Mastering Realism: Showcasing James Bond and an American Quarter Horse

Welcome to my first project! A Real-Time Character project made at Animum Creativity Advanced School during the Master's degree in 3D Character Modeling.

Being a big fan of the James Bond franchise, I decided to make my interpretation of Agent 007, taking into account the description that Ian Fleming did in his novels and also taking as references the different Bond characters that have appeared in the movies throughout the years.

In the descriptions throughout Fleming's novels, James Bond is depicted as having a sleek and impeccable physique, standing 189 cm tall and weighing 93 kilograms. His features possess an attractive and mysterious depth, captivating those who encounter him.

Bond has black hair, parted on the left and carelessly brushed so a thick comma falls above the right eyebrow. His large, piercing blue eyes, situated evenly beneath his straight and rather long black eyebrows, emanate a calm and ironic gaze. A thin upper lip below his straight and lengthy nose defines a wide and finely drawn mouth, though with a hint of cruelty. His sun-kissed, tan complexion completes his face, ending with a firm, straight chin.

As for distinctive characteristics, Bond bears a thin three-inch scar on his right cheek, another on his left shoulder, and signs of plastic surgery on his right hand. Therefore, if one attempted to depict his face, the character presented in Fleming and John McLusky's comic strips would likely be the closest representation. Ian Fleming described Bond in his novel "Casino Royale" as resembling Hoagy Carmichael, albeit colder and more rugged.

These are the references I used from some of the James Bond characters in the movies:

I started sculpting the model in Zbrush, and once I had more or less defined the character's anatomy, I did a blocking of the clothes and hair on the model to see if more or less the character proportions were correct:

To design the apparel and accessories for the character, I extensively researched James Bond's style. I aimed to feature him in his signature tuxedo suit, so I studied all of his outfits to understand the look. Additionally, I delved deeper to ensure that Bond's attire adhered to formal dress codes and was as refined as possible:

It was time to create the clothes in Marvelous Designer, so I imported the character's body in Marvelous and started to work on it:

It was my first time working with Marvelous Designer. Even though I was happy to succeed in creating the clothes with this software, I felt that I still had room to learn with it because some parts of the garments didn't feel as good as I wanted, and I didn't know how to solve it in Marvelous. So I felt the necessity to tweak the clothes in Zbrush:

Shoes were created in Autodesk Maya and exported to Marvelous Designer as a placeholder for garment simulations. When I finished all the clothes, I tweaked and finished the shoes in Zbrush:

The watch was entirely created in Autodesk Maya, and I just polished its surface edges in Zbrush to make it feel more realistic:

After completing the clothing, I focused on refining the character's anatomy and adding skin details like wrinkles, freckles, scars, etc.

To create the skin details, I applied the skin details of a 3D scan from 3DScanStore using the Zwarp plugin, and then with Zbrush layers, I tweaked the texture, modifying parts that I did not like and added details that I felt necessary, like the characteristic scars that Ian Fleming described in the novels.

This was the final result:

Now it was time for the props! For this character, I had to make only one prop; the most famous Bond gun, a Walther PPK.

So as well as the watch, I created the pistol entirely in Maya, and I polished the surface edges in Zbrush:

The next step was to create the Low Poly mesh, prepare the UV sets and make the bake of the High Poly onto the Low Poly. So I did the retopology in Autodesk Maya, UV sets in RizomUV, and the baking process in Marmoset Toolbag

After ensuring everything looked good in the bake, I started texturing the Character in Substance Painter.

In this process, I always go back and forth between Substance Painter and Marmoset Toolbag to ensure that all the work I do in Substance is equally represented in Marmoset.

Once I had all the texture done, there was only one thing to make before the final render & composition—the hair.

So searching the internet, I found some image references from Ryan Gosling's haircut, which I felt matched perfectly with the Ian Fleming hair description:

To create the hair on my model, I downloaded a free hair texture from Alma https://www.artstation.com/marketplace/p/MGjGz/free-low-poly-realtime-hair-male and made the hair cards for this texture in Maya. After preparing them all, I exported them in Zbrush and carefully placed the hair cards on my model, playing with the different hair densities to create a realistic feeling.

It was very useful for me to assign a solid color to each chunk of the texture to see better how I was distributing them:

Once I had it, I carefully posed the character in Zbrush, imported all the stuff into Marmoset Toolbag, and I started playing with the shader properties, lights, scene, cameras, etc... And this is the final result:

I hope you like it!

My next project started during my Master's degree studies at Animum as a horse for the VFX Industry, but I wasn't entirely happy with the result. Since I aim to focus my career on the videogame industry, I decided to remake the model for this industry after finishing my studies.

This is how it ended as a horse for the VFX Industry:

Before start creating in Zbrush, the High Poly mesh of the horse, I had to investigate and research on the internet for horse images and study its anatomy:

After gathering all the necessary references, I began creating a blocking in Maya. My goal was to construct a base mesh with precise scaling, a decent topology, and the general proportions of a horse:

Then I moved to Zbrush and sculpted all the High Poly mesh of the horse's body. 

I created the western saddle and bridle using Maya software. I then refined and enhanced the components in Zbrush by adding organic details such as wrinkles, texture, and damage until I finally achieved the desired High Poly mesh.

One of the most challenging parts was creating the saddle pattern. So I had to generate a tileable texture using Krita, Maya, and Zbrush to achieve it:

The next step was generating the Low Poly by performing a Retopology process on the High Poly mesh, then developing distinct UV sets. To accomplish this, I did the same as the first project. Autodesk Maya for retopology and RizomUV for UV sets:

Before entering the baking process, I had to do one last thing—the horse fur. To achieve this, I searched online for a horse's hair growth direction. Then, using Maya with XGen, I meticulously crafted the horse's fur, focusing on accuracy and realism.

Once I finished working on the horse's fur, I transformed the XGen hair into polygons. Next, I exported it to Zbrush for additional improvements and saved it with the High Poly mesh of the horse's body to begin baking in Marmoset Toolbag. This allowed me to generate the fur information created with XGen into the Normal map of the horse's body. After completing the process, I moved on to the texturing phase in Substance Painter.

One of the most challenging things in this texturing process was the color composition of the different parts. I experienced difficulty in finding the correct Hue, Tone & Value so that all the pieces were easily distinguished. I achieved my desired result after putting in much hard work and effort.

To achieve realistic reflections on the horse's fur, I created a flow map for the Anisotropic reflection of the body in Marmoset Toolbag. This helped to determine the direction of the hair and ensured accurate results.

I did the flow map in Substance Painter and Photoshop:

For the last step, I made the horse's mane, tail, eyelashes, and whiskers.

This time, I used FiberShop to create the hair texture, and then I utilized the GS CurveTools plugin in Maya to position the hair cards precisely. Overall, I found this workflow more effective than the approach I used in my previous project and was pleased with the results:

After finishing it, I made the pose of the horse in Zbrush, transferred everything over to Marmoset Toolbag, and began experimenting with the shader properties, lighting, scene, cameras, and other features. 

I wanted to show the character in an environment this time, so I downloaded a ground asset from Quixel Megascans, tweaked it in Zbrush, and an HDRI from Poly Haven.

This is the final result :)