3d Face Tutorial

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A new breed of 3D artist is taking digital portraiture beyond the real in search of a different kind of perfection. BY OLIVIER PONSONNET In this special showcase, one artist reveals the creative decisions that underpin his work hen I create a portrait, I don’t just use

the idea of putting a monkey on the character’s shoulder, but

photo-reference from one or two faces,

finally decided to concentrate more on her face instead.

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instead I try to pick out elements that I find beautiful, such as a particular

mouth or eye shape. I’m not looking to create perfect

version of female beauty. I then said to myself, “OK, let’s try

real models. Once I get a clean mesh with correct

to do something better, something more beautiful.”

proportions, I prefer to follow my feelings and intuition, ● Olivier Ponsonnet is a 3D artist at Asobo Studio, where he specialises in lighting and rendering work for video games http://re1v.free.fr

I also get my motivation from other artists. I saw a great picture by a Korean artist which really captured a particular

trying to make something appealing. With the picture to the right, ‘Moon Key’, I tried to give the

The idea here was to create a mixed-race portrait, so I started with darker skin tones, with touches of green and orange. That’s why the blue lighting naturally came up. This

character’s face charm. I wasn’t aiming for extreme realism.

colour offers a good contrast with the skin tones and

This kind of semi-realistic rendering is not a goal in itself, but

highlights it perfectly. I also decided to add more details to

a means to give credibility to the character. I try to make my

the character by giving her accessories. I wanted to get

characters believable and bring them closer to the spectator,

something light – almost ethereal – always with this idea

but I don’t want them to be too realistic – I’m after something

of the moon and dreams in my mind. So I attached a special

unusual and more aesthetic than a real human face.

necklace, with this ‘moon key’ on it. The name came from the

This picture is a completely personal piece of work in

discarded monkey idea, but also from this soft, blue and light

which my aim was mainly aesthetic. I tried to express beauty

aspect I wanted to give to this character, with the blue tones

through the facial features of the Moon Key character. To

of the lighting reminiscent of moonlight.

achieve this goal, I tried to mix several ethnicities in her face.

Most of the work here is done in 3ds Max. In Photoshop,

With ‘Moon Key’, I mixed a Caucasian face with an African

I only apply a colour-correction filter, nothing more. No details

face, which resulted in this sort of Indian face. I toyed with

are added in postproduction.

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Olivier Ponsonnet | TUTORIALS

MOON KEY | Making the most of lighting

Luminous skin For the skin, I’ve used the ‘classic’ maps – diffuse, specular and bump – with a fast skin shader, simulating light spreading through the skin to make it look softer and smoother. Due to the ethnic mix, the diffuse colour map is darker than the ones I usually use, so most of the light is produced by the specular. It’s lighter and more glossy than those I’d use for a Caucasian person.

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Lighting scheme All the lights used in this picture are area lights, simulating the lights used by photographers: you get softer shadows and smoother lighting. There’s one key light in the upper right, in front of the character, with a neutral colour. There’s a blue rim light on the left, used to get specular on the face, to highlight its shape. And there’s a huge frontal light, spreading a fill light over the character.

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TUTORIALS | Olivier Ponsonnet

CHRYSOPALE | Creating realistic textures

Convincing eye make-up To get the glittering effect on the make-up, I use a strong and glossy specular with a noisy speckled specular map on this part. The glittering on the cheeks underneath is due to a strong specular, used to counterbalance the diffuse map. For the purple eye make-up, I also add a slight bloom around the eyes, and this was painted on the diffuse map.

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Realistic skin Every single map contributes to making the skin texture realistic. The diffuse channel is important to add colour variations and irregularities, but it’s the bump that creates the small details, especially pores on the face. That’s why I usually work with a bump map that’s twice the resolution of the diffuse or specular map. The maps are hand-painted with a graphic tablet, and are not based on photographs.

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EVERY SINGLE MAP CONTRIBUTES TO MAKING THE SKIN TEXTURE REALISTIC 050 | 3D WORLD May 2007

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Olivier Ponsonnet | TUTORIALS

SHADE | Enhancing your portrait through details

Rendering the eyes The eye is such a special part that I usually model each one with two concentric spheres. The first sphere, which is slightly larger, is used to add sparkle: you’ve got to make this mesh fully transparent and reflect the environment – ideally an HDR map with strong light spots or, more basically, a simple, self-illuminated white sphere only visible through reflection. The inner sphere (fully opaque, with your diffuse colour map applied) should look smooth, almost blending with the rest of the eye area. You can achieve this by using a sub-surface scattering shader. With this kind of material, the light that spreads over or through the skin will contribute to the eye lighting, and vice versa.

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Contrasting the skin against clothes To help differentiate the skin and materials like cloth and jewellery, I try to keep something really organic on one side, with the skin maps and their random irregularities; and on the other side, I make more symmetrybased textures for the costume. The costume colours are also really different from the skin tones: in ‘Moon Key’, the jewellery and cloth are cold with blue and purple colours, whereas the skin tones are warmer. Here, it’s a more straightforward light and dark contrast. I always try to get this contrast to highlight my characters inside the picture.

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I ALWAYS TRY TO GET CONTRAST TO HIGHLIGHT MY CHARACTERS INSIDE THE PICTURE May 2007 3D WORLD | 051

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