Inspired by the movie Elysium, this villainous 3D art delivers realism while staying out of the Uncanny Valley

Thomas-Sten Chermain is a 3D character artist from Réunion, an island in the Indian Ocean. His piece Agent Kruger is based on the villain from the SF action movie Elysium, and an experiment in producing a convincing render of a real-life person. The suite of software in use included ZBrush, Substance 3D Painter, Maya, Marvelous Designer, Character Creator, Unreal Engine and Photoshop.

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Thomas-Sten says: I chose this project because of its incredible sci-fi elements. The uncanny valley of the technology wasn't noticeable when I looked at the design of the character: like I was successfully duped by this sci-fi style. One thing that was important during this project was the scanning approach for the clothes. I loved it, and it's now one of my favourite tasks.

For the posing, I started with Character Creator 4 and finished in ZBrush. In all, 90 per cent of my time was spent cleaning up in ZBrush to ensure there was no clipping geometry, stretched UVs or unrealistic deformations.

Check out Thomas-Sten’s ArtStation.

This content originally appeared in 3D World magazine.