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Elvis Morelli shared with us his latest project of recreating Sir Sean Connery and detailed how Unreal Engine's MetaHuman helped build a highly realistic digital model of the legendary Scottish actor.
Today, Elvis Morelli, a talented Italian 3D Artist and Game Designer who hails from Carrara, known as the marble capital, has joined us to speak about his artworks and getting into 3D.
His journey in the realm of art and design began in 2003 as a Pixel Artist, turning into a 2D Artist for Nintendo GBA and DS games. Morelli is the Founder of 7 Raven Studios in Thailand, an active entity engaged in game development. Growing up in Carrara, where sculpture is the main and historical profession, Elvis was immersed in art from a young age.
"I transitioned from 2D to 3D about 5 years ago, focusing on digital humans, and MetaHumans have been a significant evolution. Since then, I've been working as a freelance, creating models for clients. The projects I've contributed to are still in development and covered by NDA, so I can't discuss them, but they involve video games and films.
I developed my skills thanks to my background as a 2D Artist and traditional sculpture, which is commonplace in my city."
We also asked Elvis to tell us more about working with Unreal Enine's MetaHuman, detailing what features are the most exciting when it comes to work.
"I started working with MetaHumans as soon as they were released by Epic. I had been eagerly awaiting the early access for months. The most impressive feature is that they come fully rigged, and the facial animation with MH Animator is at very high levels, with some adjustments on par with AAA solutions."
However, the project we're going to discuss in detail is recreating Sir Sean Connery. As Elvis shares, the Sean Connery project was "born from the friendship between myself and Lorenzo Perrucci, a classical sculptor whom I met in Carrara."
"We were both fascinated by each other's work, both in digital sculpting and traditional sculpture. We found many commonalities between the two mediums, and the idea of collaborating came naturally. The concept of merging traditional and digital art is fascinating to me, especially in today's AI era where everyone can do everything with a prompt. Going back to our roots, to the organic, getting our hands dirty in the literal sense, is priceless.
Collaborations in the digital world are often remote, and it's advantageous to be able to work from Italy, whether with a programmer from Japan or Brazil for a client in the USA. Zoom calls are great, but nothing compares to meeting in person, experiencing the scents and aromas of rooms filled with art, brainstorming with Lorenzo in front of the white stone that makes Carrara unique in the world, with a nice glass of wine – it's priceless.
This project is a challenge to a world that moves too fast and only in one direction. Sometimes, taking a step back is necessary to move forward. I love the modern and digital world, but deep down, I'm still a caveman at heart, and a part of me strives to remain that way."
Speaking of references, the artists worked with lots of images from films, photos that they could find online, "as well as small video clips from movies to observe expressions."
"Connery has a very distinctive mouth and unique expressions. After sculpting in clay, we scanned the sculpture using Revopoint and then refined it in ZBrush. The proportions once on the screen are different from the real world."
"The workflow involved sculpting in clay, scanning, cleaning the scan, and refining it in ZBrush. Then, we created both low poly and high poly models for skin details like skin pores and wrinkles (Connery's are unique). Texturing was done using VFACE XYZ, and Normal Maps were baked from high poly to low poly in Substance. The models were then wrapped onto a MetaHuman conformed mesh, and basic MH IDs were created. Blendshapes were generated based on expressions.
The Mesh Morpher Plugin played a vital role in inserting custom Blendshapes for expressions or modifying the MetaHuman rig. It's a fantastic program in continuous evolution, and the support provided is almost real-time. The software used includes ZBrush, Blender (for grooming), Substance 3D Painter, Marvelous Designer, Photoshop, and Unreal Engine 5.3.2."
When it comes down to creating hair, artists usually turn to Blender because of its comfortable groom features, the same approach was utilized by Elvis.
"The hair was created using Blender's groom feature, with geometry nodes from the latest version. Previously, I used Maya XGen, but I find Blender more comfortable to work with now. The material for both the eyes and the hair is custom-made. The hair material is based on eumelanin and pheomelanin for more effective realism. The eyes are not the standard ones from MetaHuman; here, too, the material is custom-made. The default eyes in MetaHuman have an uncanny quality that I've never quite understood; they seem more like glass eyes than real ones, at least on Lumen.
The idea was to use Lumen instead of path tracing to push Unreal Engine to its limits.
The textures were painted manually in Substance 3D Painter, based on XYZ VFACE scans, which are excellent texture scans that I often work with and provide an excellent starting point. However, it was necessary to paint and work on the details to match Connery's features accurately."
As for the animation, Elvis recorded himself with MetaHuman Animator a few times, firstly using his voice, but later, modifying it with Elevelab.
"I cloned Connery's voice by extracting it from some interviews or films, allowing me to use his actual voice for my performance. The animation was then created using MH Animator in Unreal, with cleanup and adjustment layers in the timeline, and nothing more."
Elvis also shared that they used videos of Sean Connery but only as references for sculpting.
Speaking of the time spent, the project took around 20 days, "with several reviews with Lorenzo."
When we asked how Elvis achieved a high level of likeness, the answer was the following:
"The likeness I've achieved is very good, but I never settle and always strive to improve. It's reached by sculpting every day, making mistakes, and learning from them. The uncanny valley is just around the corner; the closer we get to realism in 3D, the more complicated things become. It's like reaching the speed of light; you reach 99%, and the last 1% is unreachable."
"Steal with your eyes from those who are better than you" – I follow dozens of artists whom I've admired for many years, aiming to become as skilled as them. Some seem unreachable, but that's the beauty of it. Sculpting every day, even just for 30 minutes, is vital. Moreover, in achieving likeness, sculpture contributes 50%, while the remaining 50% is attributed to textures and lighting. Lighting is everything.
Start sculpting on a stage light Look & Dev setup, and only change the lights at the end. Most importantly, your model should resemble the subject without textures. If you can recognize it with just a clay material, then you've succeeded!"