The Making of a Live Avatar

The Making of a Live Avatar 

Hi all, after receiving so many positive reactions to my first series on Virtual Fashion, I decided to introduce a second series - this will focus on how I build a complete 3D realtime avatar from start-to-finish. The end-goal is the same: high quality Digital Humanoids for Live Performance tasks via Unreal Engine.

I will additionally focus on: facial expression anatomy, game-readiness, new fashion designs and dramatic posing.

It all begins with picking good references - I will sculpt my son Daan as basis for the avatar. Note: yes it's possible to 3D scan a character, but my belief is that the better you understand anatomics, the better your artistic knowledge, results and freedom will be at a later stage.

I use Pixologic Zbrush to do all the sculpting and prefer to switch between skin materials - from shiny to matte surfaces. This allows me to polish imperfections.

After the primary forms are sculpted, I'm finishing off with 3 layers of (micro) skin pores.