Hirokazu Yokohara's Semi-Real UE5-Powered Avatar Explained

In case you missed the news, back in late January, 3D Artist and Generalist Hirokazu Yokohara unveiled a beautiful 3D virtual avatar created in Unreal Engine 5.3 Path Tracer and described by the author as "semi-realistic".

One month later, the artist pleasantly surprised us with an unexpected yet highly appreciated breakdown of the project, shared via ArtStation. Besides featuring a collection of gorgeous static renders, the breakdown showcased the production process behind the avatar, showing how it was sculpted and textured, how its dress and hair were made, and how captured facial and movement data was used for animation.

Additionally, Hirokazu revealed the full list of software that was used to bring the character to life, with that being Maya, Ornatrix, Marvelous Designer, Substance 3D Painter, Mari, Cinema 4D, and ZBrush, as well as TexturingXYZ's materials. The model was made in collaboration with Yuta Sasaki and Mishio Hirai and rendered using an MSI GeForce RTX 4090 SUPRIM 24G GPU.

You can check out the full breakdown by clicking this link.

Previously, the artist also demonstrated a Unity-powered hair sim, a neat soft-body simulation created with UE5's Chaos Flesh system, a 2D-looking 3D animation inspired by 90s anime aesthetics, a real-time fur simulation made in UE5, a cool deepfake face made with Maya and DeepFace Live, a beautiful real-time red and blue fire and smoke FX, a delicious-looking cold rice sim, and a couple of neat smoke FX made in UE5 and Niagara.

Hirokazu also showed how to simulate clothes in Blender with mocap data, how to set up a realistic face with Maya and Ziva Face Trainer, and how to utilize Apple's RoomPlan for 3D environment modeling, experimented with soft body simulations in Cinema 4D, and turned a 2D image into a 3D mesh with Blender. You can check out all of these projects and more by visiting Hirokazu's Twitter page. 

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