This version of the render was created in Substance Stager using the new ASM shader for SSS

This stylized character, inspired by Cyberpunk 2077, was created for my Substance Painter demo at Adobe Max 2020 during the 3D and AR session.

I started the character from a dynamesh sphere in Zbrush and sculpted the base form for the character bust and jacket. I intentionally left out high-resolution details with the goal of seeing how far I could add micro detail using only Substance Painter. I used Fibermesh in Zbrush to create the hair and eyebrows and simply exported the hair as geometry. I then exported the meshes to Blender where I modeled the hard surface mechanical parts. In blender, I use the Hardops addon for hard surface modeling. Again, I my goal was to define the main form at the 3D modeling stage and rely on Substance Painter for all the hard surface details.

All textures were created in Substance Painter. Details such as the pores, face wrinkles, shaved head, facial stubble were created in Painter. I also used Painter to create details such as the wrinkles in the jacket and hard surface details in the mechanical parts.

The rendering was done in Adobe Dimension. I created subsurface maps in Painter and applied them to the translucence input in the Dimension material. I am using a 3-point lighting setup with fill, key and rim lighting. Also, the scene is using an HDRI for the base environment covering reflections and GI. I modeled a Cornea layer to the eye which uses refraction In the material.

I saved the Dimension render to a 16-bit PSD file and did some further compositing in Photoshop to add additional light bloom and overall color grading.