Sculpting Scales & Simulating Clothes for Creature Chef in ZBrush & Marvelous Designer

Breakfast – Chef Extraordinaire is a real-time character project by 3D character artist Yuriy Barchuk, based on Ana Fedina’s kobold-chef concept. It connects scale sculpting, clothing simulation for a

Bringing a Kobold Chef to Life as a 3D Character

*Breakfast – Chef Extraordinaire* is a character project completed by 3D character artist Yuriy Barchuk based on Ana Fedina’s “Breakfast the Chef” concept. The figure in the original artwork is a kobold chef who handles food, and Barchuk’s goal was to practice creating more realistic creature-like characters and scales. The overall impression and colors were inspired by a bearded dragon, while the mood and forms referenced the kobolds in 《Baldur’s Gate 3》.

How the Tail and Legs Changed the Clothing Workflow

The clothing was first blocked out from the body in ZBrush to establish the silhouette, then simulated in Marvelous Designer. However, humanoid patterns could not be applied unchanged. The patterns had to be modified to avoid the tail and legs, while some elements that were difficult to create in line with the concept, such as the inner skirt, were made in other tools. This is why determining the body structure and contact points before clothing simulation is important for non-human characters.

Turning the Simulation Result Back into a Sculptable Mesh

After completing the clothing, the artist created UVs and transferred it to ZBrush and Maya along with the flat patterns. The topology of the new mesh was cleaned up and the UVs were transferred, allowing further adjustments on a cleaner mesh fitted back to the simulated 3D clothing. Thickness was then added in ZBrush, and wrinkles were reinforced in areas that compress during movement, such as the elbows. The process began with physical simulation, while the final silhouette and deformations were controlled through sculpting.

Controlling Scales with Region-Specific Layers

The most time-consuming part was the scales. The body was divided into areas to sculpt, and each scale type was placed on a separate layer so its strength or form could be reverted. After creating the basic arrangement with brushes, the overlaps were cleaned up and the grooves deepened to increase the sense of protrusion. Emphasis was reduced on the nose and top of the head, while the large scales around the cheeks and eyes were retained. Rather than distributing surface detail uniformly, introducing variation in areas where the eye rests helped preserve both the readability of the character’s face and the impression of its material.

Source: 80 Level production interview · Ana Fedina’s original artwork “Breakfast the Chef”