Zhou Xun: Recreating Chinese Actress in 3D

Introduction 

Hi, my name is Caleb. Last year, I graduated from Think Tank Training Centre, where I was fortunate to meet my mentor, Sachin Sivakumaram, who helped me gain a deeper understanding of art and the world.

Zhou Xun

Zhou Xun is an actress I’m familiar with; I’ve watched her movies and once knew someone who has a similar look and vibe. Therefore, I have a profound understanding of what I feel from her. I tried to express the feeling with what I could do, and that’s how I did the work.

Sculpting

I used ZBrush for sculpting, starting from the provided female base mesh. Meshes are displayed differently in ZBrush than in Arnold, especially with the perspective on. My way to calibrate is to frequently import my mesh in Marmoset Toolbag and check the proportions there, which saves time in rendering because Marmoset is a real-time renderer. 
 
One thing that helped me greatly was understanding what I see as volumes. In 3D, there is height, width, and depth. Understanding the depth helps in knowing how things transform with distance, especially when looking at reference photos taken under different camera focal lengths. 

For the skin details, I used skin textures from Texturing XYZ's VFace. I used Wrap to transfer the displacement map and ZBrush to fix the artifacts and add details. An extra step is needed to use displacement maps as 32-bit EXR in ZBrush. 

Eyes

For the eyes, I just used the aiMixShader in Arnold to divide the cornea and the sclera. I sculpted the iris, mainly using the Clay Buildup brush with Alpha 02 and a little bit of a Dam Standard. For the limbus, I used a Layer node to add some tint to transparency. I like the result because it reacts with light.

For me, adding thickness to the cloth was confusing, especially when doing the UVs. I figured out a workflow that helped a lot in this project:

I used XGen for the hair, from the bottom to the top of the head.

Lighting

I like to use a setup that is similar to Rembrandt lighting. I created a light map with an umbrella model. It helps by adding breakups and gradients to the light source.

Conclusion

I spent nine days on this project, making it one of the fastest I’ve completed because I’m very familiar with the workflow. Before this, I spent nearly a year studying and exploring techniques for creating 3D portraits.

One key lesson I’ve learned from this experience is that 3D art isn’t just about technical skills; it’s simply a medium for creating art. The great Renaissance artist Michelangelo did the same thing we do, except he worked with marble and paper, while we have computers and other tools. No matter how time and technology change, art will always endure, existing in countless forms, and artists have nothing to fear.

Caleb Runqiu Zhang, Character Artist

Interview conducted by Gloria Levine