this, I simply used separate XGen descriptions, such as twintail left and twintail right. This allowed me to independently adjust the colors inside the aiStandardHair shader in Arnold.

Compositing & Lighting

For the lighting, I tried to recreate the atmosphere of a café. I placed the key light coming from above and added a rim light from behind to highlight the sweatshirt fuzz.

For the background, I generated a café image with ChatGPT and placed it on a plane to complete the composition.

Conclusion

This project pushed me to step outside of my comfort zone, especially by working on a smiling expression instead of a neutral face. Sculpting a believable smile requires subtle control of the muscles around the mouth, cheeks, and eyes, and it made me realize how small adjustments can completely change the emotion of a character.

It also reinforced the importance of look development and lighting in enhancing expression. Even with solid modeling, the final emotion truly comes alive through shading and light.

Quentin Casse, Character Artist