Hey all, this is my the "so-far" of my current project. I'm making a whole scene, but at the moment I'm just working on getting this dude's face to work. I'm at the detail adding point before I do the eyes and start texturing, so I'd like to know what you guys think. Any suggestions on things to add or change or anything would be greatly appreciated.



This is my first start-to-finish Head (I created him from a mugshot-style drawn reference), and I tried to avoid all unnecessary geometry. This is nothing but quads. I'm also trying really hard to create a slightly assymetrical look, to make him look more human.

The final scene wil be this guy in a bowler hat, scarf, fingerless gloves and suit playing the shell game on an overturned box in front of a brick wall.

So, What's the damage?

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The Swindler
Critty please? With sugar on top?

Hey not bad, when I saw the render though, I noticed that some of the folds and lumps on his face look a bit unnatural.

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- Genny
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Yeah, but whicxh ones? Because quite a few are supposed to be scars, the one on the cheek and lower right chin and under the lip in particular are all from a picure of this friend of mine who was in a motorcycle accident-broke his jaw and it came through th skin there. However, I am going to be touching up the area around the nose and mouth.

The overall idea is that this is an unsavory character, who has been marked by his deeds, so to speak.

Here are some more recent renders. Better? Worse?

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The Swindler
Critty please? With sugar on top?

The reason I said the folds looked a bit weird is because they're more on the boxy side rather than fleshy.

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- Genny
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Oh, ok, but I still am unsure which ones you are talking about. Could you maybe upload a copy of this picture with it highlighted? I'm sorry, but I've been looking at this so much it's getting hard to actually see it, if you know what I mean.

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The Swindler
Critty please? With sugar on top?

The ones around the eyes (the eyelids to be exact) are what stands out the most to me.

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- Genny
__________________
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Ah, I see what you mean. It's not as bad on the left, but it is still there.

How's this then?

Attached Thumbnails

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The Swindler
Critty please? With sugar on top?

It looks weird because of this, I've never seen anyone with eyelids like that.

Attached Thumbnails

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- Genny
__________________
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I don't think it's a good idea to model scars and bumps. You get a messy mesh and it doesn't look good. Either use displacements (using Photoshop or ZBrush) or a bumpmap.

I will be using two of them in conjunction. Sometimes you can't get away with not adding these things to the mesh. If you try to animate later on it won't work. Especially these long scars or the damage under the lip. You can't fake that with a bump map. At least, not well.

Anyway, I have had no luck with Zbrush at all. I know they're are tutorials and what not, but I just yesterday bought a 4000 dollar rig to work on, and am understandably broke as hell.

As far as the eyelids go, they're half open. I read somewhere that the best way to make a face for animating is with half open eyes, slack brows, slack jaw, closed mouth. I think it was in Peter Ratner's book on the subject. Also, I take it you have never looked to closely at the Irish. A lot of Irish men have eyelids like this, my dad for one. Especially those who have ever boxed for a while. The skin kind of sags in wierd places.

I'll keep my back up without this stuff and if it still looks awful to you guys when I've completed the colo, bump, and specular maps, then I'll re-do it. I'm mostly doing this as a technical study and to see what I get when I try specific things.

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The Swindler
Critty please? With sugar on top?

Here, does this fix what you guys were talking about? It took me a day of working on something else to see what you meant. I hope this time it's fixed.

By the way, thanks a lot for the crits I really appreciate them.

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The Swindler
Critty please? With sugar on top?

So, yeah, this is my first attempt at anything even remotely realistic in terms of shader building and texturing (I still have no idea how to build a realistic skin shader, I just slapped this together on a blinn), but please, be brutal. It's the only way i'll get better.





I don't know what's going to make him reflective either. That makes no sense to me, he doesn't have a reflective map.

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The Swindler
Critty please? With sugar on top?

can you crop your pictures so there is as little black space as possible? it's kinda weird to see this giant picture only to find that the actual image is this little thing in the center...

not sure why you want to make a person reflective, last time i checked we cant see ourselves in other people's skin

blinn shaders have a reflectivity of 0.5 by default. if you didn't change this then the material will reflect stuff

skin shaders are usually done with subsurface scattering (sss), which is where the light reaches the material, bounces around inside a bit before going back out (i think)

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that's a "Ch" pronounced as a "K"

Computer skills I should have:
Objective C, C#, Java, MEL. Python, C++, XML, JavaScript, XSLT, HTML, SQL, CSS, FXScript, Clips, SOAR, ActionScript, OpenGL, DirectX
Maya, XSI, Photoshop, AfterEffects, Motion, Illustrator, Flash, Swift3D

The bumpmap looks ok I guess ,but if you want realism you have to go with SSS and for example the misss_fast_skin shader