Winner Choose: Mastering Mysterious Character with ZBrush Face Instruments
Overview
The 2024 Reallusion 3D Character Contest was a significant success, attracting 267 inventive and skillful submissions. The competition featured three major classes with Artist Konrad Hetko securing first place within the “Character Design” class together with his submission known as “The Last Entry”. Simply what impressed his intriguing character idea and what gave him the sting on this competitors? Take a deep dive into his masterpiece and uncover how he leveraged Character Creator, GoZ, and ZBrush Face Tools to win the competition.
Character Artist – Konrad Hetko
Hailing from Poland, Konrad Hetko is a personality artist who has spent over 15 years working with totally different areas of digital artwork — from picture bashing and portray to video modifying and animation. Whereas he initially got down to change into an animator, a college mission sparked his love for 3D character design, utterly shifting his focus. Now, he’s placing his expertise to work at Teyon, a Polish recreation studio, the place he was a part of main initiatives like Robocop: Rogue Metropolis.
Pushed by his ardour for each the craft and cutting-edge tech, Konrad consistently pushes boundaries, experimenting with new workflows and instruments like Character Creator 4 (CC4). Recently, he’s been hooked on the GoZ pipeline, which seamlessly connects CC4 with ZBrush, permitting him to convey characters to life quicker than ever.
The Idea of “The Final Entry”
Konrad’s entry, “The Final Entry”, for the 2024 Reallusion 3D Contest drew inspiration from H.P. Lovecraft. His character, an previous investigator, has uncovered terrifying truths about historic, legendary creatures — information that slowly drives him mad. He paperwork these horrors in a journal marked with the Elder Signal, a mystical image meant to protect his writings from the lurking risks of the unknown.
Konrad deliberately moved away from realism on this piece, explaining “I needed to concentrate on a extra intriguing stylization”. His inspiration for this shift got here from the “Unhealthy Travelling” episode of Love, Loss of life & Robots; Fascinated by the stylized character designs, he sought to evoke an identical really feel, mixing the darkish, psychological ambiance of Lovecraft with a particular and fascinating visible type.
Advantages of Character Creator x ZBrush GoZ pipeline
A key a part of Konrad’s workflow was the graceful integration between Character Creator 4 and ZBrush, due to the GoZ function. This made it simple for him to switch his character mannequin forwards and backwards between the 2 applications for ongoing refinement.
“Reallusion’s instruments have been a recreation changer, particularly the benefit of switching between Character Creator and ZBrush utilizing GoZ,” he explains. With GoZ, he sculpted intricate particulars in ZBrush and will immediately convey them again into Character Creator for additional tweaks. This seamless interplay allowed him to effectively obtain the stylization he envisioned whereas sustaining element and precision.
ZBrush Face Tools – Empower the Character Expressions
For “The Final Entry”, Konrad devoted most of his effort to designing the character’s face and expressions. This entailed creating a number of variations, with every iteration bringing him nearer to the visuals he envisioned.
All of the variations have been saved in layers, permitting him to combine and match totally different parts to refine the face. As soon as happy with the outcomes, he transferred the pinnacle again into ZBrush and used Face Tools to sculpt the mandatory expressions and dynamic wrinkles.
“That’s in all probability my favourite software in Character Creator,” Konrad admits, including, “Face Instruments deal with essentially the most tedious points of working with morphs and dynamic normals by automating every little thing with only one click on.”
As an alternative of manually creating and baking wrinkles, Face Instruments streamlined the method, giving Konrad extra time to concentrate on the inventive points of the mission. Then he was in a position to refine the expressions and total look, enhancing each its depth and realism.
Private Aspirations
Konrad’s journey doesn’t finish with the competition. He’s desperate to discover extra of what Reallusion’s suite of instruments, together with iClone and Unreal Engine, has to supply. “I’m already planning a private mission the place I’ll combine the perfect points of Character Creator with MetaHuman in Unreal Engine,” Konrad reveals. Although he stays tight-lipped in regards to the particulars, his ardour to push the boundaries of 3D character creation is palpable.
Last Ideas
Konrad’s considerate strategy to character design, mixed together with his mastery of instruments like Character Creator 4 and ZBrush, earned him first place within the practical character class of the 2024 Reallusion 3D Character Contest. His means to merge Lovecraftian themes with stylized artwork, whereas using cutting-edge know-how, made his entry actually stand out.
Reflecting on the competition, Konrad notes the way it helped him develop as an artist. “I’m actually comfortable I participated”, he says. “The competition motivated me to complete a mission, study new instruments, and push my creative boundaries”. Konrad’s work reveals how Reallusion’s instruments allow artists to create immersive characters whereas streamlining the technical aspect. With new initiatives forward, we sit up for seeing extra spectacular creations from this proficient artist.
Study extra
Character Creator – Enjoy a 30-day Free Trial
Konrad’s Full WIP of “The Last Entry”
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