2026 Reallusion 3D Character Contest - Clive Owen (Last Knights) - Realistic Character Design

[aladdinq]

Hi everyone,
I am excited to join the 2026 Reallusion 3D Character Contest. I hesitated to enter at first because, alongside my freelance work, I love to stay busy and usually manage multiple personal projects at the same time, like my current likenesses of Idris Elba and Michelle Yeoh. While jumping between characters keeps my mind fresh and gives me a great creative boost, it can sometimes become a bit chaotic, leaving me with several personal pieces that just need some extra polish and refinement to finally finish them.In fact, I started sculpting this realistic likeness of Clive Owen from the movie Last Knights about three years ago, but it has been sitting unfinished on my hard drive. The official contest video announcement gave me the exact push I needed when it asked: “If you’ve been looking for a reason to finally finish your 3D character this year, here’s a good one.” Balancing this with my freelance work will definitely be a challenge, but my absolute goal is to focus my energy and cross the finish line this time.

Current Progress & Workflow:
The Head: I actually almost finished this realistic likeness of Clive Owen from the movie Last Knights about three years ago. However, I never posted it on ArtStation because it was sculpted directly into a final pose instead of a T-pose or A-pose, meaning I couldn’t rig or animate it. All my work at the time was just still images. Now, my first step is to wrap this existing portrait onto the official CC4 base mesh to completely rebuild it for proper rigging.

The Clothing: I am going to create completely new clothing and armor from scratch using Marvelous Designer and ZBrush and maya.

Final Render: I will bring everything into the Reallusion ecosystem to prepare for the final presentation. I am still deciding whether to do the final renders in CC5 or UE5.7.

Here are my movie references and my current portrait progress.

Below is a compilation tracking the original development of the character from three years ago, showing how I finalized the portrait likeness and blocked out the clothing in a static walking pose. I never posted this version on ArtStation because of that baked-in pose. I am holding back the final look of the head sculpt for my next update, where I will showcase the transition as I wrap it onto the neutral CC4 base mesh

[aladdinq]

Update: CC5 Headshot 3 to Zbrush projection workflow

Hi everyone,

I have successfully transitioned the original Clive Owen sculpt into CC5 mesh using Headshot 3, projection, and clean-up pipeline in ZBrush
Here is the step breakdown of the image sheet:

1 - 3 (CC5 Headshot 3) Set up the alignment points on the facial features to generate the initial wrapped mesh

4 (Goz to Zbrush) Sent the mesh over to Zbrush to prepare the topology before hitting the projection button

5 (low poly projection) Projected the likeness details onto the low poly CC5 head mesh at a base resolution

6 (High poly projection) subdivided and projected the details onto a higher poly

7 (Mesh Clean up) cleaned up the topology stretching, and pose distortions caused by the old asymmetrical model.

8(Back to CC5): Sent the clean Low poly projedted head back to CC5 to verify the seamless neck blending

9 (Close up Hand-sculpted pore detail ) Close up look at final skin details. All pores fine wrinkles and secondar micro textures were sculpted entirely by hand in zbrush , no scan data or ready made paps were used. And honestly, this is the last time I am ever doing this by hand!

The character is now 100% rigged, symmetrical, and production-ready in CC5
Next up: I have already started blocking out the clothes. Let’s keep moving