Ultra-Realism Mastery: Arcana Meets Pro Tools
Course By
Rafael
3D Visual Artist
Discover how to design cinematic visuals that blur the line between AI, 3D, and live action. Taught by Rafael, a Los Angeles–based artist known for his particular vision, this course pushes beyond basics into production‑level craft.
What you’ll learn
- Ultra‑realism using Arcana: enhance faces and textures, maintain likeness across angles, and upscale while preserving detail for commercial finishes.
- Blender 3D, elevated: sculpt from solid base meshes, refine anatomy, and build believable skin with advanced shading, subsurface scattering, and groomed hair.
- Master composition and lighting: think like a cinematographer—shot grammar, telephoto intent, and golden‑hour setups—to deliver striking, story‑driven frames.
- Style that sticks: build mood boards, lock color palettes, and apply cohesive grading so every image lives in the same world.
- From stills to sequence: add subtle motion, cut to music, and finish at 1080p/4K for professional delivery.
Bonus : By purchasing the VOD and the Live Course, you’ll also get a 1h40m timelapse of my full workflow — sculpting, grooming, and development look of a 3D character, shown step-by-step on screen without cuts or narration.
Live Course Details
- Duration: 3 weeks
- Format: 3 live sessions
- Length: 1 hour per session
- Level: intermediate
- Includes VOD Materials
Course Preview
Course Details
Chapter 1 – Introduction & Foundation of Ultra-Realism
Lesson 1 – Introduction to Ultra-Realism & Workflow Overview
Discover the end-to-end pipeline for production-ready, cinematic visuals that blend AI, Blender 3D, and industry-standard finishing. Learn how consistent character design, cohesive environments, enhancement, compositing, subtle animation, and final mastering interlock to achieve believable, client-ready results.
Lesson 2 – The Visual Language of Cinema
Learn to think like a cinematographer: master shot grammar (closeups to wides), lens intent (telephoto for impact), composition (rule of thirds, leading lines, symmetry), and purposeful lighting (golden hour, directional setups) to shape emotion and direct attention with intention.
Lesson 3 – Building Realistic Concepts with Moodboards
Construct professional moodboards that lock the project’s look and feel: curate references for color, texture, wardrobe, and environment to define a cohesive style. Translate boards into clear creative direction, ensuring every frame belongs to the same world and supports the story.
Chapter 2 – 3D Blender Workflow & Composition
Lesson 4 – Color & Composition for Cinematic Impact
Refine frames with intentional palettes and precise framing to drive emotion and clarity. Learn to unify highlights, midtones, and shadows across shots, and apply director-level composition (rule of thirds, symmetry breaks, leading lines) so every image reads instantly cinematic.
Lesson 5 – Conceptualizing Realistic Faces
Design believable characters by reading micro-expressions and eye geometry. Explore how pupil size, gaze, and eyebrow arcs signal archetype and mood, then define a “neutral pose” that anchors personality and stays consistent across angles and scenes.
Lesson 6 – Creating a Character with 3D Tools
Build a production-ready hero in Blender: start from a clean base mesh, sculpt accurate forms, add skin realism with advanced shading and subsurface scattering, and groom hair/brows/lashes with particle systems. Establish a lightweight, iterative workflow that balances detail with performance.
Chapter 3 – AI Model Training & Consistency
Lesson 7 – Creating a Character with AI Tools
Generate a photoreal character from concise, targeted prompts, then enhance resolution and skin detail for a clean, reliable base. Learn reference-driven iteration to control outfit, pose, and expression while preserving the intended likeness.
Lesson 8 – Training for Consistency: Intro to LORAs with Arcana Labs Pt 1
Prepare 7–15 high‑quality, multi‑angle images and train a lightweight character adapter for face consistency. Set up datasets, naming, and parameters so the model reliably recognizes and reproduces the character across scenes.
Lesson 9 – Training for Consistency: Intro to LORAs with Arcana Labs Pt 2
Apply the trained adapter in face‑aware editing to swap or restore true likeness inside new scenes. Combine inpainting with targeted enhancements and compositing to keep expression, tattoos, and fine details intact at production resolution.
Chapter 4 – Cinematic Tools & Advanced Visuals
Lesson 10 – Light, Composition & Camera
Design frames that feel filmed, not generated: choose lenses for intent (telephoto compression, close‑up intimacy), place subjects with rule of thirds and symmetry breaks, and shape golden‑hour and directional light to drive emotion and readability.
Lesson 11 – Photoshop Masking & Compositing
Fuse high‑res backgrounds with true character likeness using precise masks, aligned layers, and edge blending. Restore facial details, correct problem areas (hands, eyes), and build seamless, production‑ready composites at cinematic aspect ratios.
Lesson 12 – Advanced Color Grading for Commercial Quality
Lock a cohesive look across shots with selective color, color balance, and photo filters. Harmonize highlights, midtones, and shadows to convey temperature and mood, preserving skin tone fidelity while unifying the project’s visual identity.
Chapter 5 – Animation, Integration & Final Production
Lesson 13 – Animating with Simple Prompts and JSON Prompts
Bring stills to life with subtle motion and camera moves. Use concise prompts for clean results, then escalate to structured JSON prompts for fine control over blink timing, zoom speed, and stabilization—iterating to remove artifacts while preserving likeness.
Lesson 14 – Integrating Characters into Environments
Unify character and scene with reference‑driven generation, enhancement, and careful inpainting. Leverage moodboards for style continuity, refine faces and textures to match lighting and palette, and composite for seamless placement across shot types.
Lesson 15 – Animation & Editing: Bringing It All Together
Assemble animated shots into a cinematic sequence: time to music, stabilize pacing, and lock a cohesive grade. Finish with professional upscaling and detail recovery for 1080p/4K delivery—producing polished, client‑ready visuals end to end.
Your Instructor
Rafael is a Los Angeles–based 3D and visual artist, known for pioneering and avant-gardiste workflows that seamlessly blend AI, 3D, and industry tools. With millions of views and a fast-growing community of 3D and visual artists, he specializes in cinematic visuals where audiences often can’t tell if the work is AI-generated, 3D-rendered, or filmed. Rafael brings deep technical expertise and creative storytelling to empower students to achieve true realism in their projects.
Buy This Course
$599.99 USD
$299.99 USD
Pay once. Get instant access to the full course.
Enroll in the Live Course
$749.99 USD
$399.99 USD
Join weekly live sessions with feedback and expert mentorship. Pay Once.
Choose a starting date
4 Remaining seats
Buy This Course
$599.99 USD
$299.99 USD
Pay once. Get instant access to the full course.
Enroll in the Live Course
$749.99 USD
$399.99 USD
Join weekly live sessions with feedback and expert mentorship. Pay Once.
Choose a starting date
4 Remaining seats
