Sculpting & Texturing a Semi-Realistic Lobo Bust with ZBrush & Substance 3D

Introduction

Hi everyone, my name is Eric Liu (AKA Qi Liu). It's a pleasure to be interviewed by 80 Level again. I'm a Character Artist from China, and I've been working in the game industry for more than 10 years. I've contributed to several commercial art outsourcing projects, including Marvel Rivals and Path of Exile. I specialize in 3D asset creation, using Maya, ZBrush, and Substance 3D Painter to model and texture game assets.

Project Inspiration

I created the Lobo project because I am a fan of Marvel and DC Comics and Ben Oliver's work, especially his DC heroes. So I decided to make a hero bust with badass vibes.

Sculpting Workflow

To prepare for the project, I first gathered multiple references online. For a personal project, I prefer to start with a sphere, as it helps build muscle memory through repetitive practice. I had the whole process of the blockout recorded:

For the eyes, I simply placed two spheres as eyeballs; for the gum, I masked that area of the mouth and extracted it. The clothing was created with a similar method, and the teeth started as a cylindrical base that I tweaked a bit.

Once the form was done, I ZRemeshed it several times and reduced the polycount to make it easier to fix and tidy the edge flow for later use in the pipeline.

Topology & UV

For the head topology, I used the base mesh from ZWrap and projected all the detail from the head blockout onto the base.

For the jacket and T-shirt, I took the re-meshed base and fixed the edge flow in ZModeler.

I normally use Maya for UV work, as I am used to doing UVs the old-fashioned way.

Preparation for Texturing

For texturing, I got all the maps baked for each UV Set in Marmoset Toolbag (the maps you need to bake before texturing are curvature, cavity, convexity, AO, position, normal, and world normal maps). Once all the maps were well baked, I imported them into Substance 3D Painter.

Texturing Face

After getting all the maps set up and ready, I built up a couple of layers as a basic grayscale. The first layer is a solid color layer; I set the value to 0.5 gray. The second one is an AO layer; the gray value I gave it is 0.23, and then I changed the blending mode to Multiply. The third one is a light layer; the gray value is set to 1, and the blending mode is Overlay.

Once the basic grayscale was ready, I created a painting layer on top of it and added a filter called Gradient so that I would be able to give it some basic color. You can also adjust the color position to make the contrast stronger or weaker based on your own adjustment.

After I finished the basic color, I added multiple fill layers above it: some purplish color around the nose, some greenish color around the jaw and chin areas; I also added some yellowish color on the forehead and cheek areas.

Garment Texturing

I used the same method I employed to make the face texture for the basic grayscale and solid color part. Additionally, I manually added some dirt, damage, and scratches on the jacket by using alpha strokes.

The challenging part of texturing was that I didn't do much damage and scratching on the high-poly model, which meant there weren’t enough details on the jacket, so I had to make some of them in Substance 3D Painter. I just manually painted some of the areas for the damage and scratches, then gave a negative value in the height channel; after that, I hand-painted some shadows on them so it would give some fake depth to all the damage and scratches. 

Rendering

I used Marmoset Toolbag for rendering. Once I was halfway through texturing, I put the model into Marmoset and started the lighting setup.

I used one spotlight as a key light because it can give a nice, smooth light transition on the model by adjusting the values of spot angles and spot sharpness. I used a directional light as a fill light to brighten up the dark side, and then I added a reddish color to it to give the character a dangerous, badass vibe. There were also two rim lights behind the character; I used them to bring out the silhouette.

For tone mapping, I normally set it to Hejl because it delivers strong contrast with soft highlight roll-off and rich, stable colors. I set the clarity value to 1 so it would enhance the details. I also tweaked the curve editor slightly to strengthen the contrast.

Conclusion

The main challenge was creating a truly badass character in a semi-realistic style. Since I had no solid concepts for my character, I had to test multiple expressions based on the references I gathered.

The advice that I would give to beginners is to start something small and finish it; don’t make a full character right away. Start with a simple prop or bust, finish it, and learn from the process.

Try a bit of everything early on – modeling, texturing, and rigging – then dive deeper into what you like most.

Eric Liu, 3D Character Artist