3D Character Artist Stanislav Lozitskii has provided an in-depth breakdown of his creative process behind the Zhuo Sal project, a comic-style character featuring hand-painted PBR textures. The project showcases advanced techniques in character modeling, texturing, and rendering using industry-standard software including ZBrush, Maya, Substance 3D Painter, and Marmoset Toolbag.

Lozitskii's journey into 3D art began during his university years while studying an unrelated field. A casual conversation with friends about game development completely changed his career trajectory. Despite having no artistic background, he immersed himself in online tutorials and sought guidance from experienced 3D artists. His first professional opportunity came at the end of 2020 on a small mobile game project, which, although never released, connected him with talented professionals in the industry.

After gaining initial experience, Lozitskii joined a major outsourcing company where he worked on notable titles including Paladins and Risk of Rain 2, eventually advancing to a Lead Character Artist position. This diverse project exposure across different visual art styles provided invaluable experience in blending artistic directions and reinforced the importance of continuous creative exploration.

The Zhuo Sal character was inspired by concept art from artist Lin Chill, depicting a steadfast guardian who protects the city of Sham with unwavering devotion while suffering from a curse associated with the place. The character's determined expression and unique outfit immediately captured Lozitskii's attention, prompting him to reinterpret the protector in a fresh artistic style. Initially, the project wasn't intended to become a comic-style character with hand-painted textures, but during the texturing phase, Lozitskii felt compelled to create something vibrant and saturated, distinctly different from his workplace projects.

The technical workflow began with creating the character's base mesh body, while the head blockout had been completed earlier. Despite most of the body being covered by clothing and armor, Lozitskii carefully considered anatomical proportions to ensure proper fit of garments later in the process. He maintained subtools at low subdivision levels as long as possible, utilizing Dynamic Subdivision and the Crease tool to control large shapes until the final stages.

Actual subdivisions were applied only during the final sculpting phase to refine details, add wear effects, and define smaller forms. For hair creation, low-poly curls with creased edges were developed using ZModeler. After subdivision, the DamStandard brush helped refine finer details, while Clay Polish sharpened hair forms and provided a cleaner appearance. This tool proved especially effective when combined with the Morph brush for enhanced control.

The head construction followed a similar approach, built from a low-poly base to avoid time-consuming retopology work later. Standard brushes including DamStandard, Clay Buildup, and Smooth were employed to polish and define primary shapes. The weapon received identical treatment, with the sword's base shape modeled in Maya, then exported to ZBrush for subdivision. This methodology ensures clean, crisp high-poly models without unwanted surface irregularities.

Once high-poly modeling was complete, retopology was performed in Maya using the standard Quad Draw tool, while UV unwrapping was handled in RizomUV, which Lozitskii considers most comfortable for this type of work. Multiple material sets were created without strict polycount limitations since this was a personal project, though he emphasizes the importance of proper optimization for commercial work while allowing creative freedom in personal endeavors.

The texturing phase proved most crucial to the project's final presentation. After analyzing character art from Marvel Rivals and Arcane, Lozitskii decided to texture Zhuo Sal drawing inspiration from those projects' artists. All texturing was completed entirely in Substance 3D Painter, beginning with base color blocking followed by hand-painted broad brushstrokes. A Sharpen filter was applied over the base to ensure stroke crispness and readability even from distant viewing angles.

To add variation, Lozitskii incorporated a custom Normal Map featuring visible brush strokes, typically applied at 40 percent opacity to avoid over-prominence. This subtle detail changes light surface interaction, providing textures with enhanced depth and variation across different materials from fabric to metal. After completing hand-painting, standard generators like Ambient Occlusion and Curvature were added to bring volume and material richness. Rather than keeping generators gray, he preferred tinting them to maintain the stylized aesthetic.

The final texturing stage involved adding comic-style strokes and outlines in various colors, placed somewhat randomly for organic spontaneity. Lozitskii believes using both black and bright accent strokes from the model's palette creates an effective method for guiding viewer attention and making textures more dynamic.

For rendering and lighting, Marmoset Toolbag 5 served as the primary software due to its comfort for model presentation and animation capabilities. Before establishing lighting, Lozitskii created a reference grid showing Zhuo Sal with different camera settings. The vertical axis displayed various focal lengths while the horizontal showed different camera positions: above looking slightly down, waist level looking straight, and below looking slightly upward. This setup approach proves helpful for anyone rendering full-body character shots.

The scene lighting remained relatively simple, employing several cool-colored rim lights from behind to emphasize character silhouette, typically using Directional Lights, plus front-positioned spotlights at different angles. Through character lighting study, Lozitskii learned that no universal setup fits every model, as each character possesses unique shapes, colors, and balance affecting light behavior.

General lighting principles remained standard: avoiding excessive light source usage (Zhuo Sal used two rim lights and three front/side lights) and preventing overly white highlights or deep black shadows unless serving artistic purposes. Since the character featured hand-painted Albedo mapping, lighting supported rather than dominated the final render, enhancing existing painted elements.

An additional shot with camera animation and different mood utilized two cool overhead lights and red illumination from below, creating a completely different atmosphere and diversifying the ArtStation presentation. Interestingly, this shot became the work's thumbnail and received favorable feedback, proving that simple setups often work best.

Post-processing involved adding colorful comic-style outlines using the same setup for both rotating video and main still image. The technique required duplicating the character layer with transparency rendered in Marmoset Toolbag, placing the duplicate underneath the original, filling with color, adjusting with HSL for easier control, then transforming slightly to achieve desired outline direction. This approach works equally well for videos or frame sequences in Photoshop.

Lozitskii identified the project's most challenging aspect as departing from his usual artistic approach, particularly with textures. The desire to try new techniques, take creative risks, and explore unknown territories sometimes led to moments of wanting to abandon the character for new projects. He emphasizes that artistic growth involves not just skills or hard work, but the surrounding community's influence. For beginners, he recommends staying curious and maintaining good company with motivating, supportive individuals. Discord groups provide valuable platforms for sharing work, receiving advice, and general discussion, demonstrating how brief conversations with friends can significantly impact artistic development.