Beautifully Haunting. I love it. Could you share a bit more about your process?
- No one knows how the Lady came to be or what her true purpose is. She is not a woman and she’s not human. Her aspect is that of a floating, robed, giant female, with a mantle of blades around her, impassive, expressionless face.
Sometimes she’s seen drifting through the streets, the edge of her gown just brushing over the cobblestones. She never speaks. Those who try interfering with her erupt in horrid gashes at just the touch of her gaze and even something as superficially innocuous as tactile exposure to her shadow can flay to death.
Wise bloods find business elsewhere on those rare times she passes down the way. Eventually, her image fades and she vanishes into nothingness. Natives of Sigil view her with fearful awe, as she is the uncaring protector of their home. -
Excerpt from “Sigil and beyond”
Her Serenity, the Lady of Pain.
I always loved the aura of mistery around this character from the 1994 Planescape Setting, so I decided to make an homage to the tremendous skill of Zebb Cook who wrote it and Tony DiTerlizzi who illustrated it. The idea was to redesign the Lady as a full 3D concept that could fit in a live action movie or a Next-Gen game’s cinematic and at the same time keep her essence faithful to DiTerlizzi’s and Cook’ work.
It was fun to imaging how the different materials and textures would look and feel in the real world, especially the rusted metal mask. I wanted the fabrics to feel rich, but also ancient and keep a limited color palette with some points of color on the face and on the little items on her belt.
Also, this is my first time testing Substance Designer and Marvelous Designer for texturing and cloth generation. I am utterly amazed from the possibilities these software offer.
I hope you’ll like it. 
Software used: Zbrush, Marvelous Designer, Maya, Substance Designer, Octane Render, Mental Ray, Nuke, VRay (for the volumetrics), Nuke, Photoshop.
- The Lady, Her Serenity, the most high up of all of Sigil's bloods, is a mistery wrapped in an enigma. - Excerpt from "A Tout's Guide to Sigil"
"The mistress o’ Sigil? Ye’ve not “heard”? Ye must be blessed or more cluel… eh, know little about Sigil… Lady’s word’s law here in Sigil. “Cept she don’t say much. Dead silent she is, actually.”
Hive Ward dweller
“That bladed witch! All high and mighty, mistress of all the city, floating and silent, she kills anyone in her shadow. She tends the city, aye… And leaves the living things in it ta “rot”.”
Hive Ward harlot
“Well, now, not many know about her, lad. and I’m figuring even those that know more than a little don’t know too much more. She’s a mistery, she is, and even should you run across her… Powers forbid… she’s silent and deadly. She’s not evil, far’s I can tell, but she keeps the dark about herself and Sigil pretty tight. None’s been able to penetrate it, and if they have, they have been mazed.”
Ebb Creakknees, planewalker
"…Sometimes bloods will be packed off to a place where they can’t do no harm. The Lady, see, she’ll take a bit of Sigil, and make a little dimensional pocket out of it, a “maze”. She places those that have crossed her in there and lets 'em rot. "
Ebb Creakknees, planewalker
“Now… you can’t escape getting mazed once the Lady sets her gaze on you, lad. She’ll get you eventually, ho matter how hard you try and dodge her. You’ll be walking down an alley, or about to step into a portal, or take a left turn down a street you have got manyfold times before, and suddently you are someplace you don’t recognize. Now, mazes aren’t escape-proof. There is always a way out of each one… a portal the Lady places there. You just have to figure out where it is and how to use it.”
Ebb Creakknees, planewalker
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Awesome lady of pain Paolo , I love Planescape, brings back some awesome memories , outstanding work sir .
small_orange_diamond
Thanks Pygmalion! 
Indeed, Planescape was such a great Setting.
I prepared a second clip with closer shots on my sculpture of the Lady of Pain.
Software used: Zbrush, Marvelous Designer, Maya, Substance Designer, Octane Render, Mental Ray, Nuke, VRay (for the volumetrics), Nuke, Photoshop.
Special thanks to Giancarlo Gallinoro for the support with the VRay volumetrics in the turnaround videos and to Christopher Brändström for his thread about how retopologizing triangulated MD meshes and keep the UVs intact.
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great work, also like where coming light,
Thanks plenty Masart!
Posting some of the test renders I did for the model of Her Serenity before getting into the texture phase
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Great job on this model Paolo.
“…That place is not safe, they say it’s cursed.
They say nothing grows in this area, because of the salt.
They say she is still alive somehow and her tears are like black acid.
If you ever come in sight of the pillar, say a blessing and walk the other way.”
Genesis 19:26 from Paolo Giandoso on Vimeo.
In the Bible, Lot’s wife is a figure first mentioned in Genesis 19. Her name is not given, but in some Jewish traditions she is called Edith.
In the tale, two angels arrived in the city of Sodom at eventide, and were invited to spend the night at Lot’s home. As dawn was breaking, the angels urged him to get his family and flee, so as to avoid being caught in the impending disaster for the iniquity of the city. The command was given, “Flee for your life! Do not look behind you, nor stop anywhere in the Plain; flee to the hills, lest you be swept away.”
While Lot’s family was escaping on the plain, disobeying the angels’ warning, Lot’s wife turned back. The sight of God, who was descending down to rain destruction upon Sodom and Gomorrah, turned her into a pillar of salt.
The reason why she turned back is never clearly stated.
Some say that by looking back at the sinful cities she betrayed her secret longing for that way of life. Deemed unworthy to be saved she was punished like the rest of the cities’ inhabitants.
Others say that she turned only to check if her daughters, who were married to men of Sodom, were coming or not. The direct vision of God consumed her mortal flash and turned it into pure salt.
I wanted to make a sculpture of Lot’s wife for a long time. It always seemed to me a wonderful and at the same time horrifying story.
Luckily for me I had some time off in between jobs to spend at the Open Workshop and I could finally sit down and take the image out of my head.
At the beginning I was thinking about rendering some stills, but then, what is the point of doing a sculpture if you don’t turn around it a little? 
For this project I used basically every program I could get my paws on while at the open Workshop (yaaay, playtime :D).
The basic scene layout was done in Maya, the low poly mesh was created and posed in DAZ3D, the dress and the turban with Marvelous Designer.
I then proceeded sculpting the base mesh in Zbrush. After that I exported the whole undecimated geometry to Octane Render (yep, it can handle it) for shading and rendering.
I love the way this program handles scattering material, it really gave me the translucency effect I was hoping to obtain, and there was basically no need for texturing. The few texture masks I had to prepare were created in Photoshop.
After rendering I comped the turnaround in Nuke and edited them together in Premiere, while I did the final retouches to the stills in Photoshop.
Here are the unedited turnarounds:
[Genesis 19:26 - high angle turntable](https://vimeo.com/188052986) from [Paolo Giandoso](https://vimeo.com/paologiandoso) on [Vimeo](https://vimeo.com). [Genesis 19:26 - frontal turntable](https://vimeo.com/175905042) from [Paolo Giandoso](https://vimeo.com/paologiandoso) on [Vimeo](https://vimeo.com).Genesis 19:26 - closeup turntable from Paolo Giandoso on Vimeo.
Soundtrack: “Eerie Stealth” from ObadiahBB
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“But Lot’s wife looked back, and she became a pillar of salt.” - Genesis 19:26
Adding some screenshots from Zbrush that shows the base mesh before the rendering and shading phase in Octane
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