After having collected some pictures of the famous actress Angelina Jolie, I decided to use some of them to help give life to my homonymous creation Angioletta Giolli.
Before starting the modeling phase it was important to take a moment to properly observe the features of Jolie, especially her cheekbones, which are very particular and pronounced (Fig.01).
Fig. 01
Starting from two references - front and lateral view - I modeled the low poly face, imported it into ZBrush and increased the subdivision level by two steps. Then I was able to concentrate on adding details to critical areas of morphology like the mouth, nose, bowed eyebrows, eyes and ears (Fig.02 & Fig.03).
Fig. 02
Fig. 03
During the working process, I was careful to maintain a clean and morphologically correct mesh and to avoid disharmony, in order to permit efficient modeling in ZBrush without too many difficulties. I added loops only on the more important areas, so that I had a more manageable mesh for the modeling.
As you can see, I added only one additional iteration to obtain a density that satisfied me. I obtained the bump map from the diffusion texture (Fig.04).
Fig. 04
Having completed the model, I imported it in 3ds Max, where I rigged the head and neck to pose the subject with a simple rotation of the head (Fig.05).
Fig. 05
in the end, after I'd positioned the camera and chosen a typical portrait
view, I added a leather string in order to put across the idea that
the woman is wearing a dress.
For the shading, I was inspired by various tutorials I had found on the web. I also studied how the various slots worked in order to obtain a realistic skin. Here are my sss fast skin settings (Fig.06 & Fig.07).
For the illumination I considered various photographical techniques and decided to put the primary light between the camera and the subject (45°), and then slightly moved to her right-hand side. Next, I added two backlights to emphasize the silhouette of the face and to obtain more depth for the final image. Finally, I added a fill light to compensate for the dark areas (Fig.08).
For the final render I decided to use mental ray as my new render engine because it is already integrated in 3ds Max. I also used final gathering, but not global illumination. In the settings of the FG, I used 0 bounces to obtain a low render time, compared to the complexity of the sss fast skin settings. I then rendered a beauty pass of the scene (Fig.09).
I created a composition in Photoshop that permitted making last minute, substantial changes to the final image. For the background, I added an image of a curtain that I had turned black. I made the hair with the Hair and Fur modifier, and rendered it separately. Then I combined the hair, background and beauty passes in Photoshop to create the final image (Fig.10 & Fig.11).
For the shading, I was inspired by various tutorials I had found on the web. I also studied how the various slots worked in order to obtain a realistic skin. Here are my sss fast skin settings (Fig.06 & Fig.07).
Fig. 06
Fig. 07
For the illumination I considered various photographical techniques and decided to put the primary light between the camera and the subject (45°), and then slightly moved to her right-hand side. Next, I added two backlights to emphasize the silhouette of the face and to obtain more depth for the final image. Finally, I added a fill light to compensate for the dark areas (Fig.08).
Fig. 08
For the final render I decided to use mental ray as my new render engine because it is already integrated in 3ds Max. I also used final gathering, but not global illumination. In the settings of the FG, I used 0 bounces to obtain a low render time, compared to the complexity of the sss fast skin settings. I then rendered a beauty pass of the scene (Fig.09).
Fig. 09
Fig. 10
I created a composition in Photoshop that permitted making last minute, substantial changes to the final image. For the background, I added an image of a curtain that I had turned black. I made the hair with the Hair and Fur modifier, and rendered it separately. Then I combined the hair, background and beauty passes in Photoshop to create the final image (Fig.10 & Fig.11).
Fig. 11
