Here's the first skin test. So far, here are my thoughts,

- Skin still needs colour adjustments - it's perhaps a bit dark and needs a pinker shade.
- The reflections are too strong, especially on the neck.
- The eyes look a little large but thats because the expression is one of awe, when I finally rotate the head back a bit it should look a little less scary.
- The SSS is looking pretty spot on, the neck and ear are looking just right I think.

If you're having a look at this, any suggestions would be welcomed!

So I've found time to finish all the textures..
The first image is just a low res example of some of the different textures in my SSS shader. I've found the sss shader to be quite tricky to get to grips with, but it is very powerful. I've done my best to stay away from using the Overall Color slot as I wanted to follow MasterZaps comments which explain that the best method for creating real skin is through careful balancing of the epidermal and the diffuse. At first I thought I was losing a lot of detail, but after some R&D I've figured out how to bring back the detail.

I've also completed the eyes, nothing very complicated here, just some hard work getting textures that looked some what believable/realistic.

Expect a render of the head with the SSS shader in the next few days.

I've spent the last few days working in Mudbox detailing some of the parts for the portrait (see image). I really enjoy the workflow in Mudbox and having seen some of the video previews for Mudbox 2009, I can't wait to give it a whirl.

All of these models have low poly counterparts and they have all been uv unwrapped so that I can create the required displacement maps.

The second image is the final expression that I am going to use for the render. It's a mixed emotion - not shock and awe but surprise and awe!
Please let me know what you think by leaving a comment using the link below.

Working away on shaders right now - not the most enjoyable aspect for me, but an important one none the less.

I haven't had much time this last month to work on my portrait piece as most of my time has been split between freelancing and creating a print portfolio for the Escape Studios vfx course. The skin texture map is almost complete, I am just making some small adjustments and then will start creating the skin shader. The hair on the chin still needs to cover a larger area and I still need to include a few blemishes etc.

Model in image is base mesh excl mudbox displacements.

In other news check out my 3D composite using my recently finished Porsche 356 model HERE

Had some time yesterday and today to work on the diffuse map - just starting to look at how I can mix in the miss_sss mental ray shader so thought I'd better get on and complete the texture maps. Next up is variations of this for the spec and bump.

Since my last post, I've again been developing the hair and have now setup a scene with all my final lights. I think I'll have to draw the line at a haircut that somewhat resembles my own. Low res texture map example included after the jump.

I know I said I wasn't going to spend anytime learning a 3d hair tool, but the idea kept rolling through my mind so I thought I'd give Shave a go for this personal project. Since my last post I've been spending late nights trying to get to grips with the hair system, but I've got such high expectations that I'm never satisfied and still want to push further. I've included a test image, but I'm still working on it.

For the portrait, I thought I'd pick a scenario that I think is engaging for the viewer (I didn't want a heavily lit environment - I wanted something with more mood) and a place I like to visit often... where else but at the movies! I've included a small test render the lighting is perhaps 75% final (still working on the screen light hitting the face) and the seats are completely finished. I snuck a few shots in my local cinema and used those as reference. I will probably add some dust flecks at some point too. Like to know what people think...

Quick update. It's difficult to model my hair, I always gel it back and then it flops slightly to the sides.. I thought about using maya fur/hair, but thought it would be too time consuming (on a time limit here!) to learn yet another new tool right now. So, hopefully blending feathered planes with the mudbox model (see images) I'll get something half decent! I'll start texturing these bad boys tomorrow which will hopefully breath some life into my bob hat lol.

I had decided some time back that I needed to do some catch up with my character modelling skills given the introduction of digital clay scultping (mudbox and zbrush) and as I enjoy trying to create realistic characters, I thought every artist needs a self portrait - how vain!

On my first attempt at working on a model in Mudbox, I hit a lot of hurdles! Mainly because I didn't know the program well enough and therefore didn't have a decent workflow setup... but I guess that's what trial and error is all about! The program itself has a great UI and it works very well out of the box, however the difficulties came when I needed to export a displacement map. Firstly, it seems Mudbox is rather picky about the uv layout of the base mesh. I ended up using UVLayout to get as clean and tidy a layout as possible. The problem areas tend to be ears and any holes you might have in the mesh. A tip... don't leave holes in your mesh around the eyes, nostrils or mouth. Instead fill them with polygons and then remove them after you have your displacement maps. Another issue was scale - Maya and Mudbox use different scaling methods, and as I wasn't able to develop an understanding as to the differences between both global scales, I ended up importing the base sphere from mudbox into maya and then scaling my head to match its size. One last thing I also changed from previous export attempts was the uv tile options... I wasn't using more then one 1,1 tile for my uv layout so I turned this option off (on by default) and it stopped the export from looking beyond the 1,1 space giving me a perfect 0-1 displacement.

I ended up throwing away my previous model I made in Maya and started out fresh so that I had a perfect quad faced model, with as few star edged vertices as possible and with the eyes and mouth extruded back to prevent issues during the mudbox export... time can be such an enemy but the effort was worth it!

I've sculpted on the beard and eyebrow detail, however I haven't decided if this will stay as it might be hard to texture these parts given the uvmap doesn't display where the eyebrow detail is. Any advice on this - leave a comment

I'm working on the head hair now which I am developing from a separate mesh I created in maya. It will be a mixture of mudbox sculpting and planes with opacity for feathered edges.