Melanin

[aminuts]

haha great 22secs! Have to give your kids a thumbs up for that one.

[schtoo]

theres a script at highend3d called kineMapper.mel that lets you morph between displacement maps,and hooks em up to your blendshapes

[facial deluxe]

Hey Seig
Very very long time I didn't see you !
Gorgeous stuff as always ! Haven't red the whole thread yet, I bet this will be for an upcoming exhibit...

I tried to reach you, I even wrote your agent to get your mail with no luck.
Seems you're still alive
I'm happy to be able to see your work again

Take care

[porksoda]

nice image. I just realised that its Bob Geldoff hehe

Andy

[Bas Mazur]

Joe, the more I see that white dude, the more I have to smile about him. Please make a funny scene with him or show us an animation. Damn, I need more 3d programs to make fun like that (also the money). I hope we get a big surprise with the new update of ZB, animation, nice hair tool, good perspective, omg I have to stop smoking and drinking to get more time to explore all!

[raf1]

Fantastic work! Am I the only one who sees the octagenarian Jerry Seinfeld here?!?!

Cheers

[fALk]

Absolutely cool work! Only thing thats strange are the big pores as someone else pointed out before me - other wise ultra lovely.

Would you mind explaining a little bit in detail your workflow from the model to Mayaanimation. Did you use vertexes or did you make blendshapes in ZBrush for the expressions and "synching"- how did you fit the teeth and jaw into the model afterwards (a real pain in ZBrush in my opinion but maybe I miss some secret recipe) or is it all one model with special texture? Any other catchas you experienced you might want to share - something that was more problematic then first anticipated?

....

[Yainderidoo]

Bas....didn't you see this one ?: http://www.joeseigenthaler.com/files/CG/zbrush/Joe_Seig_PlayBlast.mov

Jeen(deridoo)

[Blaine91555]

In grew up with a true albino in the same age group. He stopped attending school with us by the time I was in my early teens. Too many problems with avoiding the light or something. He was even paler than your image, which is awesome by the way - His skin was not as specular as normal. It was waxy with a powdery surface. I'm not sure how to describe it exactly. He was much lighter skinned than you have now. His irises were pink and he had very redish eyelids and edges to his ears where the light penetrated. Very much like you have allready. Because his skin was whiter the contrast with the areas where the underlying structure (blood and veins etc.) was more pronounced than you have. There was no flesh color at all except where the light penetrated. Once again - Awesome work

[Bas Mazur]

Hahahahaha!!!!!!!! ROFL That movie is great!!!!!

[Frenchy Pilou]

Pilou

[Bas Mazur]

Shh, crazy that animations I've seen at your webside, peegunn and elvis, just great! Damn! You made my day

[joe_seig]

Hi, thanks for posting everyone.
This will be more of a 'behind the scenes' type of post.
Some of you Pros (who do this in your sleep) may want to go grab a cup of coffee or check your email...
or stay... and watch me possibly make a fool out of myself.

First some responses:

Aminuts, Thanks fellow chi-towner!
schtoo, I've downloaded the kineMapper.mel for morfing between displacements and i'm checking it out. Thanks for posting the info.
Ah, mon cher facial deluxe, another email is coming. No, not for an upcoming exhibit, just for play. We'll see...
porksoda Yes! could be Bob Geldolf, or some sorta boomtown rat... heheh.
Bas...UROCK!!!
raf1 yes Seinfield, never thought about it, but since you've mentioned it... could Geldolf and Seinfield be brothers?
Yainderidoo Thanks for re-linking that, maybe got lost in all the words before.
Blaine91555 First-hand descriptions, observations are always helpful. Much appreciated.
Frenchy big smile for you Pilou!!! !!!

fALk ! great questions, glad you asked, so let's get technical then...

"Would you mind explaining a little bit in detail your workflow from the model to Mayaanimation."

Okay, first I'll start to develope the mesh this way:

(Note: this model's final mesh is light enough to animate without slow response in the UI.)
Also at this point we're uv mapping (AUV tiles in this case because I've always hated unwrapping UVs in Maya and now love painting directly on the model).

Next, sculpt in Zbrush...

Three critical views, profile, three-quarter, and front. All views can be important, but these three the most.(imho).
I think it's also important to spend more time on the actual sculpting and getting a convincing model before jumping into issues of color, fine texture, ect.
Great mapping and detail will often enhance greatly a model (realtime games for example), but they'll never save a poorly realized model. (again, imho).

"Did you use vertexes or did you make blendshapes in ZBrush for the expressions and "synching"-
how did you fit the teeth and jaw into the model afterwards (a real pain in ZBrush in my opinion
but maybe I miss some secret recipe) or is it all one model with special texture?"

Here's an image which may help clarify that, let's start with the teeth and jaw:

Eyes, eyelashes, upper and lower teeth, tongue... all seperate geometry, parented to joints/bones.
So there's the rig, primal, but effective for my purposes.
Nice that painting skin weights in maya is similar to using Zbrush.
White = total weight, Black = no influence, Shades of Grey = gradation of influence of joint on the geometry.

The Wig and Brows are seperate geometry as well, situated just below the surface, with a shaveNode applied.

This program's interface isn't too far from ZBrush either when moving, scaling the hair around.
much better than maya's Fur...(imho).

Lashes are geometry with a map in the shader's transparency slot. BlendShaped for opening and closing.

For blendShapes...

Modeled in maya, not Zbrush (running tests on that now though).
Since I'm using 5.0, soft selection tools are out, so it's old school vertex, edge, face, selection sculpting.
You get used to it, but I'd like to use zbrush for this now.
Jaw rotation (up-down-side-to-side) combined with blends, you can get alot of mobility going in the face.

Here's a test showing some basic movement, just tests tho...

(*edit* link below repaired)

Testing_MoveTests.mov....1,300kbs

Notice the clavicle is bending, putting a corrective blend on that should help.
Also I'm testing the hair movement... subtle, but it's gotta be there.

"Any other catchas you experienced you might want to share - something that was more problematic then first anticipated?"

The hundreds of displacement maps, color maps, spec maps ect... that I've imported/exported out of Zbrush to maya, only to find I need to rework them again.
That's a little frustrating. Now how many times has 'imf_copy' been typed in a command line? (u don wanna no).
So it's a challenge at first, but then can become (hopefully) second nature.

I left out alot here, for example set driven key info, all that, but this ZBC afterall. I'll keep updating here, have been a bit swamped, sorry.

Off Topic:
Took a poll here in Chicagoland today by ramdomnly calling computer users at home. (I know, icky, right?)
Asked them to visit ZBC and give some feedback...
Here's the result!
16,287 chicagoland viewers agreed:
"Bubbit! to the Top"!!!
(now that many Chicagoans couldn't be wrong, could they?)

[madeleine scott-spencer]

Great stuff here Joe. I was away from the thread a bit then I come back and its chock full of even more great stuff...
animations and kick butt information.

As I said before, really nice sculpt and a great presentation of your workflow!
thanks for sharing.


Scott

edit: for imf_copy fatigue try the bat file atwooki posted. The link is in my sigblock.

Also... the "traditional" work on your site is really outstanding. Very inspiring!

[Moochie]

Thanks for all the cool gen, Joe. Inspiring and a practical leg-up. Much appreciated.