Yennefer of Vengerberg - An attempt at a realistic likeness

My first, completely self-built 3D character.

An attempt at a realistic likeness: Yennefer of Vengerberg

Dedication:

Dedicated to the talented actress Anya Chalotra in admiration.

High Poly - sculpted in ZBrush
Low Poly - created in ZBrush and Maya
Clothes - designed in Marvelous Designer
Material IDs + UVs - edited in Maya
Textures - designed in Substance Painter
Hair Basics - created with Maya XGen Core
Hair Styling - done with Maya XGen Interactive Groom
Hair Export - transferred as Alembic Cache
Rigging - built in Maya AutoRig and adapted
Character + Scene Setup - Unreal Engine 5.3
Movie Sequence - created in Unreal Engine 5.3
Cut - iMovie

This is my project for Term 2 and 3 in Vertex School, Game Art Program.

I followed the standard industry pipeline, as follows:
Starting from collecting references and then creating a reference board with PureRef.
Sculpting all the the high poly by hand in ZBrush, including all face and hand details.
Designing the clothes and dress patterns in Marvelous Designer and the fabric pattern in Krita.
Making the low poly version with Quad Draw as well as setting up the materials and doing the UV Mapping in Maya.
Creating the textures in Substance Painter, procedurals and hand painted ones.
Exporting those PBR textures, channel packed as ORM maps.
Using Maya XGen Core (Description) to produce and sculpt the hair guides, comb them with XGen Groom (Interactive Grooming) und and export them as Alembic Cache.
Rigging done in Maya with Auto Rig and adapted by hand.
Bringing all meshes, textures and hair to UE 5.3 and setting up a photo booth.
Turning all textures into Master Materials and Material Instances.
Combining all to Blueprints containing Skeletal Meshes, Groom, Materials.
Creating all Movie Queue Renders, Sequences and Viewport videos in the engine.
Turning the render sequences into movies with Adobe Premiere, editing them in iMovie and revolving the Single Frame Renders into presentation pics in Photoshop.

No fancy stuff like Meta Humans or Scan Data was used.

A big THANK YOU to all the people from @Vertex School, to Ryan Kingslien ryankingslien.artstation.com who motivated me to follow this path, to Rex Lucila rex_lucila.artstation.com who taught me all the skills in Term 1 and especially to Dan Pingston dan.artstation.com who was my tutor during Term 2 and 3 in this project!

Disclaimer:
This model is a fan creation and serves solely as a demonstration of my skills as a 3D artist. It was inspired by the character "Yennefer of Vengerberg" from the Netflix series "The Witcher," portrayed by Anya Chalotra.
All rights to the character and its design belong to Netflix and CD Projekt RED. This model is not officially licensed and is not affiliated with Netflix, CD Projekt RED, or Anya Chalotra.