LogInAmelie Fischer talked to us about the Yvonne – The Last Sun Legionary project, discussing modeling skin, armor, and hair, texturing the detailed outfit, and setting up cinematic lighting using ZBrush, Maya, and Substance 3D Painter.
Introduction
My name is Amelie Fischer, and I'm a Character Artist from Germany. For as long as I can remember, I've always loved playing video games and have had a console at home. But I never realised that there was an opportunity to work in this industry. I always wanted to do something creative on a computer, so I studied media technology and design. During this time, I discovered 3D and knew that I wanted to make characters for games. After graduating, I wanted to specialise more in this and decided to hone my skills through the online program at Think Tank Training Centre.
In this article, I am going to tell you how I created my mentorship project "Yvonne – The Last Sun Legionary" at Think Tank Training Centre based on a concept by Filipe Augusto. This project was created under the guidance of my amazing and talented mentor, Colleen Larson, from whom I learnt a lot.
References & Inspiration
As I wanted to show variation in my portfolio and I am fascinated by old faces, I looked for a much older person. After surfing on ArtStation, I came across the wonderful concept of Filipe Augusto. Before starting any project, I always gather a lot of reference images to make sure I understand the character design from a functional point of view. I use PureRef for that.
To find references, I looked for actors who had similar facial features, real-life references for the character's clothes, the sword, the hair, different textures, and lighting setups. What I also find quite important are anatomy references (I can recommend the Anatomy for Sculptors book).
Sculpting
Sculpting a face takes time. To get started right, it is important to gather the right references. Whether you want to achieve likeness or not, I would always recommend choosing one or two faces as a reference so that you can achieve very natural results. I recommend famous people like actors, as these are the ones with the most pictures on the internet, especially pictures from red carpet photographs or a movie. As many red carpet images are taken with the same camera, they often have the same field of view and settings, which prevents warping of the face due to different camera settings. As a main reference, I chose Helen Mirren because she has a very interesting face. To match the camera angle in ZBrush, I would work in the perspective mode with a focal length of ~85-100mm (in the Draw tab).
The first and most important step is to get the proportions and anatomy of the face in order. Besides the actor references I gathered, I also used the Anatomy for Sculptors book and a view of a 3D skull as references.
For this project, I wanted to use skin details from a 3d Scan Store head, so I started with their free basemesh to save the process of wrapping the right topology on the sculpt. I followed this tutorial to project the skin details properly without losing resolution.
I highly recommend workig with layers and the morph target in ZBrush, as you can adjust everything from time to time or go back and forth.
What I have learnt is not to work too quickly in a higher subdivision, but to work my way up step by step. Focus on the base shapes of the face first.
The biggest challenge were the wrinkles and the fat distribution of an old person. I looked at a lot of close-ups of Helen Mirren's face, as she has very distinctive and unique wrinkles. What is also very important is to understand how the skin and facial fat ages from time to time. The skin starts to sag more and more and wrinkles form where facial expressions happen the most (around the eyes, mouth, etc).
Armor
For the rough version of the elements, I used ZBrush. I added all the elements and then either used ZRemesher or the Quad Draw Tool in Maya.
Once I got a cleaner topology, I returned to ZBrush to add hammered details typical of forged armor and to enhance the overall design with weathering effects. You want to tell a story, so it's important to consider where to add the damage and wear and tear. To control the density, I recommend working with layers.
For creating details, I used ZBrush's Standard, Move, Clay Build Up, and DamStandard 1 and 2 brushes. A tutorial by Arno Schmitz also helped me a lot.
The chainmail was created by using Nanomesh. To achieve this, I created my IMM Brush shaped like a piece of chainmail. You need an even mesh to make it work properly. Therefore, I created a low-poly base in Maya, imported it into ZBrush, and applied Nanomesh with the IMM Brush. Once this was done, I adjusted or even deleted some links of the chainmail to get a better result. I can recommend this tutorial:
Below you can find an example of the IMM brush:
I like the sword as it looks very unique. First, I looked for references and tried to find out which model it was. Then I modelled the base in Maya and subdivided and refined it in ZBrush.
And here is the final high poly sculpt!
Hair
For hair creation, I followed a real-time pipeline using hair cards. In short, I created hair cards in XGen, rendered them on a plane in xNormal and Marmoset Toolbag, and then manually placed them on the character’s skull in Maya with GSCurveTool. I followed Hazel Brown's tutorial, which is very well explained. So, if you want to learn more about this workflow, I highly recommend watching her tutorial on YouTube.
As it's a portfolio piece, I decided to split the texture into two 4K maps. One for long hair and one for short hair and brows/lashes.
Below, I explain the different cards that I have created:
Normal: I converted the xGen groom into geometry and baked it on the plane in Marmoset.
ID: With the help of a plugin in Maya, I divided the different hair strands into different groups and baked them in xNormal to get an ID map.
Base Color: To create the Albedo Map, I used the different ID maps in Photoshop.
Flow, AO, Alpha: These were baked in xNormal.
In order to make nice and believable hair, I worked with layers:
Base Layer or hair cap: Covering the scalp
Main Layer: Get the actual shape of the hairstyle
Breakup Layer: Break up the shape for more variety
Flyaways/transition: Make the hair look more realistic by adding flyaways and transition cards at the hairline
For the braids, I created a blockout in ZBrush with a Braid brush. Then I imported them into Maya and created UVs for the textures to use as a base layer. For more variation and volume, I duplicated the mesh 2-3 times and moved the UVs to a more transparent texture each time.
Below you can find my settings in Marmoset:
Retopology & UVs
Retopology was done in Maya using the QuadDraw Tool. I decimated my high-poly sculpt, exported it to Maya, made it "live", and then used the QuadDraw Tool to draw the low-poly mesh on top of it. The key is to start with large polygons and add subdivisions to get the proper silhouette. It's good practice to align the edges of different meshes that are close to each other so they deform better during the animations.
To add thickness but save polygons, I extruded the low-poly mesh and deleted the inner part except the edges and a few more loops. To optimize it, I closed the holes.
As it is a portfolio piece, I kept the polycount a little higher. The most important thing is that the topology looks clean and even.
For the chain, I created a kind of kit in low poly to reuse the individual pieces and then placed it again. This saves polygons.
The UVs were also created in Maya. Before I started, I planned how I would organise the UV sheets. I decided to divide them up by material as best I could and consider what would be most visible. As I said, this is a portfolio piece, so quality and resolution are important to me.
Texturing
When it comes to texturing, I always make a few changes to the viewport before I start in Substance 3D Painter. I changed my environment to "Studio Tomoco" and tone mapping to"ACES" for the most realistic render view possible.
For the skin, I used the 3D Scan Store Color Map as a base. As the scan Albedo was too yellow, I adjusted the color and the folds to make it look more even and natural. It's very important to make sure your facial color zones are correct. This blog article by James Gurney helped me a lot.
Then, I started adding a lot of procedural layers such as maps generated from baking (Curvature, Convex, Cavity, AO) and also reds/purples/greens to certain areas. To make it more believable, I added capillaries, veins, liver spots, and darker colors for the under-eye circles. To achieve this bony appearance, I painted a few lighter areas.
What helps me a lot is to import the mesh into the engine very early on, as this allows for faster iterations between the two as you export/import. To add more details to the skin, I added skin micronormals. You can see my settings below.
For the metal parts, I made sure to add a lot of color variation, as it makes the material more interesting. I also played with the roughness and height to make it more believable. Edge wear, dirt, and the use of cavity and curvature maps are also a must.
The key to believable leather is the use of color and roughness variations, and I always try to make the textures as procedural as possible, making use of different textures as masks. At the end of the procedural texturing, I will go in and add more specific details by doing hand painting. To guide the visual flow and tell a story, I added color gradients and mud. I also added scratches for the wear and tear look.
My character has several design elements that were made of leather. To avoid repetition, I made sure to play with the texture, color tones, and level of wear. This helped to divide leather objects into individual, interesting, and unique pieces.
And here are the final results!
Lighting & Rendering
Marmoset Toolbag 4 is a very powerful real-time rendering platform that I enjoy using. My lighting setup is quite simple. I started with an HDRI and three-point lighting (key, fill, and backlight) and then added smaller lights to areas that needed to be lifted, for instance, the face, the sword, and the necklace.
To enhance the scene I turned on Ray Tracing, added clouds using the Backdrop feature (Scene > Add Object > Backdrop) and created floating particles following this tutorial.
For a more interesting look, I also added stone assets from Quixel.
For my camera settings, I used ACES tone mapping because it adds more depth to the shaders. I also added a vignette and played with the following sliders:
After rendering, I usually like to adjust the saturation and the contrast in Photoshop, as the renders always come out a bit too desaturated in my opinion. I would also recommend adding your name in the corner on your final shots if you post it on your socials.
Conclusion
I am glad that I have been able to further improve my 3D character art skills through this challenging but rewarding experience that has greatly enhanced my skills and knowledge. I completed this project within 16 weeks during my mentorship at Think Tank Training Centre. One of my biggest challenges was not to be too perfectionist and to organise the schedule as time was a bit tight, and perfection is unattainable.
What I learned during this project is how much of a difference small tweaks to the model, groom, or shaders can make to the final image. Sometimes it's helpful to take a break and work on other things in the meantime so that you can look at it later with a fresh perspective. My character's face, for example, was a very long process because of this.
There are a few other things I've learned:
You indeed have to use a reference, so gather a lot of them. It can improve the quality of the final product, ensuring that the model is consistent with reality.
Throw your character into your preferred engine as early as possible to avoid problems and improve things directly.
Lastly, perhaps the most important thing is seeking feedback. That would also be my biggest advice to beginning artists: ask for feedback and advice. You can grow and learn so much through feedback from professionals and thus enhance your portfolio. You are not alone; there is a great and helpful community of like-minded people who will definitely want to network.
A big thanks to 80 Level for the interview, and thank you to all the people who support me and to everyone who took the time to read this. I hope this article was helpful. If you have any other questions, please let me know on my socials!