After a long hiatus creating realistic portraits it feels great to be back at it! The last time I tried it I was compositing Blender Internal’s subsurface scattering with Cycles’ reflections…so yeah, it’s been a while
I’m calling this guy “Simon”. He served as research and development for a tutorial course I’m producing for CG Cookie. Everything was created with Blender: Sculpting, texture painting, hair, clothing simulation, and rendering. The only non-Blender aspect is the HDRIs courtesy of hdrihaven.com and the city background photo from unsplash.com.
Woah! That is really impressive. I have seen a lot of impressive portraits on both here and on Artstation and other forums, but I think this is the first I have seen that was created entirely in Blender, even the texture painting. Did you project any scanned textures like texturing XYZ in the process, or did you use some other method for the skin textures? When is the tutorial coming out?
Did you project any scanned textures like texturing XYZ in the process, or did you use some other method for the skin textures?
That was my expectation when I started painting textures. But before I purchased textures or went through the hassle of taking photos of my own face on an overcast day I figured I’d try hand painting. I was shocked to discover that even a simplistic hand-painted color base with overlaid displacement and cavity bakes resulted in a believable skin texture.
I spent a lot of time working on sculpted pore-level detail which combined with random walk SSS does most of the work imo. Here’s a WIP render of solid-color plugged into random walk. It already felt close to believable, just needing a nudge with color texture.
When is the tutorial coming out?
I’ve never produced a course this extensive before so it’s still a ways off. I’m almost finished recording the sculpting portion but that’s just the tip of the iceberg. When I get about 75% through production I’ll feel comfortable sharing a date.
Haha this won’t be too much of an exaggeration This is the deepest dive I’ve ever taken with a tutorial course and, yes, it will be several hours in duration.
I definitely found that the skin felt more or less realistic depending on the lighting conditions. Dramatic lighting especially felt most realistic to me. If you could share specifics about wha gives it away as CG I’d appreciate it!
cheers
Excellent work!
This is the deepest dive I’ve ever taken with a tutorial course and, yes, it will be several hours in duration.