Wednesday, December 14th, 2022 Posted by Jim Thacker

Tutorial: Creating a Realistic Humanoid 3D Character


The Gnomon Workshop has released Creating a Realistic Humanoid 3D Character, a guide to current industry workflows for modelling and texturing 3D characters, recorded by Zoic Studios’ Babak Bina.

The intermediate-level workshop provides over three hours of video training in digital sculpting software ZBrush, along with Maya and Mari for additional 3D and texturing work, and V-Ray for rendering.

Turn a 2D concept into a production-ready 3D character for VFX, animation or games
In the workshop, Bina sets out his entire workflow for creating a production-quality 3D character, from initial 2D concept through 3D modelling in ZBrush to final presentation render.

He creates textures using a combination of ZBrush’s PolyPaint toolset and UV Master to generate a UV layout that can be exported to Maya to prepare for a multi-tile UV workflow.

The base textures are then exported to Mari, where Bina shares tried-and-tested methods for creating different texture channel based on the PolyPaint and displacement information.

In the final part of the workshop, Bina discusses how to set up an effective lighting setup for the character in Maya, and how to set up shaders for a final render in V-Ray.

About the artist
Babak Bina is currently character and creature design lead at VFX facility Zoic Studios.

He previously worked as a 3D generalist and character artist for studios including DNEG, Method Studios and Scanline VFX. His credits include Avengers: Infinity War and Game of Thrones.

Pricing and availability
Creating a Realistic Humanoid 3D Character is available via a subscription to The Gnomon Workshop, providing access to over 300 tutorials. Subscriptions cost $49/month or $490/year. Free trials are available.

Read more about Creating a Realistic Humanoid 3D Character on The Gnomon Workshop’s website

Full disclosure: CG Channel is owned by Gnomon.