Pilibustero
I wanted to work on this project in time for my country, the Philippines' Independence Day. I've been inspired to make a digital human project because of amazing artists like Dan Roarty, Kris Costa, Sefki Ibrahim.
This was quite a big task as I wanted to tackle making the best realistic digital human that I could of my country's National Hero, Dr. Jose Rizal. Aside from wanting to do the best I could, I also wanted to finally learn X-Gen and I'm proud I was able to pull it off (of course without a few bumps aka crashes and frustrations here and there)
These tutorials up on texturingxyz definitely helped me a lot with how to use the textures they have available:
https://texturing.xyz/pages/making-a-digital-face-sefki-ibrahim
https://texturing.xyz/pages/mateusz-sroka-making-bad-captain
My goal in the end was to get Jose Rizal as life-like as I possibly could and to pull off a Rembrandt-like old school look to the render.
Wireframe
Raw Render
Diffuse Pass. Texturing for Rizal's face was done in Mari using textures from texturingxyz. Specifically this one:
This was my final skin shader test before deciding to go back to Zbrush to lessen the wrinkles around his eyes and mouth as he was looking quite too old.
When I was finally finished with his clothes I did a simple grey test material for the render. And tweaked the lighting a bit more
First pass with X-Gen hair
First pass with X-Gen eyebrows
This was using just the Alsurface shader and plugging my primary and secondary spec maps in refl 1 and 2 color nad just playing around with the reflection roughness.
This was my first skin shader. I used a V-Ray blend material, had an alShader as the primary material, and two black with varying gloss Vray material for the face's
This was the finally sculpt in Zbrush.
My basemesh started from NickAverage in Zbrush, once I was able to get Jose Rizal's facial features right I retopologized and UV'ed the new model back in Maya.
Seven years difference. I mean I could've improved faster if I wasn't so distracted with video games and focused more but, at least I made it you know? I, can honestly and proudly say, I improved.
References of Dr. Jose Rizal
These were my references for lighting and also at the same time reference how a moreno skin looked like when lit. I referenced Jericho Rosales and Manny Pacquiao mainly for the skin tone,wrinkles and facial structure.The others were used for lighting refs
This was really challenging for me to groom the hair as it's my first time using X-Gen but thankfully I was able to get it quite right.
These were my inspirations for creating my digital human. In the end I may not have gotten the quality I aspired for but I am happy with what I was finally able to achieve.