I started from a concept I had saved for a long time, with the goal of making a fully game-ready character. My biggest challenge was the hair cards.
First, I gathered all my references in PureRef, including anatomy, clothing, and other details. I also looked at characters on ArtStation for inspiration.
For the high-poly model, I used ZBrush and Marvelous Designer. I started with a base mesh and focused on the face, aiming for a childlike look with chubby cheeks and big eyes. Most of the clothes were made in Marvelous, and I added details in ZBrush. For the rest, I used basic shapes and ZModeler to get clean geometry before adding details.
Using subdivisions made retopology easier since many parts were already low-poly. In Maya, I optimized everything to stay under my 100K polycount limit. After finishing the UVs and texture packing, I moved on to texturing.
I started with the face and body textures, then set up a shader in Marmoset. I always keep Marmoset open while texturing to see the results in real time.
Then came the hardest part: the hair. I stopped and did a lot of research on hair cards, watching tons of tutorials to understand the process. I bought the GSCurve tool and finally got to work. It took me over three weeks just for the hair, but in the end, I was really happy with the result.
For the final steps, I posed the character, made a small scene, and rendered everything.
After months of work, I’m really happy with how it turned out. This project helped me see my skill level, improve a lot, and learn even more.
