Scully WIP - Advice needed

Current progress:



Hi everyone. I’m attempting to make a photorealistic portrait of Dana Scully from The X-Files, but I’m having some trouble. My model just looks wrong to me, and I’m not sure what I should do to fix it. Maybe I need more, or better reference images, maybe I need more geometry, I don’t know. Here’s what I have so far:



How am I doing? Does anyone have any comments, criticism or suggestions?

If I have any updates, I’ll post them.

Thanks!

On thing you can do is map a reference shot to a camera with the pixel matching, and set your view N panel to lock camera to view - that way you can overlay your ref and rotate your view in camera to see the two against each other. The beauty is that the N Panel Background settings can be set to Front instead of behind, and you can turn the opacity down enough to see both. That might help you figure out the really obvious things, though you would need to set the camera to the same as the ref picture, like 35 is default and maybe it should be 105, etc.

Great idea! Thanks so much. I’ll try that out right now.

Your idea worked very well. Progress!


This is looking great! :slight_smile:

Looking really great once you get the Uv texture it will all come together :smiley: I love portraits :D!!!

Based on that technique Craig mentioned, I was able to improve my model a great deal. Here is my newest version. Each image here is the reference image with its associated camera angle.






I want the base mesh to be as close as possible to the final version, so that there is as little UV stretching as possible, so I’m waiting to remove the mirror and begin sculpting smaller details- I want it to be perfect. It’s sometimes difficult to judge without textures, but how does it look so far?

More progress! Sorry for the poorly timed gif. I feel I am getting closer to completion of the base mesh, though I feel there’s still something off. Maybe the eyes are too open? Will post more updates soon.

http://i738.photobucket.com/albums/xx22/Catboxfilms/progress3after_zpsc7532936.gif?t=1408039535

I think I’m finished with the base mesh, and now I’m ready to begin sculpting. But is it better to UV unwrap the model before sculpting, after sculpting, or does it make no difference at all? Should I apply the multiresolution modifier or should I keep it applied? In the latter case, how do I avoid UV stretching? I’m just wondering what the best workflow is with regards to modelling/sculpting and texturing.

Awesome! I love the x-files! Can’t wait to see how this comes out.

Thank you! :smiley:

I think the plane of the top surface of the nose is too thin, there should be more width there as far as I can tell from the refs and corresponding sculpt screens

Thanks for your suggestion!
Are you talking about this part?


That might be because of the matcap I’m using. If I switch to some other ones, do you still see the problem?


yep to thin, example how it should be:

#Example1
http://media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/7b/4d/17/7b4d1764cd565089728339b1444e7734.jpg

#Example2

#Example3

Good overall work though,

Cheers,

Jim

Alright, I think I fixed the area around the nose, as well as some parts around the eyes and chin. I also made the forehead slightly bigger. I was originally thinking that I was done with my base mesh, but now I think I have a lot more tweaking to do.


Your really capturing her likeness!it looks near perfect now, I mean I said near because nothing on earth is perfect, but this looks identical to scully! Keep up the great work!

Well thank you! Anybody else have thoughts or suggestions? Do you suppose I’m ready to move onto the high detail sculpt? I’m feeling that I haven’t gotten her eye area quite right. Or maybe it’s just the tendency of constant tweaking that always plagues artists. :smiley:

How are people going about painting textures these days? The Bprojection addon hasn’t worked for ages, camera projection mapping is out of the question, and stencil mapping in texture painting mode is a mess.

I use the new tools in the paint branch that shoudl be coming to 2.72. I have gotten used to using the Stencil projection, but there is always cloning from alternate uv layers

@Craig Jones
Good to know. Thanks!

@Photox
Thanks for the kind words, and great idea. Yes, I agree that hair is an important aspect of recognizing someone. I’ll put together some testing hair tomorrow.