Photorealistic Portrait of a Native American Created with ZBrush & Maya

Introduction

Hey everyone! My name is Giacomo Cervi. I'm an Italo-Australian 3D Artist currently based in Milan, Italy. Thank you so much for having me! I began my 3D journey in September 2022, when I enrolled at the BigRock Institute of Magic Technologies, specializing in modeling and texturing. After graduating, I stayed on, first as part of the Research and Development team, and later as a teacher.

Last year, I had the opportunity to move to Milan to join EDI (Effetti Digitali Italiani), one of Italy's most renowned VFX studios. There, I worked on various international film and TV productions.

Today, I'm a freelance 3D Artist at Gate1 Studio, where we create high-end visual content for national and international clients across a wide range of industries, including automotive, fashion, music, and sports. Some standout projects include work for Formula 1, Ferrari, the King's Cup, the Asian Winter Games, Alfa Romeo, Ringo, Eurovision, Huawei, and many others. In my free time, my greatest passion remains character art, which is exactly what inspired me to complete this project.

Inspiration & References

The idea behind this project stemmed from a desire to challenge myself by creating a character to the highest quality standards I could achieve, following VFX pipeline workflows from start to finish. It was my first time tackling a project of this complexity, diving deep into modeling, look development, grooming, lighting, and rendering. It was extremely challenging but incredibly rewarding!

I've always been fascinated by Native American culture. My goal was to respectfully portray a tribal chief, someone whose face tells a story of life, tradition, and spirituality.

To achieve this, I gathered a wide collection of both historical and contemporary photo references. Rather than relying on a single image, I drew inspiration from many. One of the best resources I found for reference images of the human head is Daniel Boschung's website.

Modeling

It all started with a sphere in ZBrush. I manually sculpted everything, building the primary, secondary, and tertiary forms, then pushed into micro detailing using ZBrush's HD Geometry. I know this approach is a bit outside the typical VFX workflow, but I wanted to challenge myself to understand how to create realistic skin from scratch.

After this phase, I added additional displacement information using the Texturing XYZ V-Face maps, blending it with my hand-sculpted details. I focused on the elements that make a face truly believable: micro-asymmetries, signs of aging, wrinkles, and pores.

The eyes were built entirely from scratch, aiming for a realistic look without overcomplicating the geometry. The iris sculpt was entirely handmade in ZBrush, using radial symmetry, then breaking it up with micro-details.

For the groom, I used XGen Interactive, combining the strengths of both XGen Core and Interactive workflows. While I'm not a grooming expert, I wanted to challenge myself this time. I researched various tribal hairstyles and chose a loose, long-hair style based on real references, including a colleague of mine. I added eyebrows, eyelashes, a beard, peach fuzz, baby hairs, flyaways, and even subtle ear, neck, and nose hairs to enhance realism.

The headdress came in after the bust was complete. The feathers were the trickiest part. Rather than grooming them, I created them using hair cards, an approach more common in game development than in VFX.

I used Substance 3D Sampler to extract maps (Normal, SSS, Alpha) from real feather textures, then hand-painted additional details for variation. 

Time-Saving Tricks

I built a personal library of custom alphas in ZBrush for wrinkles, pores, and skin details, which drastically sped up my sculpting workflow. 

I began working on shaders in Arnold early in the process, aiming to visualize my model in render as soon as possible to ensure I was heading in the right direction. I developed shaders for the skin, eyes, hair, and clothing during the modeling phase, allowing me to fine-tune the visual direction in real time and minimize back-and-forth between software later on.

Retopology & Unwrapping

I used ZWrap to project the clean, production-ready Texturing XYZ V-Face topology onto my sculpt once I was satisfied with the forms. This gave me clean UVs and topology in one go, saving a lot of time and preparing the mesh for proper texturing. 

As for the rest of the elements, props, clothing, and headdress, I modeled them either in Maya or ZBrush, depending on what made the most sense for each asset. The clothing was created in Marvelous Designer to achieve natural folds. Once all assets were modeled, I brought everything into Maya to ensure optimal topology. I cleaned up the meshes where needed and handled all the UV unwrapping directly in Maya to maintain full control over the layout and texel density.

Texturing

The entire texturing process was done in Substance 3D Painter. I started by importing the high-resolution model and applying the diffuse map from the Texturing XYZ pack. Signs of aging were crucial to the story I wanted to convey, so I used a combination of custom masks and hand-painted details to add depth, variation, and realism to the skin.

One of the most fun and interesting parts was the creation of the embroidery on the clothing. I used Substance 3D Sampler's embroidery generation starting from a custom pattern I created, which gave me all the necessary maps to be used in shading later on.

The most time-consuming part? Refining the skin shader in Arnold. Achieving the right balance of subsurface scattering and specular highlights took hours of tweaking, but it was essential for creating a realistic result.

Special thanks to Amy Ash and her incredible tutorials! They were a game-changer.

Lighting, Rendering, & Post-Production

Lighting was probably the part I learned the most from. You can have the most detailed model in the world, but without good lighting, it simply won't shine. So first, I started by understanding the fundamentals: how different light types behave, how materials react, and how to replicate real-world lighting setups in 3D.

The final renders were done in Maya using Arnold. I began with several HDRIs, from neutral studio setups to more creative environments, so as to observe how the model responded under different conditions.

Huge shoutout to CAVE Academy and Texturing XYZ! They provide excellent starter scenes, which I adapted for my final renders.

Eventually, after different iterations, I built a custom light rig. Very minimal, only one key light, Texturing XYZ HDRI, and a limbo. That setup turned out to be the most effective for this character. I also made slight variations by shifting the key light depending on the camera angle.

To streamline the process, I used Maya's Camera Sequencer to render multiple camera angles in a single pass. An underrated but super useful feature! From Arnold, I exported render passes, which I then used in After Effects for compositing. I aimed for a cinematic look: color correction, black levels, grain, lens distortion, contrast, bloom, and subtle DOF enhancements using the Z-depth pass. A lot of these techniques come from my work at Gate1, where we constantly deal with product renders and LookDev work, where lighting must be impeccable. 

Conclusion

This project was a massive learning journey. I tried to apply VFX-quality techniques while also experimenting with more "artisanal" approaches when needed. One of the most important lessons I learned is how much storytelling matters, even in a still character. The accessories, materials, and design choices all contribute to bringing the character to life.

As for the future, who knows? I'd love to animate him someday, maybe build a short cinematic to tell his story. But for now, I'm just happy with how much I learned, and I can't wait to start the next one!

If I could offer one piece of advice to other artists: Put your passion into every piece and HAVE FUN! If you have any questions or curiosities, feel free to reach out on Instagram or LinkedIn! Thanks again for this opportunity. See you soon!

Best,
Giacomo

Giacomo Cervi, CG Artist