The Huntress: Modeling & Texturing a 3D Character in Maya, ZBrush, and Substance 3D Painter

Introduction

Hi there! I’m Eduardo Morales, but you can call me Edu. I’m from Barcelona, Spain. I aspire to become a 3D Character Artist for games, and I’m currently finishing my last three months of studies at Think Tank Training Centre.

I’ve actually been involved in art and design in general for a while. Oddly enough, I started studying for a Bachelor in History of Art at the age of 18, but the pure theory wasn’t for me (although it has served me well so far with artistic theory such as image analysis, color theory, composition, knowledge of different styles and looks, etc). I wanted to pursue something more practical, thus I enrolled for a higher degree in Traditional Animation and Post-Production, and even though it led me to a few little beginner jobs, it didn’t feel like I was doing what I wanted. That’s when I decided to pursue a career related to what I loved the most: video games.

At some point, I lost track of my career and ended up doing 3D environments for AR/VR in TV, and lately, I’ve been working in Virtual Production with Unreal Engine doing commercials and advertisements in general. Most of the skills that I have come from this multifaceted and versatile background that I have, and I’m very grateful for that. Some of the most interesting projects I have contributed to lately are the creation of some commercials for Dell’s campaign Expand your Youniverse using Virtual Production with Unreal Engine, which you can find on YouTube:

I was part of the team behind the creation of the virtual backgrounds all over the commercials.

After some years working in this field, I found myself at a point where I felt “it wasn’t quite there yet”. Something was missing. I realized that I wanted to do cool 3D art for games, but I needed a strong portfolio. I was always afraid to pursue doing 3D characters because it felt really daunting to me. That was until I started my studies at Think Tank. After browsing through tons of resources and info, I stepped into Think Tank’s website. I just needed to take a glance at their student showcase and saw how strong the portfolios were. That’s when I decided I would enroll in their full-time program and try to rebuild and redefine my portfolio as a 3D Character Artist for Games, and I couldn’t be happier with the decision that I took. Shoutout to Tomas Sackman, one of my Think Tank instructors, for encouraging me to pursue doing what I loved. That’s been my dream since I decided that I wanted to do 3D art some years ago.

In this article, I’d like to share a breakdown of The Huntress, a recent piece I created for my Final Advanced Project at Think Tank, a 10-week project thought to create a full videogame character. I also want to take the chance to thank my supervisor in this project, Luis Omar.

The Huntress Project

To get started with The Huntress project, I browsed through a lot of concept art out there, until one of them caught my attention. A beautiful concept from Yi Tang: 

The aura that the character had was mesmerizing, and I thought it’d be amazing to put to practice my organic sculpting skills and to do complex real-time hair. I also really liked the fantastic vibe it had, and the fact that the character wasn’t fully human, so I could have fun with creature-like features like her horns, and her wooden limbs.

For the references, I researched and gathered a few images of each element the concept had, like the mushrooms in her arms, tree bark, furs, bones, skulls, and tusks.

I tried to break my PureRef board into islands of concepts: body anatomy, head anatomy, real references (I used Katheryn Winnick, the actress behind Lagertha in Vikings as my main reference), complements, hair, and makeup. I’d also like to mention that I used Anatomy 4 Sculptors as one of my main resources. Not only for this project but for any character art-related project, I think it’s one of the best resources out there that an artist can find.

After the references were clear, it was time to start blocking out the main volumes in ZBrush, setting proper proportions. I really recommend staying low polycount at this stage. The more polygons, the wobblier your shapes will become, while also turning your machine a bit slower, and in general, more polygons mean more potential problems, so I tried to keep it low and simple to easily and quickly iterate during the blocking phase.

Modeling the Character's Head

For both the face and head, I started working from the base blockout, generating the main shapes until I was able to dig deeper into tweaking the facial features, like the eyes, nose, and mouth. I had to look for a proper solution for the ears, so some references from elven-like characters were in order too. After sculpting the whole details, it was time to create some skin micro details, and that’s where Texturing XYZ faces come in. I used one of their texture projections, and with Wrap3D, I projected the Displacement Map on top of the face.

Once the base projection was ready, I applied the Displacement Map in ZBrush for further tweaking and applying corrections, especially in the eyelids, sides of the nose, and lips, where most projected textures can’t reach out properly. At this stage, it was time to set up some Layers to easily iterate and apply changes on the go in a non-destructive workflow. That’s when I separated each part of the hand sculpt that I did on top of the projection (eyelids, lips folds, little pimples, and skin unevenness).

For the eyes, I used a hybrid version of what I had learned at Think Tank combined with a really cool tutorial I saw back in the days from Jared Chavez. He’s got amazing stuff regarding character art, and the workflow he uses for creating eyes is just great. Again, I used TexturingXYZ’s Multi-Channel Iris and worked it in Substance 3D Painter to give them a more magical or inhuman look.

Setting Up the Hair

The hair was particularly tricky and challenging because of the hairstyle itself, and also the quantity of hair. I also had to figure out the rear part of the hairstyle because it was hard to tell from the concept.

The first thing was to use good references from both real and similar hairstyles, and also look for other real-time hair grooms. I set up some general volumes in ZBrush and laid out the braids, which I used later to serve me as a base mesh where I would lay the hair cards on top, giving the feeling of volume and dense hair without the need of placing tons of hair planes.

For the hair itself, I used a really cool plug-in for Maya called GS CurveTools. It’s amazingly useful and helps a lot with the tough process of creating, placing, and editing hair cards.

I decided to divide the general hair into 3 layers: base and dense, mid to give volumes and less density, and third layer to start doing some change of directionality with even less density. To finish, I added a fourth layer for the flyaways. To create the hair strands, I used FiberShop, a software specifically designed for this. It’s very easy to learn, fast, and has a non-destructive workflow, which makes things easier if you have to make changes on the go.

The horns weren’t easy to figure out. I decided to do the wood fully hand-sculpted in ZBrush to get the exact look that I wanted, and also have full control of the directionality and smaller details, like the kind of energy breaches they have in the concept.

I had to experiment and after a lot of back and forth, I ended up using a simple combo of a few brushes: Orb Clay Tubes with a Square Alpha to build the main directionality and volumes, Dam Standard and Orb Cracks to define and accentuate edges, breaches and crease areas, and Trim Dynamic to adjust and flatten shapes when needed. I used the same approach for the rest of the wooden parts. The vines in the horns were created directly in Maya with splines and then using the Sweep Mesh tool.

Sculpting the Body

The body itself, aside from the wooden parts and garments, was pretty easy to tackle. Mostly just moving forward with the blockout shapes into a more detailed and stylized figure, to make her look more athletic.

The outfit consisted of various parts. I created base leathers for adding the fur on top later. I decided to create UVs for the low poly versions of those pieces to project a worn leather pattern with the Surface tool, and in addition, I hand-sculpted some tear and wear on top of each one to give them a more natural and rougher look. I mainly used ZBrush’s Standard and Dam Standard brushes for this.

For the skirt, I hand-sculpted three different leaves following real references and making them in a similar vibe as in the concept, to later bake them in Substance 3D Painter to create an Atlas Map where I could just UV some planes on top. It’s a similar approach as Environment Artists do for custom-made foliage. Once I had the bakes and maps ready, I then laid out each leaf plane in Maya carefully, doing layer by layer until I had the full skirt ready.

For the wooden limbs, I followed the same approach as for the horns. Everything was hand-sculpted, but now with the little twist of following the human anatomy of muscles. I tried as much as I could to follow the main volumes and shapes for the muscles and have them represented in the wooden features. I had to figure out the legs on my own because they were not represented in the concept, so I tried to imagine them and sculpt them in a similar fashion as I did with the forearms and hands.

For the leaves, I took advantage of Atlas I had created for the skirt and just modeled very simple and very low poly planes with UVs laid on top of that atlas. It was mostly a matter of patience and just placing those leaves carefully all over the arms and legs.

The crow skull necklace was created from scratch in ZBrush. Fully sculpted using Standard, and Dam Standard. The necklace thread was also created with Spline and Sweep Mesh later in Maya. The same applies to the quiver leather ribbon.

The amber collar was fully modeled in ZBrush though, using ZModeler to quickly have the low poly and general shapes, for later subdividing while having hard edges Creased and sculpting some wear and tear with Trim Dynamic and Orb Cracks.

The quiver took me more time than expected, trying to find the right look and feel. I wanted it to be rough, so I had to lay out the basic shapes with ZModeler too to later apply some leather alphas and projections. After that, I added some rough sewing in the seams and then added some more wear and tear by hand with Dam Standard.

Creating the bow consisted mostly of patience and taking time to sculpt the main shapes and details. I first created the shape of the amber stone in the center and I started adding some geo tubes with the CurveTubes brush. When I had one side of the bow laid out, I duplicated and mirrored it, and then started sculpting the wood details the same way I did for the body.

The amber handle was sculpted using mostly Trim Dynamic and Standard brushes in combination with the ClayPolish tool. For the bow’s thread, I created again some Splines and Sweep Meshes in Maya, but this time I sent that base to ZBrush to further edit them.

The leaves across the whole bow are the same as the ones used for the arms and legs.

The fur you can see on the clothing parts has been all created directly in XGen. The only realtime hair you have is the one on the head, the groom itself.

I thoroughly discussed this with my Supervisor, Luis Omar, and we both ended up determining that doing all the fur with hair cards was way too over-scoped for the timeframe that I had to finish the project, so we took the decision to stay with XGen for the fur in the leathers.

Retopology and Unwrapping

For retopology, I used one of the 3D Scan Store models as a base. I mainly wrapped the low poly into my high poly using Wrap3D. I then had to retopologize by hand the mouth part, the eyes, and the elven ears, otherwise, it would have been impossible to have proper topology.

The forearms, legs, and leathers had to be retopologized by hand too to properly follow the ins and outs of the wooden areas. For compliments in general, I used the low poly meshes I created using ZModeler and just had to tweak a couple of things to have them ready.

The horns and the bow were going to be extremely time-consuming to retopologize by hand, especially the second one, so I decided to ZRemesh them into a fairly low poly stage to use it as a base to later retopologize by hand again on top, adapting to the wood shapes.

Regarding UVs, I ended up using up to 8 texture sets for all the body including the hair and accessories, and a 9th set for the bow. I packed up everything based on types of materials or areas, trying to keep a proper texel density and resolution ratio.

I used 4k resolution for 5 of the texture sets and 2k for the rest of them. Everything was done inside of Maya. The most important thing is that I separated the head and the body itself into two different texture sets.

The Texturing Workflow

The texturing process was mostly straightforward. I used the projections from Texturing XYZ and also the 3D Scan Store as a base. First, I reprojected the textures from the original model into my new retopo and UV’d model using R3DS Wrap projection tools. I then took those base textures and brought them into Substance 3D Painter to start fixing stuff and adding layers such as temperatures and smaller details using the bakes I got from the high poly. One of the most useful ones to get nice-looking detail is the Cavity Map.

I would say it’s mostly about having patience and keep adding as many layers as you need to properly adjust the skin as you go. I made a lot of use of the HSV Filter in Painter to keep adjusting values as I kept texturing. Another really useful tool I used is the Anchor Points to keep a non-destructive workflow and be able to go back and forth without needing to repaint stuff I already had.

After the skin was ready, it was time for the body paint. I used Senua’s from Hellblade as my main reference to create this sort of handpainted, dried, and cracked look and feel, to make her look a bit more tribal. I made use of crack and tear and wear masks to create this dried look and a lot of use of the roughness channel to play with dry/wet values in it. This was one of the most challenging parts because I had to fully handpaint the base and I couldn’t make use of any procedural nor automated process.

Also, trying to get the right feeling of rough painting was challenging, but definitely very satisfying when I finally started getting to a point where I liked it. 

The eyes, as mentioned earlier, were created using Texturing XYZ and a mix of a really cool tutorial from Jared Chavez and what I learned at Think Tank from my Supervisor Nicolás Niño.

Rendering and Lighting

The main tool I used for rendering was Marmoset Toolbag, although I did some quick testing in Unreal Engine or even in Arnold itself inside Maya just to quickly start seeing how some of the main elements interacted. The one I used for my final lookdev and rendering was Marmoset though.

I tried tons of light combinations, but after having spent quite a while in my past experience and current one, I ended up liking simple and moody lighting sets. I looked for some cool HDRIs in Poly Haven. Definitely recommend it.

After I set up a base ambiance with the HDRI, I supported it with a main light, more diffuse, warmer coming from the front and a colder rim light in the back. I did some other lighting versions where I tried a more “selfie” or photographic approach for the face closeup or others where I tried to get a more sun-like ambiance, with a directional light coming from the top. M usual my go-to when lighting up my scenes for showcasing characters is to create a natural-looking ambiance, except for sometimes when I like to play with more bizarre colors and light positions.

For the post-processing settings, I like to make use of some camera blur for the closeup shots. That way I can focus my attention on the gaze of the Huntress, for example. Something key to me when rendering in Marmoset, is to make use of the ACES color profile. Marmoset is set to Linear mode by default, and to me, Linear looks plain and dull. ACES adds a lot of depth to the colors and a wider range of brighter and darker colors. I then desaturated the color by 15%, added just a tiny bit of chromatic aberration, and also used also a bit of film grain, along with some vignetting effect in some of the renders. All these post-processing settings can be easily found in the Camera settings in Marmoset.

I rarely tweak my real-time renders in Photoshop after exporting them, unless I have a specific need that I couldn’t cover in the render engine of choice. This time I just tweaked the color balance a tiny bit and that’s it.

Conclusion

The total scope of the project was 10 weeks, so I had to quickly move through each phase of the creation process. Blocking was about a week, maybe a bit more. All the sculpting process took up to 3 weeks to properly get everything as close to being finished. I would say this phase is one of the most important ones and really needs a lot of time investment. Retopo and UVs ended up taking more than expected due to some technical challenges to put all the pieces together, and it took a bit more than a week. The most demanding, challenging, and tricky step was creating the hair card groom. It ended up taking about 12 full sessions of work, which was a lot from my scarce time budget by then. Texturing was fairly easy and fast to tackle, about a week for everything. In parallel with texturing, I started checking up the textures in Marmoset and did some lookdev to quickly change or fix anything on the go, so when I got to the lighting and rendering steps, it only took me about 3 to 4 days to have everything ready.

Throughout the whole creation process, I’ve faced a lot of challenges, and probably the most remarkable ones were the hair groom itself, all the details I had to hand-sculpt throughout all the wooden parts, and figuring out how to properly retopo them and make them viable for a real-time model.

Regarding any beginner character artist out there: don’t be scared, face and accept the coming challenges that are ahead. Do stuff you like and think you would enjoy. Don’t do things to impress others, do things for yourself and because you want them to become real. Be disciplined, as much as you can. Discipline is not a quality you have or not, it can be exercised and trained. Be patient and dedicate all the hours needed to properly finish each one of the parts of your piece. Great works you see on ArtStation or even here on 80 Level don’t come from rushing things through. Things that are good and worthwhile take time. Always. Keep working, and don’t rush yourself either. It’s not a race. You’ll get there.

Thank you so much for reading me, and thanks to the 80 Level team for this opportunity. See you around!