I'm going to maintain the blog on Artstation and post links to new blog posts here


https://www.artstation.com/markedwards1/blog/Z03q/cc-digital-human-contest-2020-realistic-character-introduction

I'll keep a single current work in progress image at the top updates below!, the blog link above now has an index and each link references which tools were used in the blog.
18/09/2020

Good luck everyone!

Mark

CC3 x Blender. Great combination!
Looking forward to seeing your artworks!

First update
Export and Import from CC3 to Blender, I will get to some Art shortly! but as 20% of competition is workflow this one of the critical bits so it works later!
https://www.artstation.com/markedwards1/blog/REZj/cc-digital-human-contest-2020-realistic-character-initial-export-from-cc3-to-blender

Import scanned asset into Blender an initial tidy up and alignment with CC3 base mesh
https://www.artstation.com/markedwards1/blog/9L9v/cc-digital-human-contest-2020-realistic-character-import-scanned-asset-to-blender-and-align

Conforming the CC3+ base mesh to the scan Part 1 (Part 2 will show how to project the vertex position back to the base mesh without messing up the vertex order)
https://www.artstation.com/markedwards1/blog/Pq3d/cc-digital-human-contest-2020-realistic-character-conforming-the-cc3-base-mesh-part-1

Conforming the CC3+ base mesh part 2
Next blog post is exciting I get back into CC3 at last :-)
This shows how to transfer your modified vertex positions back to the base mesh without changing the vertex order and initial placement and more polishing of the mesh.
Had to make some artistic decisions around the eyes at this point to make them fit the spherical mesh eyes, this is normal when working from scanned data as human eyes are not as round as we might think :-)
https://www.artstation.com/markedwards1/blog/VgG1/cc-digital-human-contest-2020-realistic-character-conforming-the-cc3-base-mesh-part-2
Final check for distortion before reimport into CC3, there will always be some as we are not modifying the UV base so it's a case of managing it, also real faces are not symmetrical so you wouldn't expect it to follow exactly. 
Around the eyebrow region there is not a lot of supporting geometry to play with and I might tweak that more but I'm going to see what it looks in CC3 like before making any further changes, it's really easy to update custom morphs so doing a few round trips back and forth to polish it is not time consuming.

Creating a custom morph in CC3

This shows how to successfully export your modified base mesh out of blender and import into CC3 as a custom morph, it also shows some areas to check and how to update the morph.
https://www.artstation.com/markedwards1/blog/2GRN/cc-digital-human-contest-2020-realistic-character-create-custom-morph-in-cc3
Next steps use morph sliders to generate the body, use headshot sliders to tweak the face using them over the top of the custom morph, use skingen to get some additional texturing and details into the skin base.
A couple of screens shot from final morph import into CC3 after a bit of refinement and a default CC3 base texture applied.  I'm actually going to transfer the texture from the scan later in the process and blend that into the base texture so I have a more custom / real look.

Creating the body and adding extra skin detail
https://www.artstation.com/markedwards1/blog/O42E/cc-digital-human-contest-2020-realistic-character-creating-the-body-and-adding-extra-skin-detail

Example of using the new morph sliders to quickly create the body without impacting the head morph


Using headshot morphs on top of the custom morph to add more face detail, then use skingen assets to add finer details


Example to show how you can use overall body shape anatomy morphs to affect custom morps so you can continue to refine



Next steps - setup new substance painter workflow use captured scan texture to refine the body texture and blend with the rest of the texture sets using substance and photoshop

There's a lot in the blog so I wont reproduce it all here
The blog takes you from exporting the current chr from CC3 to Substance painter, some tips an tricks for setting that up, onto blender to extract the base texture from the scan, over to photoshop to blend and extract more detail, back to substance painter to match and blend then back to CC3 with the new textures (phew!)
https://www.artstation.com/markedwards1/blog/0W17/cc-digital-human-contest-2020-realistic-character-fully-customising-skin
A couple of shots and the latest image (lots more detail in the blog)
next steps are I'm going to do a couple of test renders to do some final checks before deciding on hairstyles! which I'm looking forward to.
re-projecting the texture in blender into cc3 UV space


Blending in photoshop


painting in more skin detail in substance


More blending and colour matching in substance


Back to CC3 for next steps!

Test render and more tweaking!
More details in blog, but ran initial test render in Blender after exporting from CC3.  I've got a node group I've created to using the CC3 maps effectively so it's pretty quick to set up.

Noticed issue with lips on first low quality render so did round trip back to substance -> cc3 -> blender to fix just to keep everything in sync


Pretty happy with final render, it's still work in progress, I think I might have overcooked the top lip a bit but I'm going to leave it for now it's easy enough to fix later if it annoys me :-)

EDIT: It annoyed me too much!  On closer inspection I actually needed to move the outer lip edge loops and tighten them up more rather than just painting over them.

This show one of the strengths of the work flow, even with all the morhps on there and having the character in a pose, I just went back to blender, updated the mesh, reimported to CC3 and replaced the morph and didn't break any of the other work.
I added a bit more oil to the skin as well.  Glad I took the time to render it as I just couldn't see the issue until then.





next steps collecting references for hair and planning that, thinking how it's going to fit in with my final vision for the character.