Sculpted Arm (rigged + tendon displacement)

The base mesh was created in Blender, then imported into ZBrush for sculpting. It was retopologised and exported into Substance Painter where finer details such as skin pores were added with normal maps. It was then imported into Blender once more for the rigging and compiling stages.
Basic armature for standard finger and hand deformation, with a more advanced setup for tendon displacement. A NURBS curve defines the location of each tendon and is hooked to several locations on the hand to allow for realistic movement. Knuckle objects were created to interact with the curve and create a "sliding" effect when the tendon moves over the object. An intermediary "cage" is utilised to transfer the displacement of the curves to the hand mesh via an always-on scene update driver (using a BPython script).

ZBrush (sculpt)

ZBrush (sculpt)

Substance Painter (texture)

Substance Painter (texture)

Blender (lighting and compositing)

Blender (lighting and compositing)

Blender (lighting and compositing)

Blender (lighting and compositing)

Demonstration of tendon deformation (trial stage)

Rigging set-up (Tendon objects)

Rigging set-up (Tendon objects)

Rigging set-up ("Deformer cage")

Rigging set-up ("Deformer cage")