Creating a Character Bust: From Ideation to Final Render

ZBrush, Maya, Marvelous Designer, Substance 3D Painter & Marmoset Toolbag Workflow with Colleen Larson

Leveraging all of the skills learned throughout her career, Colleen Larson, a Senior Character Artist at Naughty Dog, takes you through her entire process of bringing a character to life in 3D. The workflow showcased is a modified version of the game art pipeline she follows daily in her professional role. 

This workshop is intended for anyone who would like to gain a holistic view of how a character is created from initial ideation and reference gathering through to the final render. Foundational knowledge of ZBrush, Maya, Substance Painter, and Marmoset Toolbag is recommended, but this workshop will provide a brief overview of each software used for those interested. 

Throughout this 3-hour tutorial, Colleen shares her approach to preparing for a 3D character project, demonstrates head and likeness sculpting in ZBrush, instructs how to create realistic clothing using Marvelous Designer, shows how to create impressive hair using XGen, and explains how to texture the character using Substance Painter. She then walks through the process of rendering the bust in Marmoset Toolbag to create the final images and videos to showcase in a portfolio. 

In addition to sharing her professional techniques, Colleen discusses her philosophies for staying creative throughout the process. If you are passionate about character art and want to know how to push it to the next level, or simply curious and want to learn more about how it’s done, this tutorial will provide essential insights to help you level up your 3D characters. 

The 3D Scan Store Free Base Mesh and the 3D Scan Store HD Male Head 23 are utilized in this workshop. A .txt file containing links to the other resources that Colleen found helpful with her project is also provided as a project file.