Speaking of, once I had my primary forms set, I moved to Maya and started retopologising using Quad Draw. Keeping the model with as little polygons as possible is not necessarily intuitive, but will definitely make finding the form and modifying it much easier. The See Through slider at the top right of your default Zbrush page comes in very handy. I soon started lining up my pictures underneath my ZBrush page.

I’m first looking to find something human-like and leaning more and more towards the likeness as I go. Now, jumping into Zbrush with my references, I started sculpting away using the Head plane base mesh.Īt this point I’m not lining up my photographs or heading for something perfect. The goal of gathering reference is to create a patchwork of photographs to make your own reference turntable.įor me, the two best places to keep your references together and organised are PureRef and Miro. The longer the focal length, the less camera deformation, therefore less guess work. That was a great help in finding photos of Michael facing straight ahead, with a relatively long focal length. You’ll be able to find a series of pictures from the same moment, usually from award ceremonies or red carpets and such. Another great place is stock photo websites such as GettyImages. In light of that, I set out to gather as many references from different angles and different lighting.Ī good place to find references like these are interviews, as there’s a lot of listening and sitting still. ReferencesĮveryone will tell you that references are the key to everything. I set myself the end goal of creating shots that could look like they were taken on stage. I chose to work on the likeness of singer-songwriter Michael Kiwanuka. It’s too easy to give up when it starts getting more difficult, so doing something you love will help you push through. When setting out on a new project, of any kind, I’d suggest choosing something you are passionate about. I had already worked with scans for a self portrait, and wanted to take my sculpting skills further. In this article he takes us through his process, inspiring other digital artists to take on a similar challenge!įor this project, I wanted to create a digital double without using scan data, forcing me to work strictly from photo reference. Felix recently created a digital double without using scan data, forcing him to work strictly from photo reference. Felix Gourlaouen is a 3D modeller and an ESMA Montpellier Graduate from the class of 2022.

Zbrush texture painting