Really really amazing, I love it.
One thing that could be improved is the wrinkles on the lips, at the moment I find the lips too soft and it doesn’t stand the overall level of the rest of the head.
And I’d love to see what it looks like if you do better wrinkles on the lips.
Achieving realism for a head is really hard and your thread is a great laboratory. Thanks for sharing your process.
It is great, it is subtle but I think it really improve the lips.
Can I ask you how did you proceed to sharpen these wrinkles? Are you only using the material you extracted from your scan and photo shoot or did you use some external material?
If you allow me an other observation, it is about the little wrinkles under his eyes, and the little wrinkles in general. Not the fine wrinkles that are all over the face but the expression wrinkles that start to grow. You can see them under the eyes or on the forehead.
I think they are not enough present at the moment.
What I was wondering is if the darker coloration is produce by the light or if the friction of the skin at these areas change the pigmentation of the skin.
If that’s light that produce shadow at a micro level it should be driven by displacement and your skin shader. If it is skin pigmentation it should also be present on your color maps.
Do you know the answer? I tried to find something about it on many research paper with no luck.
I’m nitpicking but I am really interested in realistic faces and your work is the most impressive I’ve seen (yeah I already said that ;)).
Just to let you know that I trully respect your work and my crits are here to try to help you and myself at the same time as I’m not considering myself as an expert :p.
dont worry about criticizing…its one of the reasons why i post in the WIP/Critique to get feedback. and yours is really hepful
ok to the point. i enhanced wrinkles by manually painting them and then converting to normal map which i added to my overal reflection normal. i also tweaked the microbump in the lips area
the photoscan isnt very useful for high fidelity details. its great for capturing the overall form
i agree about the eye wrinkles comment. the thing is to this point im developing the face and shader as neutral as possible. when im done with that (which i almost am, now only brows are missing) im gonna give this guy an expression. (something very similar the smile on the right)
then im gonna explore the more prominent mimic wrinkles under the eyes and in the nosolabial fold. i also gonna utilize my dynamic texture in that particular gesture.
Great map, impressive details for a painted map.
About the wrinkles I was talking about, I am refering to those visible in the neutral pose.
I didn’t find many references of your model so I took the picture you show about what looks like a polarized photography.
You can see that there is little wrinkles under the eyes and on the forehead. On your model they are barely visible like it was for the lips.
There is this subtle soft look that doesn’t completly match the reference. It tends to make the face look waxy, it is subtle but I think it is noticeable.
I don’t know if it is related to your map or your SSS, it seems to be your sss that is a little bit too strong.
If you look at your reference the shadows on the upper lids are not as red as your last render, it is especially noticeable on the left eye. Maybe that’s what hide your wrinkles.
well those wrinkles are there, maybe not so sharp so ill try to make them look a bit more prominent. the eye ones are mostly in shadow so theyre not so visible right now.
to the SSS…ive made tons of tests and im pretty much sure that its accurate. the reddish bleed youve noticed is comming from the GI…it always seems to be super strong in tight crevices. thats a problem i will be dealing with in final compositing
Didn’t thought it would come from the GI, thanks for the hint. In fact your GI pass clearly show it, quite annoying.
I would like to ask you how you set up your fuzzy layer on the shader.
From your shader tree it seems that you are using your color map twice, for the diffuse and for the fresnel.
That’s the second I don’t understand.
Can you explain it?
sure. the fuzzy component of the shader creates a rough fuzzy effect of the skin when viewed from glancing angles. i dont know if i can explain it right.
[img]http://ft.trillian.im/fbe8ac09d8955b867eb63005b20cb31900ee32bc/6gomEM4ermM6eRv7EYMGjpYF8rzmK.jpg[/img]
when you look at this photo. on the parts of the nose turning away from the camera. you can feel a fairly sudden change of the skin appearance. to my eyes it feels very diffuse and rough (imho the soft facial hairs are causing it)
so the shader is setup as follows, i created a desaturated bluish pale skin texture . this is plugged into the fresnel side color (so im only using the texture once, but in hypershade the swatch of the fresnel is also showing the same texture, thats what was confusing you) the front color of the fresnel is black. this shadder i am then adding on top of the skin blend material.
i also created a mask for removing this efect from the eyes and lips area.
to sum it up, its a very subtle effect that can be seen mainly on the bridge of the nose (image below) and on the ears, making them look just right in my eyes… and it works well with the fuzz hair on top of it.
hope it makes sence 
Thanks for the deep explanation, in fact that was the swatch that mistaken me.
I didn’t saw you where using a fresnel node.
It totally make sense now.
One little thing I’m not sure about is how you blend it to your final node.
If I get it right the fuzzy effect is only diffuse, if you are blending it over your skin shader won’t it diminish the skin shader at glancing angles?
it will.
the amount depends on the masks youre using. in my case its 9% (for mouth and eyes 0%)
I was on the right track, thanks for making it clear.
How did you create your base normal map? I’m trying to make one from photo but I was never found of this kind of technique. If this is what you used you did a great job.
i embossed the texture details on my high rez zbrush model, exported a normal map. then i did a much finer imagebased normal map with nDo2 and overlayed it on top of it.
im using 2 normal maps in my shader - one much finer and sharper for the sss… im letting the sss softening it. and a smoother lighter NM for the reflections.
Wow this realism is beyond comprehension. When this thread is complete someone needs to organize all this into a booklet or pdf. What an amazing study, thanks for sharing this. truly inspiring.
im tweaking the the mustache so it doesnt look like a fake one.
let me know if im on the right track
adding some new stuff to the shader…im really starting to like it, looks nice and skinny-ich (and noisy)
and i saved it as ‘FINALLY FINAL’ just a weak ago but as we all know…
facial hair is also majorly improved, render output comming soon. now im struggling with eye caustics. i cant get them to look tight and sharp (any tips regarding eye caustics appreciated. thanks)
Unbelievably believable. Cant wait to see a sequence fully rendered with animation and comped!
