Workflow Stuff: Leveraging PureRef, FaceTransfer and AI to help sculpt. (Patreon)

For educational purposes, I'm using my Spektra model. For a project like this I recommend not reinventing the wheel and purchasing a stock Genesis 8 or 9 model (I prefer 9, much more versatile) from DazStudio with an interactive license. You can choose to use morph dials or a plugin like FaceTransfer if you want, or you can export into Blender to do sculpting. Pictures A and B show the face of the model already textured and sculpted on Blender, but for body shape and size you can of course use a variety of morph packs on DazStudio, or sculpt them yourself. Both techniques have merit and it depends, if you're a storyteller it makes more sense to use Daz, if you're a technical sculptor, I'd even suggest using something more user-friendly than Blender like ZBrush, though it's a pricy option. Picture 3 shows the facial reference I used to fine-tune Spektra; this is based on an earlier primitive model of her I made that I brought to life using Nano to create frontal-view and side view facial references for further work. As you can see, she's a mix of East Asian and Caucasian just like in the story. The last two pictures feature how I make a scene in Daz Studio. On the left is the lighting asset pack I use. As you can see, the environments are a mashup of various assets- this is a custom one I call "The Cloning Vault", which is Spektra's home stage. Posing is done on Daz after rigging on Blender, and the costumes are a variety of Daz and custom-made assets. The final picture shows the Nvidia iRay render-view of the scene and on the left, is a set of poses in the Spektra- Pencak Silat II pose pack I released on Renderhub.

USING PUREREF & AI TO MAKE REFERENCE PHOTOSHere's something that I find pretty useful for modeling purposes on both Blender and Daz Studio. For those of us without two monitors, or for whom switching between monitors is distracting, references for sculpting can be used through a program called PureRef, which will keep open a dialogue box you can pin OVER your 3D program to use as a constant reference.For a model like Spektra, I've found that a good way of making reference pictures is to either take a primitive model you've made or if you're basing it off of a real person (with permission of course) to take a picture, run it through an AI program like ChatGPT or Nano Banana, and ask it to produce front-facing and side-facing reference pictures, prompting it with "looking forward", "expressionless" and making sure it is bald and without makeup so you have an accurate look at what their face can look like.This is the technique I use. For those of us who don't want to use Blender to sculpt or model faces on Genesis models, you can also use FaceTransfer. I find this plugin for Daz works best if you are using similar AI frontal references and dialing the resulting morph down to 50% as the plugin tends to exaggerate facial features any higher than that.

For purists, the use of AI in reference pictures makes sense because you often rarely find pictures of people which are 100% front-facing or side profiles, which is something you need when referencing. AI is a tool just like PS, just like Blender, PureRef, 3DSMax, and can be leveraged to help artists make art. In this case, it is used in a limited way to help formulate a design. AAA studios have been doing this and more- even using AI to create 3D assets from scratch, and SEGA has been open about doing it for brainstorming, asset creation and referencing.PureRef can be downloaded here: https://www.pureref.com/Happy modeling!