Max Bianchini talked about the process of creating Ellie's portrait, explaining how he divides his references into categories, sculpts the portrait in parts, and achieves a realistic texture.

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Senior Texture and Look Dev Artist Max Bianchini walks through his process of recreating Ellie from The Last of Us Part II as a detailed 3D portrait. He covers his reference-gathering workflow using PureRef, sculpting in ZBrush starting from base meshes, hair creation with XGen in Maya, retopology and UV unwrapping, texturing in Substance 3D Painter using ScanStore skin maps with custom layers for scars and freckles, and lighting with Arnold. The project served as an R&D exercise to refine his shader library and benchmark his skill growth since a previous version made five years ago.

Turning Ellie from The Last of Us Part II into a Detailed 3D Sculpt