Female Bust

[izze]

The head sculpt by Big Guns, over at zbrush central made me try again at getting realistic results with skin in mental ray. I am still tweaking the eyebrows and lashes. And I am still working on the hair. I dont think I will have time to complete a shirt or anything like that.

I wanted to also give a stylized look to her features. I have been looking at a lot of Modigliani lately, so I think that influenced me a bit.

Would love to hear what you all think.

[Hirazi Blue]

I for one like the style...

[ximage]

I like where this is going. lovely stylised head. her eyes look real good too. still looks a tiny bit waxy, but it not far off.

would you mind sharing your setting and workflow?

keep going dude.

Ximage

[izze]

Thanks Hirazi. I am glad the style is coming through in a good way. I know how easy it is to make the wrong turn towards uncanny.

I will put together some screens and stuff tomorrow, ximage. For now I have my second hair attempt. I think I am making good results on my third attempt.

[Hirazi Blue]

I assume this is "ordinary" XSI Hair? Looks good to me,
although I'd obviously have to see it combined with the face itself to really be able to judge this.
When I look at the face, however, a pony-tail somehow springs to mind (probably because I think it would accentuate the slightly "offness" of the anatomy better)

[izze]

Hey Hirazi, this is ICE hair, rendered with the PHair shader. I may try a ponytail and see how it looks. Thanks for the suggestion.

As far as my workflow goes. I posed and model I alredy have rigged and extracted the head for sculpting. I used Decimation master for this project since I am not animating, otherwise I like vector displacement. I used Eman's SSS shader and a whole combination of maps. I already had maps painted so I did not have to do a lot there for this project. I have a blurred HDR map for reflection on the skin. And the eyebrows and lashes are ICE Hair. The lights are all area lights. One point, and one fill light. I hope to figure out HDR lighting next time.

Cheers!

[Hirazi Blue]

Okay, another silly question: Kristinka or Melena ICE Hair?
Now that you've showed the hair together with the face I find it to be quite a good fit, I was afraid the long hair would "drown out" the features too much...
;)

[Mathaeus]

Thank You, Izze !

That 'Modigliani' concept is cool... honestly I've started something similar several times, but always ended with Barbie doll look, it seems there is no hope for me there...
Anyway, if there is a way I can help, don't hesitate to say. Of course if you didn't decided to forget these hair tools forever....

Cheers

[milanvasek]

this is very nice!
it would be great to give her a little bit more interesting expression

[Mathaeus]

Okay, another silly question: Kristinka or Melena ICE Hair?
Now that you've showed the hair together with the face I find it to be quite a good fit, I was afraid the long hair would "drown out" the features too much...
;)

I hope Izze will forgive me off topic - it's not big deal (at least with ICE, and 3d app that already have Shrink Wrap operator) to 'switch the principle', and create operator that can benefit of underlying surface, if it's needed. Even I believe the way how it works looks a bit mad at first look.

Cheers

[izze]

Thanks for the feedback Hirazi. I have never heard of Melena before. I googled and found the site, but did not see any examples. So I don’t know what it is capable of.

Anto! Thank you again for these tools! I love them! I can now see how each hairstyle can be broken down using your tools, and slowly patched together. Hair is like organized chaos.
I do have a question for you. I would like to know how to combine the Strand Fcurve to a slider or something. I have 14 point clouds, and dialing in the strand width for each cloud was time consuming.

FYI, I cannot get the Follow Curve to work in 2011. I know you are not planning updates, just wanted to point it out.


Thanks milanvasek. Next project I will be sure to push the expression a little bit more.

I tried to clean up some details in the hair. I darkened the lashes under the Right eye, because they were not showing up very well. I Also reworked the eyebrows. I think I am happy with most everything now.

Is the image bright enough for everyone's monitor? Never sure if im callibrated correctly.

[Hirazi Blue]

Hmmm, while creating a new thumbnail for our gallery, I got the impression the last image is a little bit too bright...

Personally I like the older image best (as far as overall look is concerned)

[Mathaeus]

I do have a question for you. I would like to know how to combine the Strand Fcurve to a slider or something. I have 14 point clouds, and dialing in the strand width for each cloud was time consuming.

FYI, I cannot get the Follow Curve to work in 2011. I know you are not planning updates, just wanted to point it out.

Well, you can apply multiple kH Follow NURBS modifiers to the same point cloud, the last kH Follow NURBS in the stack should have precedence in area of it's NURBS surface. That is how it's designed to work.

If that doesn't fit to your needs .... sharing kH Strand fCurve between multiple point clouds, that wouldn't be possible, without some unpleasant workaround - but you can use real one. That is, curve that you draw in view port. I've added compound that samples a 'real' curve. Only global Y positions on curve are used, X and Z is ignored, so it's best to tweak it in front view port. Compound will display 'zero point', that you can adjust for convenience. Y position, between zero point and +1 above in SI units, is equivalent of kH Strand fCurve. Now you can drive values of any strand array in any point cloud. For now, I think it's best way for multiple kH point clouds...

For kH Follow Curve, I've added a few filters more, in the same way as kH Follow NURBS has - from your screen-shots, it seems that Follow NURBS is working nicely with SI 2011.
Please let me know if it still doesn't work - in this case, there is a plan 'C' .

I suppose You already have two small compounds, 'kH Add Curve Root', and 'kH Add Curve Ratio', in folder that Softimage recognizes when loading. They are necessary for kH Follow Curve to work. When you add a curve to compound, XSI automatically loads copies of these two.

XSI model, with changed compounds, is here.

Cheers

[izze]

Ah, great. Ratio from Curve should work great for my needs. Thanks for the info. I updated my follow curve compounds and they seem to be working fine now. Thanks a ton!

Another update. Trying to just make everything look nice

[Mathaeus]

I updated my follow curve compounds and they seem to be working fine now. Thanks a ton!

Thanks,
actually it seems that kH Follow Curve needs a more serious re-design, I just working on it. I'll upload a new one ASAP.
Sorry for inconvenience.

[Mathaeus]

Hi,

finally , this one should work nicely. My fault, I've added filtering in a way that sometimes doesn't work, seems that your SI 2011 being only more sensitive to that.

By the way, I rarely use this one, my own favorite is Follow NURBS. NURBS surface provides much better info for orientation, than NURBS curve. As it is for now, kH Follow Curve just takes the root positions and 'extrude' them along curve - something like Extrusion along curve, but without 'rotate profile' option. kH Follow NURBS always take care about orientation, and can't flip, whatever is provided as input.

Cheers