INTRODUCTION
Hello, my name is Pablo Rethemias, and I come from Uruguay, a small country located in South America.
I started with Blender in a very distant era, back when the versions were more modest and not as popular as they are these days. I believe the first time I used Blender was in 2009 with version 2.49.
Since that moment, I began a self-taught journey that continues to this day. I have worked in architecture studios and advertising production companies, always trying to showcase what Blender was capable of. Some paid attention, while others not so much. Always unconsciously, I set a personal goal to spread the tool to others in the audiovisual field.
Afterwards, for a period of time, I taught classes in courses and programs in both public and private institutions. I also did so at the state university of my country, always fixed with the idea in mind to introduce others to this wonderful tool.
As a result of these chosen paths, I set a goal one day to become a part of the now-extinct group of Instructors of the Blender Foundation, the BFCT (Blender Foundation Certified Trainers).
Currently, I focus more on generalist 3D work, but in all these personal and commercial projects, I always use Blender as my main tool.
INSPIRATION
I am not the type of artist who uses other artists' conceptual art to create my works. It's worth noting that this makes the designs of my characters more laborious, ever-changing, and tedious. I would dare to say that for this very reason, they might not be as successful.
The truth is that character design is a whole different world!
On the other hand, while they may not be as popular, I believe this also makes my characters truly unique, and I love that. For this, I have used references of clothing from that era, as well as references about the human body and its anatomy.
Well, the inspiration for this artwork is clearly about vampires. I have always enjoyed books and stories about vampires, and specifically, this man is a representation of Santiago, a secondary character in Anne Rice's The Vampire Chronicles.
PROCESS
Modeling
I have used Blender for most things, modeling almost everything, lighting, and environment designing.
And also, for retopology, and UDIM UV mapping.
Sculpting
For detailed sculpting, I have used ZBrush, seamlessly connecting it with Blender and vice versa, thanks to the addon called "GoB" (Go to Blender). This addon allows us to do all of this and much more with just one click.
Here, I was adding details inside the iris, as well as sculpting wrinkles and pores on the skin.
Clothes
Marvelous Designer was used in a primitive way to create believable folds in the long coat and pants. Then, it was imported into Blender to work magic with the topology. Finally, if necessary, it was taken to ZBrush to reinforce some thread seams or fabric weight drops.
Baking
After baking normal details from ZBrush, these maps were loaded into Substance Painter to paint the model more intuitively, visualizing the fine sculpting details on the object to be textured.
Once the diffuse, metallic, and roughness painting was completed in Substance Painter, all this material was easily loaded into a Principled BSDF shader in Blender with just a simple CTRL+SHIFT+T.
Hair
Well, the hair was done using hair particles for the head, hands, beard, eyebrows, and fine body hair. On the other hand, the eyelashes were created by duplicating curves one by one with different thicknesses. The hat and coat also have fine hairs, made using hair particles.
Environment
The grass that emerges between the cobblestones was created with hair particles and then replaced by grass-shaped objects.
The ambient fog was created using volumetric objects and noise textures.
Rendering
Lastly, I illuminated it according to the project's needs and rendered it in Cycles, which, by the way, has never been so fast since I upgraded from my old Threadripper CPU to a new RTX 4070 GPU, a high-end, mid-range one. Ohhh yeah! Optix is really fast, and I highly recommend it!
Well, I hope you've enjoyed seeing a bit of my creative process. Here are some final samples of the project.
RENDER - Bloody Time
Thank you for reading the article. Feel free to explore more of my work on my social media accounts. Have a good day!
About the Artist
Pablo (PablonchoWorks) is a 3D artist, currently working on projects revolving around virtual reality and augmented reality, with a keen eye on the video game industry.
