Learn How to Create a Lifelike 3D Model of Planet of the Apes' Caesar

Introduction

Hi, I’m Logan Wiesen, a self-taught 18-year-old 3D Character and Creature Artist. I have been in 3D art for about 7 years, with the past two years dedicated to creating characters and creatures. Ever since I was little, I have been drawing characters and have had a deep passion for art. I still love sketching characters from time to time.

The Caesar Project

The main inspiration for my Caesar piece was the Planet of the Apes films. I recently watched them and was amazed by the emotional connection the apes had with the film characters as well as with the audience, not to mention the stunning realism of the digital creatures. Another thing that inspired me was the amazing performance by Andy Serkis. I’ve been a huge fan of him.

Before starting a project, I always conduct research on the character. To create a character, you have to understand them and their story. If you’re making the original one, you have to come up with that story yourself for the art to be interesting. 

The character in this project, an ‘enlightened ape’, was very interesting to me. I watched lots of videos on the behind-the-scenes work of the film’s VFX artists and the behavior of the apes. Due to this, I learned a lot about how the actors were turned into apes and what that process looked like. Apart from this, I learned about some technical aspects like how the VFX Artists helped bring these characters to life. This was extremely helpful! It aided me in understanding the great story that Caesar is a part of.

During my research, I also collected references. Caesar is not just a regular ape, so I wanted to capture his emotions and show the burden he bears of being a leader. I liked what Andy Serkis said when describing Caesar, “He’s taking on the world, so there’s the sense of this broadening of the shoulders, and the chest out more. But then the sense of the weight of everything [on his shoulders]”. I wanted to incorporate that into my final design. My main reference was Caesar on a rock standing with his chest out but his shoulders are drawn back and down.

On top, I got chimpanzee references, including their anatomy, and references for hands, feet, and face. I noticed that Caesar’s proportions are not exactly like a chimp's. I suppose this is due to character design intended to make him different from the other chimps. The main difference is that his fingers are not as long as a standard chimp’s. I also collected some gorilla references and incorporated some gorilla-like elements, such as shorter fingers and a thicker neck that we see Caesar having in the films.

Keep in mind that I continued collecting references throughout the entire project. I think that most artists would agree with me when I say that the reference gathering doesn’t stop until the project is finished.

Sculpting

After I had done my research and gathered my references, I went to sculpting in ZBrush. I started from scratch using spheres, combining and sculpting them to block out the main proportions, bony landmarks, and muscles.

Once I had general proportions, I moved into the next stages of refinement. The first stage consists of sculpting eyelids, adding eyeballs, sculpting fingers, toes, and nails. Also, it involves lightly going over the entire model with Alpha 06 on the Clay BuildUp brush set to low intensity and making larger adjustments to match the proportions of the character.

The second stage of refinement is adding all the secondary and tertiary forms, such as skin folds, wrinkles, and veins. Then I go over the entire model for a second time with the Clay BuildUp brush and add some light directional skin folds or wrinkles.

Around this stage, I usually would retopologize my sculpt, but this was a quicker project. I wasn’t planning on rigging or animating it, so I only utilized a quick ZRemesh.

It turned out that I should have retopologized, as I faced some problems later on. In the end, it worked out fine though. However, for future projects like this, I will definitely be retopologizing them.

Once I had all of my forms and was satisfied with the sculpt's appearance, I started adding details. For the high-poly details, I utilized HD Geometry in ZBrush, which allowed me to approach 170 million points. I sculpted smaller folds on the eyelids, and more break-up wrinkles on the face, neck, hands, and feet. 

For the skin pores and other micro details, I used FlippedNormals’ Skin and Face kits. I used their Alphas for areas that required more detail and wouldn’t be completely covered in hair, such as face, hands, and feet.

UVs & Texturing

As I mentioned before, I didn’t retopologize this project. I did a simple unwrap in ZBrush by separating parts into polygroups and used UV Master to unwrap the model. After that, I exported the unwrapped model to Blender and adjusted the UVs to have more detail on my texture maps, utilizing UDIMs.

I imported the UV unwrapped model back into ZBrush and baked a Displacement Map for all high-poly details, such as fine wrinkles and skin pores. After that, I exported both types of models from ZBrush and brought them into Substance 3D Painter. Within Painter, I baked maps from the high-poly mesh to get more detail when texturing on the low-poly mesh. The maps that I baked included Curvature, Thickness, etc.

For the Color Map, I started with a base dark color and used the Curvature Map that I baked earlier, with a darker color to get some values and contrast. It is important to have a good model before you start texturing to make this process much easier. Then I started painting in lighter and red areas, such as eyes, nose, mouth, and ears, and darker areas with layer masks.

To get a believable skin texture, it is important to continue to put layers on top of each other. For Caesar, I layered many procedural textures for dirt and mud, as well as hand-painted areas to break up the skin texture. 

When texturing, the most important thing is to test how it looks rendered. I use Blender Cycles for rendering. I set up a simple shader with some Subsurface Scattering and used the Displacement Map I baked from ZBrush to add miniature wrinkles and skin pores. The information that the test renders give you is valuable and important because the render is going to look very different than in Substance 3D Painter or ZBrush. Doing test renders throughout the texturing process allows you to see what parts you need to work on.

Early test render I made to see how the skin reacts to the lighting:

The Roughness Map is a very powerful tool, for this character in particular, for Caesar is an ape and probably doesn’t have a skin-care routine. I set the roughness high and broke it up with procedural textures to add more breakup to the surface. I also added another layer of roughness by utilizing the Coat Map.

War Paint

The war paint was incredibly fun to do. I believe it added a lot to the impression this project gives. The method I used was very similar to the one used by Nexttut in a YouTube tutorial, I will use this method for any future characters that have paint on them:

I like Kyle’s Paint Brushes, which are shipped with Painter by default and are helpful for getting realistic paint textures. I used some of these amazing brushes for the war paint.

In short, the process for the war paint was simple. All you need to do is to paint it, add procedural textures to break up the paint, and add another procedural texture to add cracks to the paint. It’s simple but looks good.

Eyes

For the eyes, I used the FlippedNormals Eye kit. The eyes in that kit are ready for any scene. I could have made custom eyes for Caesar, but the eye kit works great. Making realistic eyes is time-consuming and I didn’t want to do that for this project when I had access to the eye kit.

Fur Groom

To be honest, when I first started this project, I was worried about the hair. I use Blender and I know the newer hair system is definitely better than the older one. I bet any Blender OG knows what I’m talking about. I had used Blender’s hair system before and I wasn’t confident about my skills to pull off the fur. However, surprisingly, it was quite straightforward.

For the final groom, the hair is split into many different pieces. The hair on the head, the beard, the body, arms, and legs are all separate chunks of hair, as well as the very small hairs on his face.

The way Blender’s hair system works is similar to XGen. You add guides over your model and use modifiers to control how the hair clumping, the hair frizz, and many other factors. 

Similar to the texturing process, the secret to achieving realistic hair is layering, in particular layering Clump and Frizz Modifiers on top of each other to break up hair to add diversity. Remember, this creature lives in a forest, so I doubt he spends time every day combing his fur. I wanted the fur to look believable.

To control the hair direction, I used Density Maps. A Density Map is a black and white texture map that tells the software where to add hair. White color indicates areas with hair, black – areas without hair, gray – areas with some hair. Caesar also has a scar on his chest, so I was sure to remove some hair from that area.

Lighting & Setting Up the Scene

I love simplicity. To light the scene, I used an HDRI from Poly Haven. I tried to find one that best matched Caesar’s mood and personality as well as the environment in the film. Through the whole process, I went through a few HDRI’s but ultimately landed on one that, in my opinion, perfectly matched with Caesar.

I turned up the intensity of the environment in Blender and slightly boosted the saturation. On top of the HDRI, I added a Key Light to lighen up Caesar’s face, as well as a Fill Light to highlight the darker areas on his fur.

As for the final scene, I downloaded a free Rock Model from Poliigon. I posed Caesar in ZBrush using Gizmo, then imported the model into Blender for the final render.

Post-Processing

I use Photoshop to finalize renders. I start by importing a raw render. Then I adjust Brightness and Contrast. Most of the renders need the increased Brightness to look appealing. On top of that, I add many other Adjustment Layers like Vibrancy/Saturation, Levels, and Sharpness. I also brighten up the eyes by adding Brightness/Contrast with a black mask and painting around the eyes to brighten them up.

I also utilize 3D LUTs which can be used in Photoshop as Color Lookup layers. These drastically change the colors and mood of the image. I set low opacity for these layers. When doing anything, I like to follow the approach of “pushing it till it breaks, then dialing it back” by Jason Martin.

Conclusion

That is my recreation of Caesar from Planet of the Apes. The entire process took about a week. I had much fun researching, creating, and learning from this piece and sharing how I did it!

I am currently creating a step-by-step course on how to recreate Koba from Dawn of the Planet of the Apes as I’ve gotten a lot of people asking me for it. If you’re interested, want to get in touch, or are interested in my art, follow me on Instagram.

I want to finish with some advice for beginning character artists. Have patience. No one becomes a master overnight. It takes time, dedication, and discipline. Take your time to learn anatomy, form language, and other artistic principles, and, as you’re learning, put them to use. Practice as much as you can! I’m going to be honest with you – not every piece you make is going to be good. Every other artist before you has had a bad artwork. But you learn from those to make even better artworks.

“I never once failed at making a light bulb. I just found out 99 ways not to make one.” – Thomas A. Edison

Logan Wiesen, 3D Character Artist

Interview conducted by Gloria Levine