Foundation
Through a single decision, you taught me the significance of conviction and sacrifice. You offered me an alternate path in life. You are the foundation by which I build my character. For that, I am forever grateful.
Goal
I made this portrait as a gift to my Dad to personify the importance of his influence on me. The goal of this project was to nail down a likeness and capture realistic skin detail. I was able to achieve this level of detail through the guidance of Tran Ma and Miguel Ortega while attending Gnomon School of VFX.
Vision
I collected references for
1: The structure of my dad's face for sculping.
2: Some equally lit in ambient light for capturing the skin color correctly.
3: Sculpture reference for general understanding of how to capture propper forms.
4: Clothing and prop reference for additional parts.
5: Western photography and actors in movies/shows for mood/lighting.
​
Process
The Face mesh and hat were both sculpted in Zbrush, then UVed in Maya. The Clothes were built in Marvelous Designer, re-topologized and UVed in Maya, then Enhanced in ZBrush. I Used texture XYZ assets to paint the skin in Mari, while the clothing was textured in Substance. All clothing textures were made from base materials I built in Substance Designer and finished in Painter. Hair was Xgen Maya. The final render was in Vray Maya.
Modeling & UVing
I sculpted his head following the references collected. I would mostly look at the reference and then replicate the form I was observing, but occasionally I would overlay the images to make sure the primary forms were lining up. I learned how important it is to collect references from the right lens because my references for forms weren't resulting in me overcorrecting based on an incorrect perspective. After realizing that I stopped relying on overlaying the image as much instead using it as a relative guide.
Although I found a way to scan my reference I chose not to because I wanted to go through the process of mentally comprehending the forms I was making instead of copying a perfect representation. Plus this was a personal project I felt I owed my Dad doing this the more manual way. For me, I feel it's important to do things the hard way first and then learn how to use tools to cut corners, so as not to make that tool your crutch for inability.
Once I was done with the sculpture I kicked out the low to Maya for UVing. I mirrored The UVs so that I could mirror some of the skin painting to speed things up. However, for the same reason above, I chose to paint things more manually I didn't find that it slowed down skin painting that much plus it made both sides more unique.
Also, the mesh wasn't posed until after UVs were transferred back to the model in Zbrush, so I would have two versions of the mesh to work with. This ended up being extremely useful in the end as I was able to re-exported corrected displacement maps from the unposed version while modifying the expression on the posed.
If in production I would instead use a scan or a close base mesh to cut down on sculpting time immensely. Then align the face of another model with textures ie: Zwrap or Projection. If not that Mirror as much of the manual painting as possible to cut time. However, this project wasn't about cutting corners it was about building a foundation.
Texturing Displacement
The Head was textured in Mari using texture XYZ assets. This process taught me a lot, it was my first time using Mari and it completely reconstructed how I approach texturing ever since. The node system allows for more flexibility in reusing any maps, masks, or other assets brought in. Big thanks to my professor Tran Ma for guidance in this area. Everything Im explaining is my take on the method she taught.
For the most part after finding the correct face textures for your model this step can be really fast as long as you have a system for how you approach it. Since there are no actual layers you need to stay organized in how you problem-solve this area so that you could easily course-correct as needed. Im going to explain the steps as passes think of them like layers they are just the sequence taken to construct the final result.
First, solve displacement on the face. Think of this kinda like the final pass on sculpting you need to finish the model before you paint on it. Basically, you are sculpting in the texturing step because the texture can hold pore information more accurately than the mesh can. Also anytime you start painting displacement from a different map do it on a separate pass because all the displacement maps you use vary in how intense they are. Unless the displacement maps came in a single pack from the same source you will have to adjust these passes effects per displacement map used. Once you're done with displacement you can use these passes to isolate pores, wrinkles, and more in the color pass.
Texturing Color
I broke the Color passes into two sections as shown above. One is the more manual section and the other is more map based. The visual structure above is just the base, you can add more passes as needed. Also whenever I needed to adjust a map or displacement information from earlier I would often use (7) as I found it to be the easier way to control maps. I would pre-make this setup and then copy-paste them as needed.
1: Regardless of how well you paint these passes, you should have a foundational pattern giving a fleshy look that will repeat through every pass you make. every pass here is propagated from the same base texture being triplanar projected across the mesh. In photoshop make a tileable skin texture sourced from an equally lit flat section of a face ie: Cheek. Each pass will just be this adjusted for color and then masked to relative heat zones.
6: All of these passes are sourcing maps you either generate beforehand or build from other passes. You'll need a Cavity map, AO map, and Displacement map. It doesn't matter where you get them from as long as they can isolate the areas you need. 7: use these nodes to adjust the maps as needed. Although you are sourcing a map still mask it so as to knock back and feather the effect as needed.
Manual
Maps
1: Triplainar project the base flesh texture on the face so it repeats 7-10 times or so along the height of the head
2: Sorce this projection but adjust the color to the reddest part of the face. Do not use actual red always source the color from the reference. Paint a mask relative to where you see red on the face.
3:Do the same but for the cool tones of the face. Usually found in the eye sockets and crevices of the face.
4: Make a paler version of the base for this pass. Think of what color the skin is when being pinched. This skin is more convex and pushed away from the blood vessels refracting less blood. Paint this on pinched folds and lightly wherever bone is more present ie:forehead.
5: Match the lips or make this by accurately matching warm & cool tones in the area. I do this separately because for some people melanin in this area can vary more.
8: This cavity map should isolate crevises, wrinkles, and folds that were captured in the sculpture. The color should be the base skin with more melanin added. Sorce the folds of the face you should see that the color is like a browner saturated version of the base color.
9: This Fine Cavity map is sourced from the displacement on the face. You can adjust the levels and saturation so that you can isolate the pores. Usually, this color is similar to (1)-(2) this pass usually adds subtle blood to the face.
10: This AO pass is used like feathering for the cavity pass and to add some depth to the skin. Color should be similar to the cavity but less intense. Knock it back wherever it's too intense. this should be very subtle it shouldn't be obvious your using AO.
11: Think of the pinched skin pass from before but more subtle and lightly applied to all convex parts of the face. Use this to knock back some of the colors in the face and add curvature. The color should be between (1) - (4).
​
