Netta
A stylised character taken through the full production pipeline, from sculpt to retopology, textures, facial blend shapes and rig, and ready to animate in a real-time engine.
- Role
- Character artist
- Discipline
- 3D
- Year
- 2025
- Tools
- ZBrush, Maya, Substance Painter
Netta was a test of the whole pipeline, not just the sculpt. The goal was a character that looks good in a still render and also holds up once it has to move.
Sculpt to game-ready mesh
I sculpted the character in ZBrush, refining the face and proportions over several passes, then retopologised for clean deformation. The hardest areas were the joints and the face. Topology that looks fine in a T-pose falls apart at the elbow or in a smile, so I tested poses and expressions early and went back to the mesh when they broke.
Textures, rig and expressions
Textures are a mix of hand-painted and procedural in Substance Painter, using roughness and normal maps to push an anime-inspired look. Getting skin, clothing and hair to respond to light consistently was its own challenge. The rig uses HumanIK, and facial blend shapes handle expressions without breaking the mesh.
Look development
I tried several toon-style shaders and lighting setups to see how far the stylised look could go in real-time rendering.
What I’d take further: a proper animation pass, and a final shader built for a specific engine instead of a general look.