ZBrushCentral

Portrait of MakeupFX Master: Dick Smith (WIP)

I am still alive…

This is a work in progress portrait I’ve been working on and off for the past two months. Still unfinished, with very rough clothes, no buttons, no thin hair blending brows and hair line, likeness has good room for improvement, grooming needs work etc etc etc. But I am sharing this on other platforms, so it would be unfair not to share with this community that did so much for me over the years.

The first image was rendered to test a pretty cool camera lens shader developed for Arnold by @zenopelgrims to emulate various vintage lenses. The preset I picked was the the Zeiss Biotar 1927 58mm. Very interesting result, especially on the edges, where you can see the chromatic aberration and the interesting distortion combined with the DOF.

ZBrush for sculpting, Maya/Arnold 5/Randomwalk SSS for rendering.

Everything you see is 100% “hand-crafted”, meaning no photos, scans or commercial alphas were used, other than reference photos from the web, opened on a second monitor, to avoid any type of tracing as well. All textures were polypainted by hand using HD geometry mode (my favorite ZBrush feature by far… please, develop it further, Pixo!!! :slight_smile: ). All detail was done either using ZBrush’s default brushes or my own set of custom, hand sculpted brushes (pores, wrinkles etc), also in HD mode, at about 70million polys for head/neck/shoulders.

The iris is also hand-sculpted, so what you see is actual forms, not textures.

Why? Because I already use a lot of scan data in my professional work and that would be meaningless to do on my personal work, because I am in this world to learn and I like “training my eyes” to be able to see better both the macro and the micro picture.

So here is what I have so far. I will be posting other things like wires, video timelapses etc, but only when I come back from my trip starting tomorrow. So, I talk to you guys in about a week or so! I hope you like it so far.
Cheers!

DickZeiss3 copy.jpgDick37.0012 copy.jpgEyesHDRI copy.jpgDick37.0005 copy.jpgDick37.0001 copy.jpgDick37.0002 copy.jpgDick37.0004 copy.jpgDick37.0006 copy.jpgDick37.0011 copy.jpgDick37.0010 copy.jpg

Attachments

EyesHDRI copy.jpg

1 Like

Always jaw-dropping work.

amazing work

Just starting out in ZBrush?:smiley:
Good gracious no, this is spectacular! :+1:

Absolutely stunning. Can’t wait to see more.

Awesome work Kris!!! You just rock !!!

WOW!!! Really well done. Thank you for sharing. Looking forward to see the rest of the images you will be sharing.

i was follow you step by step process of this great portrait in instagram mate,well done to you.

So insanely good, man. I wish I could do 20% of what you are capable of.

:sunglasses: Impressive, to say the least. :+1:

Great work as aways! I started learning zbrush because of you, so many years ago… Thanks for the inspiration all over these years!
Obrigado mestre!

…fantastic…no words

One word for to describe you, master. Unbelievable work man. This is where I found you and once again you’ve inspired the hell out of me. Congratulations on another top row!

Glad to know you’re still kicking around.

If this is a WIP, I think your satisfied final will be right back up in Top Row as a ‘Tsar Bomba’ portrait!

Wild applause so far.

…mature Master! :wink:

Kris!!! It has been awhile.
Goodness, this sculpt. Every image has a little more detail that I didn’t see the first time. (Capillaries on the bridge of the nose)

Simplesmente incrível cara, demais! Os detalhes das rugas nos olhos, a expressão… incrível.

abs

Solid as always Kris! Keep on rocking!

Spectacular and inspiring work Kris, congrats on the Tow Row!!!

Such lovely work, Kris. You have been an inspiration for some time. Hope you enjoy your vacation, I have a few questions for when you come back:

Have you seen Kazu Tsuji’s portrait of Mr. Smith? http://kazustudios.com/dicksmith/ If anyone created a work that rivaled this one, I’m not surprised that it is you.

Do you have any tips or advice for sculpting the kind of skin pore detail you see in the philtrum area of your Duchess character? https://cdna.artstation.com/p/assets/images/images/006/305/700/large/kris-costa-18278577-10154617548686647-3000155458349550932-o.jpg?1497553804 There is a lot of complexity to these pores and I’d be grateful to learn how it is done.

Speaking of details, do you have any tips for preserving high frequency detail when using SSS in Arnold? I haven’t had the chance to use the new random walk version, but in the past I have found it difficult to achieve the level of SSS back scatter effect I want without losing visibility of fine skin details.

Finally, would it be possible to provide some insight into your texturing techniques for this portrait? So many nice details and color variations in this project.

Thank you very much for taking the time to look at my questions, and for continuing to share and inspire with your work. Cheers!