Realistic Character Workflow

In this documentation we share all the current research and workflow techniques on creating highly realistic human characters in Blender. This section was mostly compiled from previous work and research from the Blender Studio.

All the content is closely tied to Project Heist and will often use it as a visual reference. This documentation will remain more generalised to apply to other characters outside of that production as well.

This documentation is focused on advanced techniques and general advice that was learned during production. It will not go into detail like other tutorials on this platform.

The main topic will also be on the sculpting and modeling process for animation, instead of the whole workflow of texturing, shading, grooming, rigging and animation.

The original intent was to turn this documentation into a full tutorial series similar to the Stylized Character Workflow. That tutorial course was originally born out of collected knowledge from previous Open Movies such as Spring. But since the features and workflows of realistic character creation are not as easy to follow and use, we decided to leave this in its current format until another time.

Big thanks to Daniel Bystedt, Kent Trammell & Chris Jones for feedback, inspiration & resources!