How To Create Realistic Scars & Brains Using ZBrush & Substance 3D Painter

Introduction

My name is Eduardo Bartali, a 3D Character Artist working as a freelance professional. My journey in 3D art spans nearly a decade, with the last four years dedicated specifically to character design. Unlike many in my field, I'm primarily self-taught, having developed my skills through online learning platforms, tutorials, and countless hours of dedicated practice.

Drawing and gaming have been lifelong passions, which naturally led me to 3D modeling, a field that instantly captured my imagination. My artistic philosophy centers on appreciating beauty in all its diverse manifestations, believing that even seemingly imperfect forms possess their own unique visual harmony.

My professional portfolio reflects a rich tapestry of experiences across the entertainment, art, advertising, and gaming sectors. These diverse projects have not only challenged my skills but have significantly contributed to my professional growth and creative versatility.

The Workflow Behind The Scar

For this project, I followed Pete Zoppi's Character Creation for Film/Cinematics course. Intriguingly, the concept art by Guohongchao never revealed the character's left cheek, inspiring me to imagine a significant scar hidden there. This creative interpretation motivated my detailed exploration.

Pete Zoppi's feedback was instrumental in refining the scar's development. I modeled entirely in ZBrush, utilizing the SpotLight technique to directly map reference images onto the mesh. Using the VFace mesh from Texturing XYZ, a method new to me, I experimented with various approaches.

I employed specialized brushes simulating scar tissue, combining dynamic fold brushes to enhance organic authenticity. Through layering techniques, I progressively developed a burn scar effect. By strategically masking areas and leveraging cavity mask systems, I meticulously crafted skin textures and imperfections, always referencing the original concept and visual references.

Drawing inspiration from Jared Chavez's method, I began by characterizing the subdermal layer and mapping capillary vessel and muscle distributions across facial regions.

At the epidermal level, I highlighted skin elevation and sculptural recessions from the high-definition model, emphasizing these with subtle color variations ranging from red to soft pink. I then focused on detailing blood irrigation within the scar areas, introducing nuanced color shifts in yellow, blue, and violet tones.

To enhance visual complexity, I created additional color variations and levels to mask different scar sections. Finally, I desaturated the entire facial texture to ensure color coherence, paying particular attention to the roughness texture's specificity.

Rendering

The final scar rendering benefited significantly from material management using the Arnold rendering engine in Maya. By combining the displacement map from ZBrush with the normal map from Substance 3D Painter and carefully balancing their interaction, I enhanced the facial contours and scar imperfections.

I incorporated a dedicated micro detail map to seamlessly blend the transition between normal skin and scar tissue. In material management, I utilized the normal map in the normal coat to accentuate skin texture, allowing light rebounds to highlight surface irregularities.

The strategic use of roughness and diffuse maps further refined the visual characteristics, ultimately creating a more nuanced and realistic skin texture.

The Workflow Behind The Brain

This project involved recreating the iconic alien character from a '90s film, reimagined by the Outelier Games team with whom I collaborated. Our primary focus was developing the organic brain component, a critical aspect of the character's design.

Following the concept artist's guidelines and conducting extensive image research on specific brain morphology, I initiated the process by establishing the primary organic form's foundational structures. I first created a low-poly silhouette of the face and skull, then projected the low-density mesh onto the brain model to capture base configurations.

After subdividing the head mesh and re-projecting the upper cranial section onto the brain model, I began introducing detailed elements. The SpotLight technique proved most effective, allowing me to reproduce and modify image references on the mesh directly while maintaining visual fidelity. Subsequent refinement involved adding intricate details such as veins, enhancing soft brain tissue curvatures and sulci, and progressively incorporating high-resolution anatomical references to achieve increasing levels of precision. The entire process was executed using ZBrush software. 

Texturing

After creating the UVs and the low-poly mesh, I worked on the textures. I exported the high-poly mesh to use with Substance 3D Painter, enabling more detailed texture refinement. Extracting the displacement map from ZBrush and reimporting it into Substance 3D Painter provided a significant enhancement.

My approach to organic texturing is inspired by Jared Chavez's method, which emphasizes creating a sequential layer structure from the subcutaneous level to generate color and density variations, ensuring a more coherent result.

I crafted the textures by highlighting the details obtained in ZBrush and introducing color and tonal variations. I deliberately increased the roughness to create a map that accentuates the organic nature and soft brain tissues. To add further visual interest, I incorporated tri-planar texturing with tailorable microdetails, enhancing the overall definition. 

Conclusion

These projects presented a fascinating challenge, offering opportunities to learn new concepts and directly engage with professional techniques. The key modeling aspects included projecting maps directly onto the mesh in ZBrush, utilizing specialized and dynamic brushes, and implementing effective masking and sculptural techniques. 
For texturing, the focus was on structuring textures from the high-poly model and highlighting depth variations through nuanced color gradations and shading.

Eduardo Bartali, 3D Artist