ZBrushCentral

Melanin

Hi,

I haven’t posted my work in forums too often, but this seems like a friendly place.

Fairly recent character, originally generated from zspheres. I made him to learn Zbrush.
(Mesh was redirected a little in mayax for animating).
Macro and micro sculpting in zbrush.
AUV tiles… so color painted directly on model, ZappLink, and displacement map from zb.

Rendered with Mental Ray using Maya 5.0
Shader is DT3d Skin Shader by Miguel A. Santiago, a.k.a. migusan76. Hey!
Hair was created using Joe Alter’s Shave and a Haircut.

The character is based on someone with albinism, those who have a complete lack of melanin in their skin, hair, and sometimes the eyes.
Melanin, the chemical in our skin which reacts to the sun, how do you represent skin without it?

So I’m trying to work out the balance between light and color with this.
Not sure if I’m succeeding with a certain quality I’m after… not tan, not too pale or powdered.
Alive, not dead, maybe just too red.
(Is rhyming allowed?) oops, sorry.

All hard crits are welcome, please kick this hard if you have the time.
I’ll try to post more images showing improvement.

Oh here’s the wire, 2000 polys, AUV tiles with util_mark6.tif mapped earlier on them.
Maybe too poly heavy on the ears ect., I’m trying to unlearn that.

Crazy how Auv’s get scrambled around.

Thanks for lookingJoe_Seig_Pair2.jpgJoe_Seig_Pair3.jpgJoe_Seig_Wire.jpg

hey -this guy looks great!! i love the shape/weight of the lips and the teeth.
kick it hard? hmmmm - well the skin shader needs some work - he looks a little dry. needs some subtle specularity in there. im not to keen on the eyes. not the fact that they are red and inspired by the albino condition, but that they appear low resolution compared to the rest of him…
great to see some different expressions too! are these blendshapes/morph targets or just moved around in zbrush?
one thing that would really add another level of detail would be to make different displacement maps for each belndshape. for example, if he scrunches up his nose - you sculpt a more bunched/wrinkly map to blend to, aswell as the model changing.

im not exactly sure how this is done in maya, as im a max user, but ive set up a little pipeline that allows blending from one map to the next, aswell each model.

canat wait to see further updates :+1: :+1: :+1:

good work! i really like the exaggerated eyes and nose, clean wire frame too. i think adding a bit more variation in the skin will add more character, but as it is, its A+ work in my opinion.

so clean, everything looks great to me, great work

Excellent!
Stunning model.
:+1:small_orange_diamond:+1:small_orange_diamond:+1:
LemonNado

this looks fantastic!
I recall this guy from your website a month or two back…

very inspirational stuff. Great animation too!
Didn’t he have a funny hat? or is that another character?

How is it jumping from the sculpture medium…to the digital sculpture medium?
keep it up the excellent style!
-tiktok

Very nice character and look. Nice Zsphere model. :wink:

Beautiful, beautiful, this is what i really like - realistic character with a bit stylization. Wonderful.:smiley:
5stars.

great character !!
cool :sunglasses: :+1:

Great model! :+1: :+1:

Amazing Joe! Don’t think I have ever seen a 3D Albino before :slight_smile:

You have a great sense of style.

If I was to make a crit I would agree with mutant about adding a little more subtle specularity, somehow the spec seems a bit diffused (not very helpful I know, sorry). You make an interesting point about the ability to represent skin without melanin, not sure if skin shaders take Albino’s into account when they are being designed :stuck_out_tongue:

Once again, awesome work keep it up

:+1: :+1: :+1: :+1: :+1:

Ben

mutant: Thanks, was hoping the specularity issue wouldn’t come up, I’ll look into it.
I agree with the eyes, I haven’t fully explored them. Good call. Also more chaos in the lashes.
These are blendshapes/morf targets, but now I know zbrush can help with that too.
I’ve yet to figure out blending between displacement maps, I’ll look into it as well.

joeanomics: Thanks, yes more variation, I’ll check my references.

Logick and lemonnado: Glad you like him, thanks for your positive feedback.

tiktok: Hey, thanks, you still sketching up bizarre ideas? :wink:
This is a different character, completely started using zbrush, but they do ressemble one another.
Good eye. Let’s call 'em brothers.

Your sculpture medium vs. digital sculpture medium question:
Digital is harder, dang it is.

Jason Belec: Thanks Jason, yeah the original zsphere is in there somewhere. Still peeking at your low-rez.:wink:

Suzana: Thanks, you nailed it. Great work you’re doing btw.

Drummer: Grazie! ciao for now.

Bas Mazur: Thank you, Your influence runs deep here. I know it’s flowed my way.

Brainplug: Yes you’re right about the specular, it’s been difficult. Thanks, glad you like it so far.

I’ll try to work on this tonight, thanks for the motivation everyone.

Bro, you rock:+1:small_orange_diamond:+1:small_orange_diamond:+1:

what program are you useing for your rendering and animation?

the shaders you have created/used are outstanding
TIA

hi again joe,

heres a link to a cool plugin thats been developed to blend/morph between meshes/displacements. vertex cache for maya. looks pretty powerful/handy :slight_smile:

http://imaginecube.com/features.html

Brilliant work Joe. My only comment is I wonder about the scale of the bumps/grain/pores on the facial skin. My guess is its twice too large for the model, but you’re likely still working on that.

Gotta say, yours is about the best from-scratch-in-ZBrush work I’ve seen lately. :smiley:

Sven

Excellent work, Joe!
Really love the stylisation of this character - albinism, hair, expressions and all :+1:

As I remember, albinos do tend to have slightly dryer skin than usual, so the
diffuse and spec would be different; also are you planning to use SSS with
this guy eventually? It’d be a real ‘scattering playground’ :slight_smile:

C.

Excellent Stuff!!! Very nice model and texture… Great job!!

FANTASTIC!! :+1:

:smiley: Wooooott WooooTT, Hey Joe great to see your character around, Plus Featured Gallery thats awesome!!! Keep up the Great Work. Too bad your not rendering through Maya’s software render I could pass you a modified version of the shader with a True SSS term so you could get some nice Behind the ear light on this model. :stuck_out_tongue: Or you could use fast_SSS shader for mental ray.