LIU THE DRAGON HUNTRESS

Self-taught freelance 3D artist, Jeanbaptiste Gaeng, worked on this fierce character in his spare time over a three-month period, totalling around 130 hours. “It took me quite a long time because it is in this very project that I learned the workflow to create a realistic CG character,” Gaeng tells 3D World. Several courses helped make this character a reality: ‘Liu Yifei likeness as Mulan’ by Jungwon Park (from which Gaeng took the initial base mesh of the head), ‘Creating an advanced cinematic character – Vagrant Knight’ by Huifeng Huang, and ‘Creating a photorealistic character: Joan of Arc’ by Mike Hong.

Gaeng used Mari for the albedo and displacement head maps, and textured with Texturing.xyz. “The Texturing.xyz textures allowed me to go faster and gain realism without having to hand sculpt the pores of the skin, which I know other artists may prefer,” he says.

“This was by far the most technically challenging and time-consuming piece of work I have done so far,” Gaeng explains. “I always wanted to create a character in the heroic fantasy universe, and I also plan in the future to sculpt creatures from this world as well. Why do you think Liu is named ‘the Dragon Huntress’?”