Turning a 2D Illustration into a Realistic Two-Character 3D Piece

Whenever possible, I kept elements symmetrical for as long as I could. The legs, helmet, corset, metal claws, and parts of the gloves were initially created symmetrically, and I only broke the symmetry later during the detailing stage. I also try not to rush out of the blockout stage. It is important for me to lock the proportions, silhouette, and main design decisions before moving on to more time-consuming detailing.

I also built the geometry with the future low-poly in mind. Whenever possible, the first subdivision level was already clean enough to use as a low-poly base. Elements such as straps were often created directly as low-poly and then refined in either ZBrush or Maya depending on the task.

Texturing and Material Lookdev

Most of the detail for the skin, clothing, and metal was built directly into the textures rather than handled through the material shader. A more procedural approach could have been more efficient from a production standpoint, but for this project I wanted more direct control over the surfaces. Because of that, I created part of the skin and material detail in ZBrush and then baked it into Normal maps.

In Substance 3D Painter, I usually start with a base material and gradually add curvature-based wear, AO darkening, color variation, gradients, and microdetail. I did not rely heavily on AO in this project because I already knew the final render would use Path Tracing. At the end, I also used Sharpen to improve the readability of smaller details.