Realistic 3D Portrait Of Seong Gi-Hun From Squid Game
Hirotaka Morino joined us to talk about his take on Seong Gi-hun, which he created as a way to challenge himself with realistic digital doubles and hair grooming in Houdini.
Introduction
Nice to meet you. My name is Hirotaka Morino, and I work as a 3D Character Artist. I'm originally from Osaka, Japan, and I have about four years and eight months of experience in the visual effects industry.
Ever since I was a child, I've always loved creating things: drawing, sculpting, anything hands-on, and I originally aimed to become a manga artist. At 19, I moved from Osaka to Tokyo and lived in a shared house for aspiring manga artists. For about four years, I submitted my work to publishers and even won several awards in their competitions. However, at some point, I found myself unable to draw manga anymore.
Not wanting to waste time, I decided to study 3D so I could create backgrounds for manga, and enrolled in Digital Hollywood, a one-year CG/VFX program. After joining the school, I gradually discovered the joy of creating characters and creatures, and before I knew it, I was aiming to become a character artist.
After graduating, I spent a year studying anatomy for humans and animals on my own, as well as grooming with XGen, while continuing to build my portfolio.
As a result, I was hired by Griotgroove Inc. in Tokyo, where I joined Linda, a team with more than 20 years of experience in high-end animal CG and cinematics. Including freelance work and other studio projects, I have worked for about four years and eight months on commercials, music videos, films, and drama series.
The Seong Gi-hun Project
I created this project because I was inspired by Netflix's Squid Game. I loved the compelling character of Seong Gi-hun. His expressive, human qualities made him a character I really wanted to bring to life. Through this project, I wanted to challenge myself in several areas:
- Creating highly realistic, memorable facial expressions and deepening my understanding of Asian facial features through digital-double production;
- Using Houdini grooming to create naturally messy hair;
- Look development and rendering of a digital double in a Houdini & Arnold environment;
- Testing a technical workflow using R3DS Wrap and Mari to fully leverage tools like Texturing XYZ.
Modeling
I began the process in ZBrush, sculpting the face while carefully studying reference images. After that, I created a clean model in Maya and Marvelous Designer.
For posing, I applied a simple Quick Rig setup. After establishing the pose, I used it as a base to run the clothing simulation in Marvelous Designer.
Using the simulation mesh from Marvelous Designer as a base, I deformed the clothing model in Maya with the Wrap deformer. Areas that broke or collapsed, such as the zipper and intersections with the inner layers, were manually rebuilt and corrected.
Hair Grooming
The hair grooming, as well as the final look development and scene setup, were done in Houdini, and I used Arnold for rendering. For Gi-hun's distinctive hairstyle in Squid Game Season 1, I paid special attention to the shape of his signature bangs and the longer hair at the nape of his neck.
Since he is portrayed as a 47-year-old man who has lived a difficult life, I designed his hair to look slightly messy with subtle strands of gray mixed in.
The attributes are managed at the guide hierarchy level.
For the eyelashes, I converted them into polygons using a PolyWire node.
Since my main goal for this project was to improve my skills and deepen my understanding of facial structure, I didn't optimize for speed. Instead, I worked on the project little by little whenever I had time, continually refining the model until I was satisfied. At the same time, I made sure not to repeat unnecessary work, using Layers in ZBrush for efficient iteration, and structuring the grooming work in Houdini so that each element was separated and easy to revise at any stage.
Texturing & Lookdev
I performed the retopology in Maya using the Quad Draw tool on top of the sculpted mesh.
For the eye and mouth areas, I created a clean loop-based topology to ensure proper deformation.
For the skin texture creation, I first used Wrap by Faceform to project the Texturing XYZ VFace onto my sculpted model. After that, I brought the assets into Mari, where I overlaid the wrapped model onto the retopologized mesh and transferred the textures, such as the diffuse and displacement maps. I then refined the size and placement of the original wrinkles and used these maps to generate additional textures, including the roughness and subsurface scattering maps.
For the eyes, I added iris details in ZBrush, and created the textures for the eyes and clothing in Substance 3D Painter.
I set up a simple lighting environment using an HDRI as the main light source, adding only floor reflections for subtle visual grounding. The light sample value was set to 3, and all final renders were completed using Arnold.
Conclusion
The biggest challenge was achieving a strong likeness. I focused heavily on how to match the references directly within the 3D scene, paying close attention to East Asian facial musculature and bone structure. My goal was to create forms that looked natural and convincing from every angle.
If I were to give advice to beginners in realistic character creation, I would say: don't focus too much on details at first. Instead, prioritize a clean, appealing silhouette and make sure the overall biological shapes feel natural.
Fine details and technical skills are important, of course, but through my professional experience, I've learned that what matters most is how quickly you can evaluate the natural beauty of the shape, color balance, and overall proportions, especially when viewed at a distance. Establishing this foundation early on makes everything else stronger.
