A MAN’S PORTRAIT
This my latest hyper-realistic character project. I started sculpting in ZBrush, adding more skin details using the skin brushes. Then I hopped over to Substance Painter to create different materials and finally rendered it in Arnold.
Time Spent: one month
Software Used: Maya, Substance Painter
Basic Workflow:
Sculpted in ZBrush
Retypologized in Maya
Increased the subdivision level on the low-poly model and project the details of the high-poly model
Bake high-poly to low-poly in Substance Painter and textured
Created grooming using XGen in Maya and did the lookdev in Arnold
In this project, I used the typical workflow where I baked a high poly model to a low poly one. However, I am also exploring another workflow where I sculpt more details through HD Geometry export normal maps directly from ZBrush, and then bake the curvature map based on the normal map. This will be the topic I am exploring next.
Face Sculpt in ZBrush
Texture:
When it comes to texturing, I played a lot with the stencils and stickers this time. I added many paint and fill layers under the black mask to create redness, sun damage, and pores. In order to randomize and create an uneven skin color, I added up multiple layers with various degrees of opacity.
For the iris, I first created the pattern in Photoshop, adjusted the level, and then used it as a stencil to paint over the base color I already made.
Material Breakdown in Substance Painter
Grooming:
For the hair, eyebrows and lashes, I was debating between using hair cards and XGen grooming and chose to go with the latter eventually because I wanted more control over the details like different hair lengths and those stray, flyaway strands.
I even created a separate description just for baby hairs to add some extra randomness to the hair on the forehead.
Playing with XGen was a fun experience especially when you layer the clumps, coils and noise in the modifier sections and see how the hair came to life.