nicely done.
Congrat !
Sorry, didn’t mean to imply you were being negative, that phrase just epitomized for me how some people, artists & viewers alike, seem to feel about CGI, as if it’s a poor relation to the other visual arts. I truly understand your meaning about the Uncanny Valley, made a few trips there myself in days past, happy to have left it behind, at least most of the time, I hope.
myself, i did not wanted to make it “realistic”, in the sense that i paint every pore etc. then i would have projected fotos of real skin onto the texture map saving a lot of time, instead of handpainting it in blender … such realistic work is explored by the viewer often to “find” the differences to real world. which is understandable from the puzzlement “is it real or cg?”
instead, i wanted to give the “illusion” of being realistic, like in a painting or a good sculpture, so that one can take the time and look and “find” the story it tells (or i wanted to tell that is).
the skin texture is very painterly, and it took me some time to get that with the paint tools in blender, as the brushes are not very sensitive to pressure and the lightning in blenders viewport is not very friendly for painting either. painting a texture with an effect of the sss shader in mind, without seeing that effect in the viewport while painting made the task not easier…
looking at the texture with a diffusion shader instead of a sss shader makes it look really weird, lol. the sss shaders together with the painterly looks great, imho, and gives the feeling i was after…
making something look real, so that it can be confused with a foto, is a hard job requiring a good deal of knowledge. it is a high technical skill rather than art though, imo.
and yes, mr chuan, the age spots are too blurry (not by a gaussion filter, but by the way how i painted them) they would be sharp boundary in real. i wanted to subordinate the agespots, maybe making them blurry was probably not the best choice. glad you enjoy my choice of subject, i know it is way of off main stream 
kologne, yes, maybe the ear got a little too dry, but then older people do have often very dry skin, right? i am amazed this image was identified being mine just by the thumbnail, as i thought it is a new way for me, or rather just the second one…
thank you all for your kind comments, and for seeing what i wanted to show with this image…
Absolutely wonderful! I actually saw it on Google + and I thought it was a picture at first. Magnificent!
I’m learning how to model and I have a couple of questions:
- How did you apply the texture so precisely? Which technique did you use?
- Anything you can suggest to improve modelling skills? At the moment I’m only doing low poly…
hi angel. glad you like my portrait.
- for the texture, i made good uv, and then just painted. i did not use fotos and projection mode for painting, but just made brush strokes and painted all the skin… is this answering your question?
- in this portrait, nothing is modeled (in edit mode i mean). everything is sculpted, first roughly in dynatopo, then i retopo and finally sculpted in multires. wait, yes the jewellery is modeled, but this is very simple objects, combined a lot with array modifiers…but all other things are sculpted as i said…
what i suggest is to start simple. for example if you want sculpt a head. you can do first a very rough head as low poly model, since you are familiar with this technique. then bring your lowpolyhead into sculpt mode, activate dynatopo with a larger detail setting, and slowly refine your basic model. look at the big forms first. remove the hard edges from the lowpoly, but still do not add detail. only when you have the big forms correct, make detail size smaller and sculpt smaller forms… i hope this helps a little…
Can you tell us a little bit about Elsa? The real Elsa.
Whao! I really like this image and the atmosphere of it! Great job
it is such an inspiration to view your work. Thank you very much.
Do you have a wacom or touchscreen? Is a good texture
Congrats on 2 in the top row! At the same time! Nice portrait.
How did you do the shirt and jacket textures/materials?
Amazing inspirations keep pouring out of you, Doris, thank you for this!! I love the painterly effect you point out, and I feel your pain with the shader and lighting - I am hopeful we will see some better painting experience in 2.8 PBR viewport later on.
I thought this image should get a top row feature from the get go when it didn’t get there I was a little disappointed. It’s nice to see that it didn’t slip through the cracks that’s two of your works on the top row you really knock them out of the park Doris.
Wow, very impressive.
Appears like a real person to me :).
It’s really really beautiful.
I would like to see a second layer of very fine hair at the base of the hair line to soften in out. That would just kick it right out of the park (or what ever they say in sports). You’ve done such a superb job on it it’s worth another couple of hours to improve the hair.
This is really some amazing work, in my humble opinion. The wrinkles are excellent as is the glassy eyes. I can imagine she normally wears glasses at her age and the eyes show that! Also, if you look closely, she has chin hair! This is something you will usually see on older women. I also think the added ‘imperfections’ make it even more perfect…the slight loose hair strands around the head, the random thread fray on the sweater…great work!!!
Amazing as always…I love the stray threads on the sweater.
Great work.
Aside from the above - one comment I have is that her eyes look too glossy/reflective and it gives her a ‘waxwork’ look.
Do you have any fresnel on the eyeball material?
wow, now that is a pleasant surprise! thank you so much for voting me to top row again!
as to your questions or remarks:
michelweber, elsa appreciated it to be chosen as my model for sculpting, but she prefers otherwise not to share info about herself.
wikifry, i use a wacom bamboo only. and no mouse at all. i do everything just with the bamboo tablet.
bogleo, the pullover and the jacket materials are done with image textures from fabrique. a knitted one for the pullover, a foto from linnen cloth for the jacket. i made these fotos to tilable textures, and then used crazybump to derive normal and glossy and displacement maps from them. for the jacket, i used just the diffuse, glossy and normal map in the material, for the pullover, i added a displacement modifier using the displacement map.
craig, i am looking forward to better viewport vision
tyrant, what a very kind remark. thank you.
helenz, yes this might worth it, but i have other things in the work right now, that keep my interest totally…
dvnobles, it makes me very happy, you found a lot of the little things i put in to make it more believable
moony, whoops, indeed i just checked, the fresnelnode is gone. it must somehow accidentially vanished when i tried to clean up the material layout… you have a good eye…
Superb in every regard and a banner image for Blender / Cycles continuing to rival the “big names” of 3D software - when used in the right talented hands.
Bravo!
Wow. Just wow. Great execution, great subject choice, great attention to detail. Every time I look at this I find new details I hadn’t noticed before.