Open Documentation for Realistic Characters

Some insight in how the Blender Studio plans to share research, the workflow and technical challenges of creating realistic human characters.

Mission of Project Heist

A couple weeks back Project Heist was announced, which aims to use, test and optimise Blender for creating characters and environments with maximum realism. This is a pretty high goal and will need a lot of research and testing not just for the technical and artistic side but also the general workflow. A workflow that can be significantly different than cartoony/stylized characters that the studio focused on previously.

To make this information more accessible we decided to openly document all of this information, especially now during the early development and pre-production. This is shared in the Training section as the Realistic Human Research. These pages are heavily under development and incomplete for a while but will offer our live insights in the process.

Development and Consulting

As of right now the workflow for creating fully realistic characters is somewhat incomplete. So we aim to find a workflow that works with what is currently available and work with the Blender developers to add crucial functionality that is missing, which is tightly linked with the strategic targets of 2022.

We are also in contact with various artists that specialised on achieving maximum realism and want to make this conversation as open as possible. More blog posts and pages in the documentation would then follow.

Tutorial Content

Looking back, it's interesting that we went through this exact process before. During the production of Spring we were documenting and looking critically at our workflow in creating stylized characters for film production. Based on these insights we created the Stylized Character Workflow course as well as the free character rig Rain that came with it. So we are keeping the doors open to create a "Realistic Character Workflow" tutorial course based on what we find this time.

Until then we hope that you enjoy what we have to share. There will also be weekly updates on the Heist project. Also comment below if you have any questions.