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Blog 42: Final Reflection – Learning Through Practice

This character project helped me learn a lot. I followed the full AAA character workflow and worked on sculpting, retopology, texturing, hair and rendering. I also learned to stay patient and solve problems when things went wrong. Even when I had issues like software crashes or missing tools, I found ways to fix things and keep going.

I’m happy with the result, but I know I still have a lot to learn. I want to keep practicing and make more characters to get better. I planned to pose and render Hui Long in Unreal Engine and maybe rig him too, but I couldn’t do it because of technical problems. Still, I gave my best effort and I’m proud of what I finished.

In the future, I want to improve even more — better details, better lighting and stronger storytelling. This project gave me a strong start. I want to thank my tutors Neil Gallagher, Eden Anthony, Wayne Robson and Saint Walker for their help and support. They gave me advice and helped me stay motivated.

Thank you for giving me a chance to work on a project like this. It really helped me grow.

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Blog 41: Inspiration and Evaluation – Aiming for the Forefront

As part of my final project, Hui Long – The Burdened Pilgrim I wanted to reflect on the professional standard I was aiming toward. One of my biggest inspirations during this project was the monk character sculpted and rendered by Wangchen (3D Art Director), showcased on ArtStation. This cinematic-quality model represents a level of artistry that I one day hope to reach.

While my character shares similar design roots — an older monk with layered robes and rich symbolism the quality and execution of wangchen character is far more advanced.

What I admire in the reference:

Material realism: The leather, silk, and metal have perfect roughness, depth and variation.

Lighting & Render: Rendered in Unreal Engine 5, every light and shadow brings cool mood.

Posing and accessories: The character is fully posed, rigged and built into a well detailed scene.

Hair and beard: His beard grooming, layering and flow look far more refined and natural.

Detail polish: Subsurface skin, tiny cloth damage, and fabric threading are highly advanced.

Where I feel I did well:

Texturing: I was able to bring out believable skin tone, fabric variation and ID-based detail across all assets.

Props and ornaments: My staff, sandals and necklace were detailed with attention to character history.

Workflow understanding: I completed a full AAA character workflow from blockout to grooming to render.

Hair cards: Even though it was tough I completed beard, eyebrows and flyaways using hybrid methods.

What I can improve further:

Rendering in UE5: I was forced to stick with Maya due to technical limitations, but cinematic lighting in UE would elevate the outcome.

Hair realism: While I completed hair cards I still have a long way to go in grooming and layering.

Rigging and posing: The final A-pose render was clean but I could have pushed more expression and narrative in the final pose.

Micro-detailing: Subtle skin spec, cloth fuzz, dust layers and fine wear could enhance realism.

Eventhough I’m proud of how far I’ve come. This character taught me patience, layering and artistic decision-making. I still have a lot to improve but I know I’m getting closer to the standard I dream of.

Reference 王琮 (n.d.) Character display of the game Black Myth: Wukong. ArtStation. Available at: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/lV65lG .

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Blog 40 : Final Character Render Look – Hui Long

This blog marks the final visual presentation of my character Hui Long – The Burdened Pilgrim. After weeks of sculpting, designing, texturing and rendering, I’ve brought everything together to produce the final cinematic stills and turntable renders.

The renders were done in Maya using Arnold, with all materials properly connected, lighting balanced, and the hair cards fully placed. The Subsurface Scattering (SSS) on the skin worked beautifully in the final lighting, and the custom fabrics added richness to the layered robes.

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Blog 39: Accessory Showcase – Small Details Big Impact

For this post I wanted to highlight the smaller but important pieces of my monk character: the accessories. These include the leg bangle, both bead necklaces, the wooden sandals and the ring. While each of these objects might appear minor compared to the full character I gave them a lot of attention in sculpting, texturing and presentation.

I sculpted the ornaments in ZBrush and focused on giving each a distinct form and wear pattern. For certain parts of the detailing especially the ornamental engravings I used alpha patterns generated using ChatGPT to speed up the workflow and add consistency across materials. These were especially useful for surface design on the metal beads and ring.

The wooden sandals have handmade rope straps giving them a rustic and grounded feel. For the two necklaces one was kept plain and wooden while the other had engraved metal detailing to make it feel more ceremonial. The leg bangle and ring share a golden finish and ornate patterns to match the visual identity of the staff.

Rendering these accessories helped improve my prop presentation skills and UV packing for smaller assets. It also reminded me how even minor elements add richness to a character's silhouette and storytelling.

Reference

Alpha design patterns were generated using ChatGPT (OpenAI, 2025).

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Blog 38: Project Overview – Creating Hui Long, The Burdened Pilgrim

Over the past several weeks I dedicated myself to creating Hui Long – The Burdened Pilgrim a myth-inspired cinematic character brought to life through a complete AAA pipeline. This blog summarizes all the work I did across the entire project:

Concept and Story

The character is an elderly monk who has traveled far. His appearance is shaped by experience and spiritual weight. I designed Hui Long to reflect inner strength and wisdom enhanced by heavy robes worn accessories and a ceremonial staff.

Blockout and Marvelous Designer

I began with a ZBrush body blockout exported to Marvelous Designer for cloth simulation. I created layered garments: robe inner cloth pants waist wrap and bow-tie achieving believable draping.

Sculpting and Detailing

Back in ZBrush I refined the folds sculpted realistic aging details like wrinkles and scars and optimized the mesh by removing unseen body parts under the clothing. I also sculpted and detailed each prop: necklace ring bangle and wooden sandals.

Retopology and UV Mapping

Using Maya and ZBrush I cleaned the topology of both character and props. I organized the UVs into multiple groups tiles for better resolution control grouped meshes for clean baking and prepared ID maps for efficient texturing.

Texturing

I used Substance Designer to make custom fabric materials and tested them on robes.

In Substance Painter I textured the skin using multi-tone layers and curvature occlusion maps to enhance depth. I followed tutorials for skin realism and created a color palette with Coolors.co.

The staff was textured with jade and bronze stylization giving it a divine relic look.

Hair Card Workflow

Creating hair was a major learning experience. I tested Blender FiberShop and various plugins before finalizing a workflow with XGen in Maya guide lines from Photoshop and high-poly refinement in ZBrush. I baked maps in xNormal and used the GS Curve Tool (paid plugin) to place the hair cards. I also created a beard eyebrows and flyaway strands.

Rendering

Though I initially planned to render in Unreal Engine I used Maya for final outputs due to time and technical limitations. I assigned materials in Arnold added SSS for the skin and adjusted lighting and tone to match the emotional narrative of the character.

Promotional Video

I compiled a cinematic turntable of the character close-ups of the props beard and textured surfaces with a short voiceover describing the process and story. The video captures the emotional tone and craftsmanship of the final model.

Reflection

This project taught me the full pipeline from concept to final render covering sculpting retopology UVs texturing hair and presentation. I gained confidence in working with tools like ZBrush Maya Marvelous Designer Substance tools xNormal and Photoshop. I also learned to troubleshoot plugin limitations optimize for performance and meet submission deadlines.

Although I couldn’t rig or render in Unreal due to time and crashes I’m proud of what I achieved and will improve even more with future characters.

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Blog 37: Final Render of Hui Long’s Staff Prop – A Symbolic Masterpiece

Blog 33: Final Render of Hui Long’s Staff Prop – A Symbolic Masterpiece

This is the final render of Hui Long’s ceremonial staff — a central prop in his visual storytelling. The entire concept was developed through ChatGPT, where I generated multiple idea prompts and design inspirations, then sketched and fused them into one original concept. I’m genuinely happy that I was able to translate that vision into 3D form.

The staff combines ornate elements: triple crescent rings, a central jade medallion, ancient script, and layered metal embellishments. Each part carries symbolic meaning and supports the mysticism of the character.

Workflow Overview:

Base mesh modeled in Maya

High-resolution sculpting in ZBrush (majority done manually except for the gemstone alpha)

UV unwrapping and retopology done in Maya

Baking & texturing in Substance Painter using ID maps

Color palette centered around jade green and ancient gold

Rendered in Maya with proper displacement and shader work

Reflection: Creating this staff helped sharpen my technical and creative skills. I improved in handling UV grouping, ID-based material assignments, and baking pipeline accuracy. The final textured version closely mirrors my concept sketch — which makes this one of the most fulfilling parts of the project. It also reminded me how powerful design tools and AI can be when used thoughtfully to support original art.

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Blog 36: Final Promo Video – Presenting Hui Long

After weeks of sculpting, texturing, retopologizing, placing hair cards, and rendering, I’ve compiled everything into a final promo video showcasing my character: Hui Long – The Burdened Pilgrim.

A full turnaround of the character

Close-up shots of the face, hair, and accessories

Fabric material details

Staff prop showcase

Lighting and presentation in Maya

Creating this video gave me the opportunity to look back and appreciate all the work that went into this project. It captures the full journey from concept to render and I hope it reflects the passion and dedication I poured into bringing Hui Long to life.

About Hui Long’s Story: Hui Long is an aged monk who has wandered the lands for decades a spiritual figure burdened by wisdom, memory, and the weight of the past. His scars, layered robes, and ceremonial staff all carry meaning and history. This character was designed to tell a quiet but powerful story of a man shaped by time, loss, and inner strength.

This is the Promo video do check it out:

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Blog 35: Character Creator and the Future of Character Design

Character Creator tools are reshaping the way 3D artists approach character development. Instead of starting from scratch, these tools provide advanced base meshes, rigging, and even skin detail presets, making it faster to prototype and iterate. I explored how tools like Character Creator 4 or MetaHuman are now being adopted across industries to reduce early-stage workload, especially in game and cinematic pipelines.

Although I sculpted Hui Long entirely by hand for this project, learning about these tools helped me understand where the industry is going. They allow artists to focus more on storytelling and design rather than topology or rigging concerns. Seeing how studios mix these tools with traditional sculpting inspired me to consider hybrid workflows for future projects.

Refrences

Reallusion (n.d.) Character Creator 4 Overview. Available at: https://www.reallusion.com/character-creator/

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Blog 34: Substance Sampler – Speeding Up Surface Creation for Character and Prop Artists

While working on Hui Long, I explored different workflows for generating believable surface detail. One tool that caught my attention was Substance Sampler a material creation tool that lets you turn images or scans into texture maps very quickly. Even though I didn’t use it extensively for this project, learning about it showed me how modern texturing pipelines are evolving for both stylised and realistic character workflows.

Substance Sampler is especially useful for character artists who need to make secondary assets like belts, cloth straps, or even skin details without starting from scratch. It allows rapid prototyping of materials by blending and editing real-world scans, generating height, roughness, normal and AO maps in one click. This makes it easier to maintain a high-quality look while still meeting production deadlines.

I realised that pairing Sampler with Painter or Designer could dramatically cut down iteration time especially when trying to build up surface variation. As a character artist, learning tools like this gives me more freedom to experiment and develop a library of custom materials.

Reference: Adobe (n.d.) Substance 3D Sampler Overview. Available at: https://www.adobe.com/uk/products/substance3d/apps/sampler.html

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Blog 33: xNormal for Efficient Map Baking

For baking hair strand texture maps, I relied on xNormal — a free, reliable, and industry-recognized baking tool. While many modern plugins offer full-featured baking workflows, xNormal remains an efficient solution used even in AAA pipelines for its accuracy and speed. I used it to bake my high poly ZBrush strands into maps (normal, AO, height, alpha), then exported clean results to Photoshop for further edits.

This was my first time using xNormal, and I found it extremely helpful. It’s free, accurate, and surprisingly easy to use once I understood the input setup. I used xNormal extensively for baking the hair textures and also for prop elements like the staff and accessories. In the hair card workflow especially, it allowed me to bring in my high poly sculpted strands from ZBrush and bake them over low poly planes. This was a key step to creating realistic hair texture maps that could be reused across the beard, eyebrows, and flyaway systems.

Reference:

xNormal. (n.d.). xNormal - baking tool. Available at: https://xnormal.net

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Blog 32: GS Curve Tool for Hair Card Placement

One of the most helpful plugins I discovered during this project was the GS Curve Tool for Maya. I purchased it when I was struggling to place beard and hair cards efficiently. Most of the earlier workflows I tried were time-consuming or locked behind paid tools I couldn’t afford. GS Curve Tool provided an intuitive and flexible method to curve and place hair cards, giving me greater control over the beard and flyaways. It really sped up my hair workflow and let me focus more on shape and style instead of manual tweaks. These tools were very helpful and made my work much faster.

This tool was directly applied to Hui Long’s beard and flyaway hairs. It allowed me to add layers and curve-based placement without needing XGen for every strand. Thanks to GS Curve Tool, I could maintain consistency across grooming while also saving crucial time before submission.

Refrences

Sladkovsky, G. (n.d.) GS Curve Tool. Available at: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/LeKroK

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Blog 31: Setting Up Turntable Scene for Promo Character Render

With the character fully textured, shaded, and assembled in Maya, I began preparing the turntable scene for the final render a key element of my promo video.

I created a clean, minimal environment to keep the focus on Hui Long. Using a simple studio-style background, I added a subtle floor surface with soft reflections to ground the character. The lighting setup included a key light, a rim light and soft fill lights to enhance the form without washing out the detail.

I made sure to rotate the character slowly over a 360° sequence to capture all aspects the clothing folds, the skin shading, the beard structure and the staff accessory. The camera stayed locked with a slight upward angle to give the character more presence and power in frame.

The render output will be used in the promo video to showcase the model’s full turnaround, making it easier for viewers to appreciate the detail, silhouette and material quality.

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Blog 30: Hair Attachment, Beard Shading, Skin SSS and Test Rendering

As I moved toward final rendering, I started by attaching all the hair cards to Hui Long’s head including the beard, moustache, eyebrows, flyaways and eye strands. I carefully adjusted their placement to align with the facial sculpt and ensure a natural flow across the jawline and brow.

Once positioned, I assigned materials to each hair card. For the beard, I modified the base color tone to a white gray blend, reflecting the character’s old age and wisdom. This subtle change gave Hui Long more personality and visual identity, especially under cinematic lighting.

For the skin, I used Arnold’s aiStandardSurface shader in Maya, plugging in the maps exported from Substance Painter’s Arnold SSS preset — including base color, roughness, normal, and subsurface color. I fine-tuned the subsurface scattering (SSS) settings to highlight soft light diffusion around areas like the ears and nose.

I ran a few test renders under my lighting rig to evaluate everything together. The results were satisfying — the beard blended well with the head, the white tone looked aged but elegant, and the SSS gave the skin a subtle warmth and realism.

Reflection: This was the moment where everything began to feel polished. Seeing the hair cards and skin shader come together in test renders gave the character real presence. Adjusting material tones added storytelling, while the SSS helped bring Hui Long to life visually.

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Blog 29: Prop Render Setup and Turntable for Promo

With the staff fully textured and tested in Maya, I moved on to rendering the final prop presentation. I created a clean scene setup with a simple backdrop, key light, fill light, and rim light to highlight the shape, metallic shine, and sculpted details.

I positioned the staff upright with enough space to capture it from multiple angles. Using Arnold in Maya, I rendered both stills and a 360° turntable, which will be included in my final promo video to showcase the prop separately.

I made sure to match the lighting style of the character scene so that the renders felt consistent across the project. The turntable helped display the finer alpha and sculpted ornament work on all sides of the staff.

Reflection: Rendering the prop on its own gave me a good sense of how much detail I was able to carry through from sculpt to final output. It also gave the staff the attention it deserved not just as an accessory, but as a main narrative piece.

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Blog 28: Assigning Materials to the Staff and Test Rendering

With the staff prop fully textured in Substance Painter, I imported it into Maya for material setup and rendering. I applied the exported texture maps including base color, roughness, metalness, normal, and displacement using Arnold’s aiStandardSurface shaders.

I took time to test each map and made sure the displacement was functioning correctly. The fine sculpted details in the staff showed up well under my lighting setup, and the gold and jade material translated nicely from Substance Painter to Arnold.

I also ran a few test renders to verify how the materials responded under different lighting angles. The results were promising the surface definition, gloss breakup and shadows worked as expected.

Reflection:

This stage gave me confidence that the prop was ready to be integrated with the character. Seeing the displacement and texture quality come through clearly in the test render i felt satisfying, especially after so much time sculpting and detailing the asset got the results... :)

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Blog 27: Flyaways, Eyebrows and Eye Hair Detailing

With the main beard and moustache in place, I moved on to refining smaller details to push the realism further. This included adding flyaway hairs, eyebrows and eye corner strands to bring the character closer to my concept reference.

The flyaway hairs were placed using thin, curved cards around the edges of the beard and moustache. They helped break the silhouette and gave the facial hair a softer more natural feel. I kept the placement subtle but intentional enough to avoid a too clean look without making it messy.

For the eyebrows, I followed the structure and flow seen in my concept art. I used a smaller set of cards with tighter bends to form the eyebrow arch. These helped give Hui Long more expression and character.

I also added a few tiny strands in the inner eye corners to replicate subtle facial hair buildup common in older characters. These micro-details made a surprising difference once I viewed the model in close-up.

Reflection: These small additions really helped bring the whole head together. Matching the concept required attention to small things not just big shapes. I learned that even minor strands can add a lot to the overall feel of realism and storytelling.

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Blog 26: Adding Beard Density and Moustache Pass

After building the background layer and first beard rows, I moved on to adding more density to Hui Long’s beard and completing the moustache. This stage helped push the character’s expression and age, making him feel more grounded and believable.

I used GS Curve Tool for this process, and I genuinely enjoyed working with it. The plugin made the placement smooth and intuitive, especially when layering additional beard cards with subtle curve variation. It felt efficient and helped me get results that would have taken much longer with default Maya tools.

For the moustache, I focused on shaping it to flow naturally over the lip, connecting smoothly into the beard. The dense cards under the chin and jaw area helped fill in gaps and gave the whole facial hair setup a fuller appearance.

Reflection: At this point, I started to feel satisfied with the beard's shape and coverage. The GS Curve Tool really made things easier, and I was able to focus more on form and flow instead of technical limitations.