Okay, so, recently I was messing around with some stylized character stuff, right? And I kinda got fixated on trying to create those cool, almost-hyperreal, "the ring stills" – you know, like super-detailed, cinematic portraits.
First thing I did was gather references. I'm talking mood boards galore. Pinterest, ArtStation, just trawling for anything that felt even remotely close to what I had in mind. Key things I was looking for: strong lighting, interesting textures, and a general sense of drama.
Then, I blocked out the basic character in Blender. Nothing fancy, just getting the proportions right and establishing the pose. I wasn't going for realism, more of a stylized look with slightly exaggerated features. Think like, bigger eyes, a sharper jawline, that kinda thing.
Next up, sculpting! This is where I spent the most time. I used Blender's sculpting tools to add details like skin pores, wrinkles, and subtle imperfections. The key was to not go overboard – I still wanted to maintain that stylized feel. I used a bunch of different brushes, the clay strips brush was my best friend here, and I constantly zoomed in and out to check how the details looked from different distances.
Retopology was a pain, as always. But it's necessary, right? I used Blender's manual retopo tools to create a clean, efficient mesh that would be easier to texture and animate later on, even if I wasn't planning on animating it right away. It's just good practice, you know? It took a while, I won't lie.
UV unwrapping time! Another not-so-fun part, but crucial. I tried to keep the seams hidden as much as possible and made sure to pack the UVs efficiently. I used Blender's automatic UV unwrapping tools for the most part, but I did some manual tweaking to avoid stretching and distortion.
Texturing in Substance Painter was where things really started to come together. I started with a base skin material and then layered on details like color variations, subsurface scattering, and specular highlights. I spent a lot of time tweaking the roughness values to get that almost-wet, hyperreal look I was going for. I also created custom stencils for things like freckles and blemishes.
For the hair, I used Blender's hair particle system. I created a few different particle systems for different layers of hair, like the main hair mass, flyaways, and short hairs around the hairline. I spent a lot of time combing and shaping the hair to get the desired silhouette. It was a real back-and-forth process of tweaking the particle settings and adjusting the comb brushes.
Lighting was super important for achieving that cinematic look. I used a three-point lighting setup with a key light, a fill light, and a backlight. I played around with the intensity and color of each light to create the desired mood and atmosphere. I also added a subtle rim light to help separate the character from the background.
Rendering in Cycles. I cranked up the samples to reduce noise and used a few different render layers to isolate different elements of the scene. This gave me more flexibility in post-processing.
Finally, post-processing in Photoshop. I adjusted the colors, contrast, and sharpness to give the image a final polish. I also added a subtle vignette to draw the viewer's eye to the center of the image. I did some dodging and burning to accentuate the highlights and shadows.
And that's pretty much it! It was a lot of work, but I'm really happy with how it turned out. Learned a lot about stylized character creation and pushing the limits of realism in 3D. Definitely gonna try something similar again soon!
