My 3D brother

I decided to create 3D portraits of people I love. I'm using Maya 2011 and ZBrush.

First of all the reference, a couple of photos to use as guide. I decided to to model the initial geometry in Maya because it's easier to navigate the viewport. This is quite important because it's all matter of proportions. Before importing the photos as image planes,  I altered the front view in Photoshop to match the perspectives.

On the right, the initial shape I modeled in Maya. I started from the side view drawing the profile and extruding the rest. During this stage I prefer to turn on a smooth mesh preview to see possible problems. I think I spent 3 hours, more or less, to model this shape.

Now it's time to run ZBrush. I'm using GoZ to quickly transfer my geometry back and forth between ZBrush and Maya. I imported my photos into Spotlight to sculpt, refine and texture the mesh. I didn't activate symmetry because the human body is not symmetrical. Initially I grabbed the eyes from demohead.ztl to have a reference, I made realistic eyes in a second moment.

Essentially in this phase I used the clay brush and the move topological brush to make further changes, for example the cheeks, the eyes, the ears and so on.
When this work was done, I decided to create the UVs. I used UV Master, a free plugin for ZBrush which lets us create very efficient UVs for our models in a few steps.

Now it's time to paint my model with the textures to have a more significant reference and refine the mesh with further details. I used a layer to store the texture. The powerful Spotlight allowed me to combine the front and the side view. On the left the front view applied to my model.

On the right all the photos have been painted on my model. I exported the texture to make further changes in Photoshop. For example, I decided to erase the hair and the eyelashes because I want to create them in Maya. The UVs I created with UV master allows me to reimport the fixed texture.

Now the details. With a simple noise effect I created a base for the skin and, using alphas, I'm adding details like big and small pores, eye wrinkles and so on.
After that, I will export the model to Maya to create a hair system and render the model with Mental Ray.

The next step consists of creating realistic eyes for my model in Maya. Now the eyes are quite important, they really can change a face but they are also quite complicated. Rather than importing an eye diagram into Maya and understanding how an eye work, I followed a fantastic free tutorial by Alex Alvarez (Gnomon). The biggest difference is that I used a marble texture for the veins, Alex used an effect from Maya. Anyway the veins are really small and I don't think I'll zoom on them.

First of all the hair system to complete the model. A lot of curves to easily style the hair, the eyebrows and the eyelips. Then I created a a bunch of maps (epidermal, subdermal...) to plug into a misss_fast_skin_maya material to achieve a realistic skin. I plugged a mia_exposure_photographic and a physical lense dof node lense into my camera.

So, on the right the final result. I'm quite happy because this is my first 3D portrait.

Best regards.

A pilot for my Viper MK II: sculpting the head

My Viper needs a pilot, so I have just started to sculpt the head.

The first step: I have created a low poly head in Maya and then I have imported it into ZBrush. The goal is achieving the normal map from the hi-res model and using it in Maya. Nothing fancy here, I need a simple model: the pilot will be visible in a few frames during the animation, the fighters are very detailed and I can't "spend" a bunch of polygons. I found out some interesting photographs browsing the internet to use as reference for my 3D head.

The image on the left is the result of my work. Using the standard brush and the move tool, I have sculpted a simple head in 30 minutes. I'm pretty happy about my head, I'm creating a tough, die hard pilot! I have used a couple of alpha brushes to add details like the beard, the eyebrows and hair. Probably this step is useless, but ZBrush is so amusing! Now I can create the normal map to "smooth" my low poly head.

The next step is boring (for me): it's time to use Photoshop to paint a texture on the UV map. Probably it's the moment where I waste a lot ot time. I can create a model very quickly but I'm never satisfied when I use Photoshop. Actually I'd like  to send my model to the texturing department but I  dont'work for Pixar, it's all home made. In this case I created the texture in 3, 4 hours making it again, and again, and again. I used a lot of references I found in internet. The result is not phenomenal but I can live with it.  I really don't like flat hair but I cannot use fur, it's too expensive. No eyes at this moment, this guy is still blind!

The day after: I have tought of using a technique for video games to have my hair. The idea is simple: creating a lot of cards to fake the hair. The result should not be terrific but this guy will have a helmet and I won't spend a lot of resources for the hair. The problem is that I have to come back to Photoshop to create a new texture with a good alpha channel. The image on the right shows the cards on top of the head.

What a crew cut for this guy! I think the result is pretty good, considering I'll must model the helmet. It's very important to program what we are going to see in the animation not to waste useful resources. The final texture is a tga file with an alpha channel for the transparency. I used a single hair wisp scaled, mirrored and altered a lot of time to achieve a minimum of variety. 1 hour of Photoshop for this work. As said before, this result could be better but I have to model the helmet, the body, the boots and the hands yet. And this guy will be visible for a few frames. Ok for now, it's time to find a reference of the helmet used in Battlestar Galactica.

Best regards!