How to sculpt and texture a demonic bust
BLENDER | SUBSTANCE 3D PAINTER
Build a fearsome character with Elena Leonteva as she explains the details behind her striking project
When I set out to make this demonic character bust, my main goal was to create a detailed, real-time 3D portrait that looked as close as possible to the original concept art made by Veronika Kozlova. It also gave me the chance to test out Blender’s capabilities for high-poly sculpting, which I’ve been eager to try for a while now, and check on how its real-time EEVEE render engine performs.
In this tutorial, I’ll guide you through my process creating the bust. We'll start off by sculpting in Blender, before retopologising and unwrapping the textures. With that done, we’ll create PBR textures in Substance 3D Painter. Next, I’ll show you how to set up a scene in Blender and make the final render in the EEVEE engine, and we’ll also do some small post-processing with compositing in Blender for the final image.
01 BLOCKOUT THE PRIMARY FORMS
First you need to do the blocking of the main shapes. It’s necessary to create all the main volumes of objects without venturing into any great detail. We’ll make the horns, head, ears and the basic shape of the hair out of spheres using the Grab, Clay Strips and Smooth brushes, also periodically using the Remesh tool.
At this stage, we want to make the armour elements from planes using a set of modifiers. Start off with the modifiers for Mirror, and Subdivision set at Level 1, then Solidify to increase the thickness, Bevel, another Subdivision modifier set at level 2 to give us better smoothing of the shape, and finally a Weighted Normal for improved shading.
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02 REFINE THE SHAPES AND ADD DETAILS
The next step is to add detail to the objects in accordance with the concept. The head, horns and ears need to be combined into one object, then you need to detail the shapes, adding large wrinkles, basic shapes, and more intricate touches to the horns.
We must also apply modifiers for the demon’s armour, so make a Remesh with a Voxel Size of 0.005m and work out the details. Combine the side of the lining and the first plate into one object, smooth out the transition, and add chips, scratches, bruises and abrasions for a lived-in feel.
03 RETOPOLOGISE THE HEAD AND ARMOUR
I used the BSurfaces add-on for the retopology work, which is already built into Blender. Using this add
