38:45 the subsurface radius number is not just an arbitrary number, it's from the Random Walk shading model. This is how it works in Arnold as well. This is physically accurate, as it's derived from how light penetrates skin, red light absorbs deepest, followed by green, and then blue. You can see this in Arnold too: R 1.0/G 0.33/B 0.2. This is the number recommended by the Arnold devs for the most realistic shading of skin. Plugging maps into these numbers is old school, same for spec/roughness maps(if you want to retain physical accuracy) The random walk shadding model only needs a displacement/bump map, as the reflection is driven by the microsurface detail. Of course, there's nothing stopping you plugging old school maps into the channels for artistic reasons.
Forwarding this on to all the students I know, its a great resource to outline everything for them visually with a high quality asset :) Quick tip on the skin shading: You mentioned plugging the colour map in to subsurface and setting its weight to 1. Although this works, when you are going for realism it can be good to plug the colour in to diffuse AND SSS colour, that way the subsurface amount slider becomes a blend. Telling the shader how much light should reflect off the skin and how much should pass through the top layer. It really helps get a bit extra definition in your models to have a touch of diffuse :)
Super cool to see a new video from you guys! I know you are busy and all but i bet this video will be a blast to watch. An awesome throwback to the full character workflow video that you did a few years ago 🙌
I’m super stoked, this course is on my Christmas list, and I feel like this is going to fill in a whole bunch of gaps in my knowledge! If not even for the simple reassurances of “it’s okay to add a few more details to the sculpt even if you’ve started texture painting.”
That was the one crit I had for the software, UVing - compared to the Maya UV editor its definitely lacking. With plugins like UV Packmaster, Textools and Zen UV however, the process is improved. I also wouldn't really be inclined to texture/sculpt in Blender as imo there are far better softwares for that (Painter/ZB.) However, everything else I've seen in Blender is impressive, i.e. the modeling/shader editor is so cool - looking forward to delving further into the software. Thanks for the breakdown
So do you block it out with Dynamesh and or Sculptris Pro, then Zremesh it, project history and sculpt fine details with sub divisions? or can you make the whole thing with sculptris pro? it seems like when i use sculptris pro it's always really sketchy looking no matter what i do.
the best advice you'll ever get is to buy a sketch book. learn how to draw and draw a lot. take some life drawing classes and draw from life. once you get comfortable with drawing learn how to sculpt and sculpt a lot. these skills will make you a beast in these applications. at the end of the day zbrush, plasticity, maya, blender, and 3ds max are only extensions of your understanding of traditional skills.
I wouldnt necessarily discourage someone from picking it up first. I hated drawing my whole life, my third sculpt ever was 10x better than anything ive ever drawn. Some people may (MAY) just take to sculpting in blender way better than drawing, just my personal anecdote. If i read this and took it at face value I might never have tried doing realistic sculpts, and I'd think i never could cuz my lack of interest in drawing. No flame, just offering a perspective of someone who happened to take to blender sculpting in a way you'd never think could happen
BUT i'd still recommend a sketchbook, even if you only sketch enough to remind yourself of what is in your minds eye. My sketches are useless, but theyre good enough for me to recall my mental imagery later.
You are right of course but for people who don’t have 10 years to spare before even turning PC on, I would suggest small alternative - try to do all at once. It’s not necessary to have professional drawing skills and doctor-like understanding of anatomy to apply learnt skills on sculpting and to be Michelangelo to start digital sculpting. These things are interconnected and even more fun when learnt simultaneously. First works wouldn’t even resemble human (if human is a goal) but who cares? Learning to watch and see is the most important at the beginning. And combining 2d and 3d might be even more useful for adopting this skill than taking it step by step.
@@JasonH-i5tI learnt to like drawing after borrowing mom’s tablet and starting again (after many MANY previous efforts) digitally. Funny, now I find more comfortable just to use pencil and paper. Yes, sculpting was just more fun and required little manual dexterity so it could add a little “practical” skills into the equation. Still, even in this case it was much better and fun in digital world. And I was avoiding it for pretty long time.
This is awesome, you guys just put a lot of work into every project. And that's why the result look really great. Btw, how many hours it should take for an intermediate artist to get this kinda result?
Thank you! :) That's a great question, actually. You're probably talking around 70 hours or so. This realtime took 24 hours start to finish (the unedited recording, edited its 21h), but then the result was already made before. It would've taken us at least double without it having been done before, and we've done this for a while now.
Thanks for this. Great job and always learning something new. Also learning from the discussions on here too.😁 Def seems like a good overview into your masterclass. The quick post processing overview at the end was golden. That's one thing that I don't seem to spend alot of time on... due to having no time. 😆
At 16:53, after retopologizing, uv mapping, and reprojecting from high to low...why do they take the model back into zbrush to sculp again? Wont that just mess up the topology again?
Does the fibers used in zbrush/blender for hair and eyebrows cause performance issues in real-time rendering in modern game engines? Ive seen the magic that nanites in Unreal 5 can do, is this one of them? I would really like to just freely create hair for games without any restraints or workarounds like hair cards with UVs...
I’m a bit confused, when you do UV’s, you unwrap it in Blender first? On top of that, how does marking a seam affect anything when exporting the OBJ from Blender to ZBrush?
If you want all the project files and the video, there's a link to the full masterclass here: flippednormals.com/downloads/realistic-character-portrait-masterclass/
Wait so when you mark seam and export it as a OBJ into Blender, are you using the GoB add-on? Exporting it manually? Also, how does marking seam transfer into ZBrush???
Any tips for reprojecting* the mouth/lip area, where the lips connect/crash? I always get artifacts ("spikes") there. Is the best option to just mask out that area and then use the project brush to manually project the rest of the missing details?
hiya, I'm trying to follow the video but i gor lost at 13:20 the reprojecting hight poly onto low poly. What is the tool/ workflow to achieve that? can anyone help please? @flippednormals ?
Awesome! I am curious about the Mix node you plug into Subsurface Radius. You don't seem to be mixing anything so can't you use an RGB node instead? Or does the Mix have some special function?
In other series you used Arnold for rendering and SSS emulation, so what's the difference between those two, if I already used to Maya for rendering, should I switch to Blender?
We're actually working on a very similar video to this for Arnold. Personally I prefer Arnold over Cycles, and Xgen is much more developed for hair. Up up to you :)
The model was decimated to a few hunded k points so that the model worked in Painter. Scale was established early on in Blender and never changed. We used real world units in Blender and then simply exported OBJs between the software. Nothing really else to do there :)
@@FlippedNormals thank you, I see $500 for commercial, do you make that often? For 500 I can pay my lancer or make it myself and own the rights, I'm just curious if that's a normal commercial rate, because now I'm thinking of selling stock?
just not a fan of blender scupting, what i do, is sculpt and paint in zbrush, then i do terrain and HDRs in blender, then i export to photoshop for final piece, blender just needs way too many addons just to get started sculpting, and not that easy to use
Just realised I should stick to Stylized models lmaoooo. Because realistic models need proper texturing which needs the correct colour variation of skin and shades of colours
I wish Blender would get its ass in gear and make its sculpting as good as Zbrushes, or at least an on par second. Currently 3dcoat is the best second...not that people cant do amazing things in blenders sculpting, but it STRUGGLES with anything bigger than an Anime Mascot. Or Anime Girl, honestly
It's actually a very common misconception that Zremesher and auto retopo is better than doing it by hand. It works in some cases but it has tons of drawbacks. We have loads of videos on that:)
38:45 the subsurface radius number is not just an arbitrary number, it's from the Random Walk shading model. This is how it works in Arnold as well. This is physically accurate, as it's derived from how light penetrates skin, red light absorbs deepest, followed by green, and then blue. You can see this in Arnold too: R 1.0/G 0.33/B 0.2. This is the number recommended by the Arnold devs for the most realistic shading of skin. Plugging maps into these numbers is old school, same for spec/roughness maps(if you want to retain physical accuracy) The random walk shadding model only needs a displacement/bump map, as the reflection is driven by the microsurface detail. Of course, there's nothing stopping you plugging old school maps into the channels for artistic reasons.
What do you mean with plugging maps is old school? Using spec/rough maps for driving roughness? I don't think I understand what you mean
Forwarding this on to all the students I know, its a great resource to outline everything for them visually with a high quality asset :)
Quick tip on the skin shading:
You mentioned plugging the colour map in to subsurface and setting its weight to 1. Although this works, when you are going for realism it can be good to plug the colour in to diffuse AND SSS colour, that way the subsurface amount slider becomes a blend. Telling the shader how much light should reflect off the skin and how much should pass through the top layer. It really helps get a bit extra definition in your models to have a touch of diffuse :)
Brilliant, thanks Mike!
This is a solid tip. Comment pinned!
@@FlippedNormals Pinned ????
@@FlippedNormals I sec that , you guys provide materials everyone should know about , thank you for that
@@FlippedNormals not actually pinned. It didn't work.
Also, instead of adding mix color node set its blending to 0 and picking the color you like, its less confusing if you just add Input>RGB node.
Super cool to see a new video from you guys! I know you are busy and all but i bet this video will be a blast to watch. An awesome throwback to the full character workflow video that you did a few years ago 🙌
Thank you! We really want to make more videos like this in the future :D
@@FlippedNormals We miss you guys.
I’m super stoked, this course is on my Christmas list, and I feel like this is going to fill in a whole bunch of gaps in my knowledge! If not even for the simple reassurances of “it’s okay to add a few more details to the sculpt even if you’ve started texture painting.”
Post processing is such an important last step. Great video!
It really is! Every single render needs post work
amazingly helpful video for someone who's still pretty new to 3d. Thank you so much!!
Glad it was helpful!
A nice thing in Blener 4.0 is that they are bringing in AGX as the new default.
That was the one crit I had for the software, UVing - compared to the Maya UV editor its definitely lacking. With plugins like UV Packmaster, Textools and Zen UV however, the process is improved. I also wouldn't really be inclined to texture/sculpt in Blender as imo there are far better softwares for that (Painter/ZB.) However, everything else I've seen in Blender is impressive, i.e. the modeling/shader editor is so cool - looking forward to delving further into the software. Thanks for the breakdown
Hurray! New video!
Hope you enjoyed it!
So do you block it out with Dynamesh and or Sculptris Pro, then Zremesh it, project history and sculpt fine details with sub divisions? or can you make the whole thing with sculptris pro? it seems like when i use sculptris pro it's always really sketchy looking no matter what i do.
the best advice you'll ever get is to buy a sketch book. learn how to draw and draw a lot. take some life drawing classes and draw from life. once you get comfortable with drawing learn how to sculpt and sculpt a lot. these skills will make you a beast in these applications. at the end of the day zbrush, plasticity, maya, blender, and 3ds max are only extensions of your understanding of traditional skills.
Wise suggestion, Sir.
I wouldnt necessarily discourage someone from picking it up first. I hated drawing my whole life, my third sculpt ever was 10x better than anything ive ever drawn. Some people may (MAY) just take to sculpting in blender way better than drawing, just my personal anecdote. If i read this and took it at face value I might never have tried doing realistic sculpts, and I'd think i never could cuz my lack of interest in drawing.
No flame, just offering a perspective of someone who happened to take to blender sculpting in a way you'd never think could happen
BUT i'd still recommend a sketchbook, even if you only sketch enough to remind yourself of what is in your minds eye. My sketches are useless, but theyre good enough for me to recall my mental imagery later.
You are right of course but for people who don’t have 10 years to spare before even turning PC on, I would suggest small alternative - try to do all at once. It’s not necessary to have professional drawing skills and doctor-like understanding of anatomy to apply learnt skills on sculpting and to be Michelangelo to start digital sculpting. These things are interconnected and even more fun when learnt simultaneously.
First works wouldn’t even resemble human (if human is a goal) but who cares? Learning to watch and see is the most important at the beginning. And combining 2d and 3d might be even more useful for adopting this skill than taking it step by step.
@@JasonH-i5tI learnt to like drawing after borrowing mom’s tablet and starting again (after many MANY previous efforts) digitally. Funny, now I find more comfortable just to use pencil and paper. Yes, sculpting was just more fun and required little manual dexterity so it could add a little “practical” skills into the equation. Still, even in this case it was much better and fun in digital world. And I was avoiding it for pretty long time.
I don’t understand can you animate these? I’m just trying to figure out how to get sculpt details into my animation model
This is awesome, you guys just put a lot of work into every project. And that's why the result look really great.
Btw, how many hours it should take for an intermediate artist to get this kinda result?
Thank you! :)
That's a great question, actually. You're probably talking around 70 hours or so. This realtime took 24 hours start to finish (the unedited recording, edited its 21h), but then the result was already made before. It would've taken us at least double without it having been done before, and we've done this for a while now.
@@FlippedNormals Thanks a lot for the info. And love your videos ❤️❤️❤️.
Thanks for this. Great job and always learning something new. Also learning from the discussions on here too.😁 Def seems like a good overview into your masterclass. The quick post processing overview at the end was golden. That's one thing that I don't seem to spend alot of time on... due to having no time. 😆
7:50 Maybe it's not a perfect solution, but turning on "Backface Culling" helps a lot with visibility while doing retopology in "vanilla" Blender.
It helps a little bit, but it's still not a full solution unfortunately. Retopo Flow has a pretty good retopo shader though!
At 16:53, after retopologizing, uv mapping, and reprojecting from high to low...why do they take the model back into zbrush to sculp again? Wont that just mess up the topology again?
Ayy yall back :D
Hello, I love your work! I wanted to know if by doing your course, I could replace blender with maya or do you necessarily have to blender? thank you
Does the fibers used in zbrush/blender for hair and eyebrows cause performance issues in real-time rendering in modern game engines? Ive seen the magic that nanites in Unreal 5 can do, is this one of them?
I would really like to just freely create hair for games without any restraints or workarounds like hair cards with UVs...
You still very much need hair cards for games. Its far too heavy with 'real' hair currently
I’m a bit confused, when you do UV’s, you unwrap it in Blender first?
On top of that, how does marking a seam affect anything when exporting the OBJ from Blender to ZBrush?
I've wanted this topic so bad, wish you guys included accessories but I guess the same steps can be applied to each individual item
If you want all the project files and the video, there's a link to the full masterclass here: flippednormals.com/downloads/realistic-character-portrait-masterclass/
Wait so when you mark seam and export it as a OBJ into Blender, are you using the GoB add-on? Exporting it manually? Also, how does marking seam transfer into ZBrush???
Ah I was hoping we could see the UV unwrapping in Maya
I am just curious that it looks like normal maps weren't used for this character. Is only the displacement map the one that takes care of the details?
You mention UDIMs being much more prevalent now in areas other than film, does that include video games like in UE5?
Is there any poroblem if you make the model first on Zbrush and then take it to Blender to then retopologize and continue the process ?
Any tips for reprojecting* the mouth/lip area, where the lips connect/crash? I always get artifacts ("spikes") there. Is the best option to just mask out that area and then use the project brush to manually project the rest of the missing details?
The numbers sliders under 'Subsurface Radius', is that not just representing R-G-B colors?
Hi, can anyone recommend a good famous person to use as reference when starting with more realistic sculpts??
hiya, I'm trying to follow the video but i gor lost at 13:20 the reprojecting hight poly onto low poly. What is the tool/ workflow to achieve that? can anyone help please? @flippednormals ?
Awesome!
I am curious about the Mix node you plug into Subsurface Radius. You don't seem to be mixing anything so can't you use an RGB node instead? Or does the Mix have some special function?
awesome tut, as soon as u switched up eyebrows in blender he suddenly looked like *LIAM NESON* 😅
Accurate
what file format do you use to export from a software to another?
In other series you used Arnold for rendering and SSS emulation, so what's the difference between those two, if I already used to Maya for rendering, should I switch to Blender?
We're actually working on a very similar video to this for Arnold. Personally I prefer Arnold over Cycles, and Xgen is much more developed for hair. Up up to you :)
@@FlippedNormals cool, thx
Nice!!!but how do you work in photoshop after rendering in agx?
You just export as as PNG with the LUT baked into it :)
@@FlippedNormals can I did same thing with aces?
You should add more blur to the eyebrows they look too solid. Also I preferred the warmer look.
Amazing
hello me Henning,what is the difference between this class and the one up on sale in Flipped normals
The video here is a very very short version of the whole class. The one for sale is around 21 hours long, showing the whole process all in realtime :)
Love the content
Thank you!
I have a question. Did you get 64kk poly into painter directly from Zbrush? How do you work with scale between blender and Zbrush?
The model was decimated to a few hunded k points so that the model worked in Painter.
Scale was established early on in Blender and never changed. We used real world units in Blender and then simply exported OBJs between the software. Nothing really else to do there :)
@@FlippedNormals Thank you for answer, establishing scale in Blender seems like easiest way
How do you do chromatic aberration in ps?
Where is that eye kit for sale. Your site is dropdown sub menu background isn't filling all the options so the links are mixing on chrome?
The Eye Kit is available here:
flippednormals.com/downloads/flippednormals-eye-kit/
@@FlippedNormals thank you, I see $500 for commercial, do you make that often? For 500 I can pay my lancer or make it myself and own the rights, I'm just curious if that's a normal commercial rate, because now I'm thinking of selling stock?
just not a fan of blender scupting, what i do, is sculpt and paint in zbrush, then i do terrain and HDRs in blender, then i export to photoshop for final piece, blender just needs way too many addons just to get started sculpting, and not that easy to use
Wasn't this on flipped normals? You guys giving a section away of it for free now?
We usually always release 1 chapter for free from our courses so people can get a sense of how its being taught
How would make animation of the transformation from normal face to devil face?
its too expensive for my situation to buy your course .
Dont cut in pole areas
Just realised I should stick to Stylized models lmaoooo. Because realistic models need proper texturing which needs the correct colour variation of skin and shades of colours
I wish Blender would get its ass in gear and make its sculpting as good as Zbrushes, or at least an on par second. Currently 3dcoat is the best second...not that people cant do amazing things in blenders sculpting, but it STRUGGLES with anything bigger than an Anime Mascot. Or Anime Girl, honestly
윤,,?
Poor old Dara O'Brien
My god... never realized that before.
>”how to create a full character in 3d”
Proceeds to creating a bust of a character in 3d
It’s the full pipeline though ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ everything here is applicable to modeling the rest of the body
Why did you sculpt the present Korean president? lol
Pᵣₒmₒˢᵐ
a thousand dollars for commercial license?🤨 who the fuck needs to use it commercialy...
I'm sorry but a bust isn't a full character.
Stand with Ukraine 🇺🇦🇺🇦🇺🇦
You are wasting a lot of time remeshing that way when you can just create polygroups and use Zremesher
It's actually a very common misconception that Zremesher and auto retopo is better than doing it by hand. It works in some cases but it has tons of drawbacks. We have loads of videos on that:)