Turning Ellie from The Last of Us Part II into a Detailed 3D Portrait
Max Bianchini talked about the process of creating Ellie's portrait, explaining how he divides his references into categories, sculpts the portrait in parts, and achieves a realistic texture.
Introduction
Hello! I'm Max, a 3D Character Artist based in Italy. Ever since I was a child, I loved drawing my favorite characters. This passion for art has always been with me, even though I never pursued any related studies during my time in school. It was only in 2016 that I first took a basic computer graphics course, and from that point on, after a lot of practice, countless hours of YouTube tutorials, and many software crashes, that passion became my daily life.
I currently work as a Senior Texture and Look Dev Artist at Platige Image Studio. My main responsibility is to recreate realistic textures and shaders for the characters in cinematic trailers and TV series. In the last few years, I've had the opportunity to contribute to some exciting projects, including Destiny, Star Wars Outlaws, Call of Duty, Warhammer 40000: Dawn of War, The Witcher IV, and Secret Level.
Ellie's Portrait
I started Ellie's portrait because I love the storytelling and characters developed by Naughty Dog. This isn't my Ellie's first portrait. It's a rework of the previous one I made five years ago. I decided to redo this portrait to see how my skills have grown over the years, especially now that I've been working in the industry for several years.
For gathering references, I use PureRef. I usually divide the references into various macro categories: anatomy, game reference, illustrations, series or film shots, hair, and close-ups of various elements I'll need (eyes, skin, fabrics, etc.). Throughout the project, I constantly update my PureRef tab with new additions, and I also add various test renders to create a sort of timeline that I can browse like a history of the character's development.
Modeling Workflow
When I start a portrait, after preparing my PureRef tab, I open a ZBrush scene containing my base mesh with various subdivision levels. Starting with the base shapes, I first add the various elements I'll need. In this case, I began with the main volumes for the likeness, a rough and quick sculpt for the hair, and with a mask from the body's base mesh, I extracted the base for the shirt.
Once I have the main subtools and volumes, I usually begin sculpting the secondary and tertiary shapes. For Ellie, I sculpted the entire clothing in ZBrush, as it was just a simple shirt, and I had fun freely sculpting the various folds and creases. Likenesses are always a challenge and are the part of sculpting that excites me the most: each one is different, and sometimes it can take many hours of work before I have a good result.
Typically, after the first few hours of work, I import everything in Maya, and I use a basic shader for the skin, with textures that I have ready in my library (to optimize, all my basemeshes have the same topology and UVs with previously wrapped Scan Store or XYZ skin textures). I then start with a simple HDR to test the volumes with the rendering engine, I use the Arnold plugin.
For the character's hair, I use Xgen in Maya. For me, this is the most complex part of the project, as it's more of a technical development than an artistic. I divide it into various descriptions that help me achieve the realism I'm looking for.
Retopology & Texturing
I generally use custom base meshes wherever possible. In this case, for Ellie's body, I used a base mesh with a good topology that allowed me to sculpt the details I needed and then unwrap it for texturing. For all other assets, I generally retopo and unwrap them in Maya.
For high-resolution textures, I use various Udims, which allow me to achieve the quality required for cinematic shots. For shading and texturing, I have a library for frequently used assets, including custom presets like skins, eyes, and mouths. This library, which I've built over the years, allows me to optimize time and have different shaders and presets added at the end of each project.
For texturing, I use Substance 3D Painter. Starting with the base Texturing maps, in this case from ScanStore, I start processing the textures to match my references. For Ellie, I worked on various layers. Initially, I reworked the Albedo map, adding unique character details like scars, freckles, moles, and small cuts.
Then, I developed a Roughness, Specular, and Coat map. Additionally, I also worked on several texture layers to add to the Base maps, such as dirt and blood textures. The most complex setup I created during the character's look development was the skin shader setup.
I had created a shader that worked through attributes: by assigning a numerical value to a given attribute, additional Dirt and Blood maps are activated in the shading, affecting all channels and adding up to each other with the blending mode. In the end, I decided to discard this setup and leave Ellie with a cleaner look. I created this setup because it allows me to add variation to the character simply by activating an attribute.
Lighting & Rendering
For lighting my scenes, I usually use various HDRs, both from the studio and external environments, and Maya's Arnold plugin as a rendering engine. For turnarounds, I use a simple HDR+Rim light setup, while for more complex scenes, I use a scene-integrated background, a low-intensity HDR that adds color and fill, a key light (Arnold area light), a rim light, and, if necessary, simple geometry that acts as light refractors.
I often find myself creating multiple light sets, using film or other cinematic footage as reference. With this range of different light sets, some will be modified and used until the end of the project, while others will be discarded during the creative process of my work.
Conclusion
Maybe I spent far more hours on this project than necessary, but I used it as an R&D project to implement and improve my skills and my shader library. I worked on it for countless hours, even shelving it several times to move on to other personal projects, until one day I decided to finalize what was missing and wrap the project.
My favorite parts when working on a portrait like this one are the details and expressiveness, especially on the eyes, trying to make them as alive and expressive as possible. There were no particular challenges in this project, as it was a remake of a project I had already done in the past, but every moment spent on this piece definitely helped me improve and set a new standard to surpass for my next personal project.
