Gnomon Instructor and Senior Concept Artist Kyle Brown shares a groundbreaking workflow

Kyle Brown, a veteran of the CG world, Kyle has worked within the field since 2015 and has had his hand in a number of projects throughout the film and television industry. He also currently is an instructor at the Gnomon School of Visual Effects where he is able to share his expertise with others.

This Master Class comes in 7 parts, each carries its own tutorial video to guide you through the entire process of how Kyle incorporates Character Creator, Photoshop, ZBrush and other tools to create the concept art. You can find links to the other 6 tutorials below.

Part #7: Comping Renders, Paint, and Finish

With the renders complete, I bring them into Photoshop to put on the final touches. The amount of painting varies from piece to piece but as so much of these pieces were figured out early in the process, it doesn’t take much to get them looking the way I want them to.

The first thing I do is play around with some color LUTs to get a unified color grading, very similar to the post effects available in CC3.

On the two other versions that weren’t based on my initial sketches I want to push some of the stock elements a little bit further to match the Cyberpunk look. As mentioned earlier in the tutorial, I not only wanted the costume to be different between the versions but also the artificial skin as well. I opted to tweak some of the cut lines and QR code on the cheek a bit, opting on the third to remove it completely for more of a natural aesthetic.

With the more ‘mechanical’ bits on the second version, I wanted to paint in some extra cut lines and material reads, including some additional texture and sheen. As well, this version showcases the alternate glow texture created earlier in the tutorial.

I used some really cool streetwear for the third variation that looked great right out of the box but felt it needed some more break ups in the pattern and something futuristic in the read to push it over so I opted for some plastic or some sort of transparent material.

And here we are! The three final design iterations for our futuristic Cyberpunk android!

And that about does it! There are plenty of resources out there to cover the digital sculpting and digital painting processes, but I was happy to put together a tutorial that tied all of these elements together and showcased an alternate way of utilizing Character Creator 3 for concept design! As I experimented with this new workflow, I found feature after feature that I am excited to implement going forward. I only scratched the surface of all of the new features available in Character Creator 3, whether it’s the brand new SkinGen or the awesome Headshot plugin that allows you to easily capture likeness, something I feel will be extremely valuable on upcoming projects! 

Thank you so much for taking the time to check out this tutorial! It was fantastic getting to explore a new workflow, one that feels like a missing component my workflow was missing and one I am excited to push forward. Once again, thank you to the Reallusion team for inviting me to participate and helping so much along the way! Can’t wait to get into the next piece!

Follow the other 6 tutorials in this series:

Part #1: Getting Started and Sketches

Part #2: Costume & Asset Creation in ZBrush

Part #3: Refining and Adding Details in ZBrush

Part #4: Generating Textures and Importing into Character Creator 3

Part #5: Lighting and Posing a Character in Character Creator 3

Part #6: Costume Variation and Texture Modification

Gnomon Instructor and Senior Concept Artist Kyle Brown shares a groundbreaking workflow

Kyle Brown, a veteran of the CG world, Kyle has worked within the field since 2015 and has had his hand in a number of projects throughout the film and television industry. He also currently is an instructor at the Gnomon School of Visual Effects where he is able to share his expertise with others.

This Master Class comes in 7 parts, each carries its own tutorial video to guide you through the entire process of how Kyle incorporates Character Creator, Photoshop, ZBrush and other tools to create the concept art. You can find links to the other 6 tutorials below.

Part #6: Costume Variation and Texture Modification

When you spend all the upfront time getting your avatar set up, posed, lit and positioned in frame the way you want, you’ve done all of the heavy lifting. With Character Creator 3’s incredible library of assets that can be applied to nearly any character, you can mix and match these incredible assets to get all new looks for your design. With concept it is all about exploring a variation and possibility so being able to change bits and bobs to get new looks is crucial which makes CC3 such an exciting and efficient new tool to be added to the toolbox.

With custom clothing and accessories, it might require some tweaks to make sure pieces don’t interpenetrate and overlap incorrectly. Luckily, we can tackle these issues right inside of the CC3 Modify tab. Hitting conform will give you options to adjust the clothing as a whole where the Vertex modifiers will allow you to use different tools, including options like sculpting to select and move specific vertices, a really handy tool to keep the whole process simple and efficient.

This is a preview of the conform options which will place your model back in T pose allowing you to see the fit as a whole. Like most 3D packages of your choosing, you can use soft selections to make gradual adjustments to areas without distorting the mesh too much.

My first version had the visor up as it did in the initial sketches, but on each iteration I like to change up as much as possible so I easily move the visor down to see it in action.

You can generate a whole library of clothing and accessories that fit within a genre so you can pick and choose elements to get brand new looks with a few clicks and quick adjustments.

I decided that I want some options on the character herself. I elected to remove the cut lines that I had created earlier and opted to create something else that will still evoke the cyber punk feeling while hopefully feeling fresh and interesting. 

I grabbed the same texture from the cut lines that were directing the glow effect and once again took advantage of the Texture editor that sent it over to Photoshop. I used the texture reference in tandem with the original cutline glow to figure out where I wanted the new glow to be, I really enjoy hand painting these maps, giving me a very fluid workflow that can help create options on the fly. 

With mixing and matching, I am able to set up three unique renders that I can now take into photoshop to finish off with some paint and photo texture to get that last little bit of the way to the finish line!

*Note: You can Right click on your color map in the modify tab to pull up the option to Adjust color. This allowed me to desaturate the texture of some clothing I had that didn’t quite work with what I had established. This gives me a great base to work with in Photoshop.

Follow the other 6 tutorials in this series:

Part #1: Getting Started and Sketches

Part #2: Costume & Asset Creation in ZBrush

Part #3: Refining and Adding Details in ZBrush

Part #4: Generating Textures and Importing into Character Creator 3

Part #5: Lighting and Posing a Character in Character Creator 3

Part #7: Comping Renders, Paint, and Finish

Gnomon Instructor and Senior Concept Artist Kyle Brown shares a groundbreaking workflow

Kyle Brown, a veteran of the CG world, Kyle has worked within the field since 2015 and has had his hand in a number of projects throughout the film and television industry. He also currently is an instructor at the Gnomon School of Visual Effects where he is able to share his expertise with others.

This Master Class comes in 7 parts, each carries its own tutorial video to guide you through the entire process of how Kyle incorporates Character Creator, Photoshop, ZBrush and other tools to create the concept art. You can find links to the other 6 tutorials below.

Part #5: Lighting and Posing a Character in Character Creator 3

With all of the textures in place and material properties assigned, I start to work with some of the other properties within the content library, including the Stage elements. I enjoy looking through the Smart Gallery as well so see how options are bundled for a more cultivated look. 

Not only can you set up the lights but you can also further adjust the image window with a number of post effects including blurs, color adjusts and LUT color grading effects.

This is great for artists who want to streamline the process as much as possible and limit their time in their post processor of choice.

I flipped through a number of studio lighting scenarios that had some really strong dramatic lighting. I wanted a nice blend between studio lighting and something that would feel a little more natural or environmental as though some of the lighting was coming from some neon street signage.

Once you pick a studio lighting preset you will see that it generates lights in your scene tree that you can move and manipulate for further customization. 

With lights arranged I went digging through the library of content to see what I could tackle inside of CC3 rather than generating elsewhere or photobashing later. I was thrilled to find the Floor_Asphalt and Floor_Tarmacked available in the Content > Stage Elements > Props > floors. 

There is also a really great concrete wall that fit perfectly for the vibe I was trying to achieve in the piece and did a great job of framing the scene.

I experimented with some posing earlier in the process, when checking to make sure all of the costume and prop elements were parented to the right body part and conforming properly. After setting up the lighting with the figure in T-Pose, and locking in a little bit of the environment, I deep dive into getting my character into her final pose.

The final Pose is similar to the initial pose used for the sketch phase, still maintaining the same attitude that the sketch had. I wanted a pose that showed off a bit of character without it being too extreme, blocking parts of the costume. As this is for concepts, it’s important to communicate as much information as possible to the viewer. 

I had to tweak a few elements of the costume, including the shoulder pauldron that after moving was interpentrating the upper torso and arm.

Everything is looking the way I want, the pose and position are where I want them, the camera angle is where I want so I start adjusting some of the camera effects.

These adjustments can be made in the Visual tab, where you can make adjustments to your Light, Shadow, Ambient Occlusion and much more. You have the option to edit your post effects that were added from your content library as well. 

Here is the piece rounding the final adjustment to get our primary scene set up. I make some adjustments to the Bloom to get a little bit more ‘oomph’ out of the visors and play up that cyberpunk aesthetic.

CC3 can render out a static image from the real time window, It’s is important to know that there is also the option to render with the Iray renderer that can be installed with CC3. To take advantage of the real time benefits of the SkinGen set of tools and their appearance, it would be best to render with the real time render in CC3. This will be one set image when I render out, with no additional passes which means I want to handle as much in one pass as possible and handle the rest in paint within photoshop.

I want to get some depth of field in the shot, so I select the Camera in my scene tree and jump over to the Modify menu where you find some additional options you can tweak.

If you want to see the effect of the depth of field, you can check or uncheck the Activate box in the Modify menu to turn it on and off. I will do this as I apply different costume pieces to the other iterations in the coming steps.

*Tip: To save the Camera by navigating to the Content tab, selecting the Stage Elements > Camera and selecting Custom. Hit the + at the bottom of the menu to add your custom camera in case you accidentally move out of that view while modifying your character.

Follow the other 6 tutorials in this series:

Part #1: Getting Started and Sketches

Part #2: Costume & Asset Creation in ZBrush

Part #3: Refining and Adding Details in ZBrush

Part #4: Generating Textures and Importing into Character Creator 3

Part #6: Costume Variation and Texture Modification

Part #7: Comping Renders, Paint, and Finish