Gregory Peck

[minoribus]

Hey Folks,
here is my finished portrait of Gregory Peck. Some of you may know him even today as being a very famous actor in the middle of the last century. Once again I have been carried away by a project and spent too much time with it. Now it is about time to call it finished.

I was inspired by all the cool portraits and likeness studies that we’ve seen here in the last weeks, namely the Martian by ToshiCG, Daniel Craig by pieriko, Finn by Cesar89, Casey by Speed7 and Branded by ArtOfLight. These are wonderful, guys.

I have done several characters before. Now I wanted to see what I would be able to do in this field of CG with the skills I have today.

My hardest critic has been my wife so far. It took so many iterations until she was willing to see him as Gregory Peck. At that point I had been looking at the references for so long that my mind simply added the missing parts and I saw him in every iteration. But she was rigorous

I have to say thanks also to some of my colleagues who gave some important final critiques.

Again I learned a lot during this project. My workflow in general was

• sculpting
• retopology
• fine skin details
• texture painting
• shading, grooming, lighting
• tweak and try, back and forth (that was the longest part of it)
• check monitor calibration
• final render at full HD and 3000 samples
• post processing including color grading and color correction

As always, I found the lighting quite early in the process and settled with it. Lighting is done by several mesh lights.

I must say that I gained most of the likeness by tweaking the retopologized mesh. While I think the sculpted version was close, I lost much of the likeness in the retopo’ed version and had to push the vertices with the help of mapping the camera to the reference. Thankfully you can map a background image to the camera view. Next time I must try to keep more of the likeness during the retopology.

Maps for this piece are color map, normal map, gloss map, sss map, and a particle hair distribution map together with vertex groups for the different hair systems.

Softwares used were Blender (sculpting, modeling, baking, shading, grooming, lighting, rendering, color correction), 3DCoat (retopology and texture painting) and Gimp (texture painting and post processing).

Happy blending!

edit: changed opening image after reducing red tint.

Attachments

[harleynut97]

Very nice job on this Minoribus. A couple questions / comments

1. Can you provide a link to the high rez version?

2. My guess is 90% of the forum members have never heard of Gregory Peck, maybe you should post the reference image you used.

3. He acted for a long time, I’m curious at about what age he was in your reference?

Likeness sculpts seem to be one of the most challenging things you could do in character sculpting, you did a fantastic job on him.

[minoribus]

Thanks for your comment, Harleynut, I appreciate it much.

Here is a link to the highres version. I saw it on different monitors today and it had a very noticeable red touch, therefore I used the chance to do a little correction. Hopefully this isn’t as red as it maybe was before on your monitors, guys. And hopefully again is hasn’t turned into green.

I used a bunch of references across different ages, but for the final stages the two main ones have been these:

I guess he was around 30 in the first ref picture and maybe 40 in the second.

[Steve_S]

Nice job. It’s a very good likeness.

Steve S

[ToshiCG (Todor (CGDive))]

Hey, minoribus, good job!
I agree, portraits are fun

I cannot comment too much on the likeness since this is not a face I have firmly in my brain but I can say this: I looked at your image and I thought “looks like Jude Law”. Then I googled some images of Gregory Peck and I thought “this dude looks like Jude Law” So I think you’re spot on.

I must say that I gained most of the likeness by tweaking the retopologized mesh. While I think the sculpted version was close, I lost much of the likeness in the retopo’ed version and had to push the vertices with the help of mapping the camera to the reference. Thankfully you can map a background image to the camera view. Next time I must try to keep more of the likeness during the retopology.

Yeah, I kind of think doing dyntopo and then retopologizing is pointless for a human face… since our faces basically have the same predictable set of features that just adds needless complexity in the workflow. It seems that having a good base-mesh and starting straight with multires would be a better solution.

As I said I like your result. The things that caught my eye:
-the fuzz seems too thick or long. I could be totally wrong and it’s basically an artistic decision so not a big deal
-the lips - you could try to add a little more spec on them or something since then look a bit dry and not soft. Lips are damn hard to get right.

Keep rocking!

[theoldghost]

Really nice job minoribus except I believe your depiction is a little younger then he was in ‘Twelve O’clock High’. I was maybe ten or eleven when I saw it meaning he was in his early thirties. Anyway I was still paying a kids price which I remember as nine cents. With a dime and a nickel you could watch the show and load up on Good & Plenty. Sorry but the character you choose is a walk down memory lane.

[theoldghost]

minoribus, after positing the last I had to Goggle Gregory Peck because it suddenly dawned on me I had no memory of his World War II contribution. Many of our sports stars and even move stars actually fought in WW II and many notable names come to mind. Then some, like Ronald Reagan, made training films never leaving a Hollywood set.

It seems he was actually declared 4 F by the draft board for a bad back. And, if a draft board at that time said your back was bad it was indeed bad. And, I guess the jest of this post is he was a good man. Who gave much back to the acting community. He also had a son in Vietnam who he supported while opposing the war.

And, he said many times he was blessed by the roles he got. This was of course in the old Hollywood system where actors had no say so in the roles they were tasked with. So it seemed he wasn’t only a fine actor given the right role but a dedicated father, husband, and just a citizen of the world. Yeah, minoribus, I remember him.

[minoribus]

Thank you very much, Steve S, I’m glad you like it.

ToshiCG, thanks a lot for your comment. And I guess you are right on the fuzz and the lips. I will take it into account the next time. You made a good point about the workflow. Starting with a good male of female basemesh and going straight to multirez could be a viable option. It’s a bit against the mainstream opinion. But you are right, the main facial features and the basic proportions are the same across all heads.

Talking about meshes … as you can see in my wireframe the loops around the mouth don’t follow the facial features completely correct, especially in the area of the wrinkles. I tried to get close to it by moving the pole on his cheek, but the loops could be better there. Thankfully the normal map ironed that out.

Ghost, thank you as well. You are right, he is a bit younger in my depiction. When I started I followed a theory, which said, that the main facial features of a person will stay the same (mostly) across all ages and that this consistency is what defines the likeness. Therefore I started with a whole bunch of reference images across different ages and studied them in search of these consistent features. While I still think the theory is correct, I had to cut corners in the end and focus on only some of the references to get a good likeness. The younger age might be a leftover of that approach.

And yeah, a great actor he was

[Speed7]

Hi minoribus

Very happy to see that you took the plunge into the world of portraits and you have done a very good job of this Gregory Peck one, see I got it right this time, not sure why Ghost and others struggled to get it right in the WIP :evilgrin:

My wife is also my toughest critic so do not feel bad, every time I sit back and think that I have something right she points out all the mistakes and of course she is always right and I start all over again. Seems to have that eagle eye you have.

Once again well done and here is hoping to see more of these works in the near future.

Regards

Shaun

[joseperez]

hey minobirus, I like the model result and the movie style that you apply to this render, his facial features for me looks how a stylised version of this actor.

the skin looks pretty cool in general, except the lips, since for some reason looks as plastic. for another side the fur and the hair bear looks nice, but the eyebrows don’t have the same impact.

[minoribus]

Hi Shaun and Jose, thank you very much, guys. I’m glad you like it.

Jose, you have been the first to notice the movie style :). Most of the reference images have been black and white and that made it a bit difficult, to choose the right color. And it also influenced the feeling of likeness as I was used to see him in black and white. Therefore I tried to go with a modern movie color pattern of red/orange and blue.

Shaun, my wife said, Audrey Hepburn should be next. Most probably because they did the movie “Roman Holiday” together.