Hello and welcome to this tutorial series on creating a realistic head in Blender 2.6!
This is a complete tutorial series explaining the creation of a realistic human portrait with Blender. The entire process will be covered from base mesh modeling, detail sculpting, texture painting, hair growing and styling, sub-surface scatter shading, and compositing. Some of the more time-consuming tasks will be time-lapses with commentary like modeling, sculpting, and texture painting; the other parts will be mostly real-time.
Part 6 is all about the eyes which are paramount in achieving a believable result. From modeling to texturing-painting to shading, we’ll create realistic eyes by artistically interpreting human eyeball anatomy. Some of the texture is sourced from Google and some hand-painted in Blender/Photoshop. Blender Internal is utilized for rendering. Textures and images are packed into the .blender file.
DISCLAIMER: We cannot redistribute these references, due to the license, but we can use them under Fair Use laws for educational purposes. They’re not available for commercial use, though.
Music: “So Kill Me” by Minimal Art (http://ccmixter.org/files/minimal_art/8652) and “Grapescape” by Grapes (http://ccmixter.org/files/grapes/12748)
Note: This series has been previously available on Kent’s Vimeo channel but he has kindly permitted us to repost them here in order to reach a greater audience. All parts will be available on Blender Cookie very soon, while part 05 will be available exclusively on Blender Cookie.
wuhu first commenting this^^
First?
watching this now
looks grat thx jast got broad band can start downloading same tutorials now
Kent, it’s uncanny. Stellar work.
really yellow eyes that’s for cat my friend :/ anyway thanks for the tutorial really enjoyed it
Googling and grabing a random eye photo brings up a ton of issues with respect to copyright.
Note the disclaimer
WoW…… im pretty sure next will be hair…animation
Thanks for the GREAT series.
I’m planning a clothing tutorial next, then hair, and then final lighting. You’re very welcome
jsut a little tip , in the object section under Display you can check transparency for better vesualisation (thats my oppinion, for seeing pupils they are important in animation ) , by the way u can hit “J” key to change render slots on the fly
ps : thanks for the infos , I rarly find tuts at this quality , and free !!
Indeed good tip! One I should have mentioned. The J key for switching between render slots is new to me – thanks! That’s much more convenient.
I’m really glad you’re enjoying them! Thanks for watching
I have a question. When you add a new image in the UV window, what’s the point of turning the alpha off? What happens if you don’t?
Do you mean the “Color and Alpha” toggle that shows the checker in the background?
No I mean when you originally add a new image in the UV window. And it says Alpha, UV test grid, and 32-bit float. What does turning off the default alpha check mark do? And does that correlate to the three little buttons you’re talking about? with the checkerboard?
Oh I see – I assumed it created an new image without an alpha channel (by unchecking “alpha”). I don’t think it’s a big deal whether you check or uncheck it. If anybody else has any insight on this let us know.
Maybe you should have used Gimp instead of Photoshop, since you are using blender, which is an open source software.
My first taste of GIMP was bitter and I haven’t mustered the will power to make the transition since…It’s on the to-do list though
How long did it take you to finish this WHOLE Project???? Great Job by the way
The head in this series is being created as we go, so it’s not finished yet. The stylized old man pictured at the beginning of each part was the proof-of-concept for the series and he took about 2 months.
Thanks for watching!
where I can download the base files?
plis
The source files are only available to Citizens (Check out the 3rd feature on this page: http://cgcookie.com/welcome-to-the-cg-cookie-network/)
Thanks
Excellent series.
Just out of curiosity why did you go back to blender to paint the red veins? Wouldn’t it be faster to cut, paste, alter, autocomplete real one’s? I know you said for artistically placing them but you could do that in PS too.
I have learned a ton from you. Thanks again.
I’m not really sure why I wanted to paint them in Blender..I guess it’s more fun to paint the veins there rather than copy and paste them in PS. But I have copied and pasted them in the past. It’s up to you really
Thank you for the encouraging words – I’m thrilled that you’re learning from the series!
This is insane, really awesome tutorial.
It’s Oculus Orbus!! Lol Does anyone else remember Madballs? A little green ooze and some stitches and you’ve nailed him. I’ve been meaning to do a model of Horn Head for a while now. I thought about using his likeness in the pumpkin carving contest. Excellent work, by the way, Kent! I’ve really enjoyed your full tuts. Personally, I love the photoshop lesson integration since I’m fairly unfamiliar with it’s full potential. I’ll have to translate it to GIMP later. This eye looks great in stills. I’ve had a lot of problems animating recessed irises though. The lids are always intersecting the lens, requiring lots of constraint and shape work. And the pupils seem to disappear when viewed from near the side. What is the best eye shape for animation?
Haha I am unfortunately unfamiliar with Madballs
I’ve actually did some tests of the eye from multiple angles while making this video – perhaps I’ll post another turntable of it soon. In my experience, the refraction of the outter shell (I call it “cornea” in the vid) prevents the pupil from disappearing when viewing it at an angle. So I use this setup for animation as well..you could maybe try a flat iris instead of concave but you’ll probably loose the subtle shadow that I find appealing.
Thanks for watching!
It seems like I remember them using something similar in Incredibles too. I’ll have to give it another go sometime soon. I was thinking about that refraction thing right after I posted lol. I get sick of posting second comments to correct my goofs, hehe. I guess I meant more off center than normal rather than disappearing altogether. It was giving one of my characters a rather down-synish look and I had shadow problems with the cornea/eyelids to boot. maybe I just had the IOR set wrong. I finally just went with totally spherical with a micro-thin cornea since it was cartoonish and it solved all my probs. I’m still not sure if I’m ready to animate photo-real;) By the way, that Steve Carrell ani was pretty dang nice! Kinda creepy how good it looked, haha.
Oh I see what you mean. Hmm..my pupil shifts a bit due to the refraction but not enough to bump the realism I don’t think..checking the IOR is a good idea methinks.
“Steve Carrell ani was pretty dang nice! Kinda creepy how good it looked, haha.”
I appreciate that sir! I’ve received pretty mixed reactions from it lol..my animation skills could probably use some leveling-up, but thanks!
The background music actually has a positive influence on the tutorial itself great job! Same with the eye ofcourse, it looks great!
Fantastic series, really love it. Just one little remark on the download time of the resource file. I have broadband/very fast internet but it took me more than an hour!?
Kent, I’m actually interested in buying a Wacom Tablet as well. Based on the work you’ve been able to do with it and the praise it has received from other artists, I want to get one as well. Can you let me know what type of Wacom Bamboo Tablet you got? On Google Shopping/Amazon, there’s a Connect Tablet, a Capture Tablet, and a Create Tablet. What did you specifically get? Thanks.
I think the tablets you mentioned are all Wacom models…but they all looked the same to me (same price, same pictures) so either of them is a good choice methinks. Wacom is the biggest name in tablets and I have what I think is their lowest-end option: An older model Bamboo. It’s a small drawing surface but gets the job done – I recommend it as a first tablet at $100.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/B005HGBEZ2/ref=dp_olp_new_map?ie=UTF8&condition=new
If you’re artistic and use the computer for any digital art, a tablet is a must IMO. Thanks for watching!
Cool! That’s definitely in a good price range! Do you know if it works with a Mac though? I assume so right?
Wacom tablets work flawlessly on a Mac
They have a complete driver and System Preferences pane
oops. meant to post that here
can you tell me what are you talking about…..
What do you mean? about the wacom bamboo tablets?
Excellent! Looking forward to getting one soon! Thanks guys
This is a Great series, I take my hat off though I know I have to really learn all the ins and outs of the interface before I come close to 1/10th of your mastery. Thank you
Hi Admin, can you upload this series in YouTube?
why!to snatch (download)that video,,,,hey i have seen your site are you realy operating from within India than what about me….
Yes iam from india.
do you know why any one had not submitted any images in series i think its because you had speeded some previous tutorials…K not the perfect reason but it apparently worked with me………
WOW, dude you are awesome! Love your style!
I hope you do more tutorials for Blendercookie.
Thanks! I don’t want to speak for BC, but our relationship is progressing. We’re not moving in together or anything yet, but I like to think it’s serious
Mister “Clark” Kent Trammell I presume ?
Ha! I’m certainly not super. But I don’t mind that connection
I love that this tutorial is for Blender Internal, hoo-ray!
BI has a lot to offer right?! The little render engine that could/can!
Brilliant!
Thanks for this series, I’m creating a portrait and I’ve up to the point to add hair. Keep in mind we used area lights from the getgo, with no buffer shadows, and now the particle hair looks horrible with the area lights. I switched to spots with buffer shadows, hair looks good but the skin shader looks like plastic, please address these issues, I don’t want to lose the quality we achieved with the skin shader. Thanks Ronboy
Nice graphics….
awesome tutorial Kent
thank u so much
also waiting for the next part
i really love this tutorials..!!!!! i can’t wait for the next one…!!!
How come when I rendered my head in cycles,nothing turned out.
Cycles doesn’t automatically convert all the Blender Internal material settings…at least not currently. You’ll have to do significant tweaking to the Cycles version of the shaders.
why when out get out of camera view in rendered view port mode, some crackles appear on my head
I’m not sure what you mean..maybe post an image in the “user submitted images” section of this page.
I need some help D:
here is my problem – http://i49.tinypic.com/1z6buo.jpg
That is just the iris texture on the inner surface.
I disabled the cornea because that was making it worse and had the same problems.
I’ve rebuilt the eyes 3 times now to the smallest detail following the video and I end up with this checker distortion every time.
there are no mirror, reflections or anything like that enabled on the materiel.
So bumbed out about this
Hi there,
It looks likes the normals on your eye meshes are messed up. To fix this simply select the whole mesh in Edit Mode and press CTRL + N. This will ensure all faces are pointing the same direction.
I hope that helps!
Jonathan
Thanks Jonathan, but only a small improvement in the clarity, still allot of noise.
Go ahead and try removing doubles as well by selecting everything and pressing W > Remove Doubles.
Last question I promise haha. I’m working on a slightly unrelated project to the portrait of a person, but rather a human skull. I plan to use a similar workflow to these tutorials. What I have is a sculpted skull with no materials. My question is, when I finish sculpting, bake out a displacement map, make my materials, spec maps and bump maps, should I keep the multi-res modifier on the model? Or should I delete it to conserve render times and solely use the displacement map as a normal map? I only say this because I haven’t seen you delete the multi-res modifier yet and I’m wondering if you plan to, or if you plan to apply it or what. Thank you again.
No problem at all – keep the questions coming if you have them!
For this head I’ll be keeping the multires modifier on the mesh throughout. Baking sculpting data to a displacement map has traditionally been the only way to get sculpted detail outside of the sculpting package and renderable in a legitimate render engine (ie zbrush to maya). The problem with this a displacement map is it’s simply and approximation of the sculpted detail. I’ll go so far to say it’s impossible to get a 1-for-
whoops…hit a key by accident
anyway, it’s impossible to get a 1-for-1 copy of your sculpted detail with a displacement map bake. With Blender, we have the opportunity to render the actual sculpt since it exists in a renderable 3d package.
As far as render time saving, if I’m going to render a displacement map with adequate detail my mesh needs to be subdivided as many times as the multires anyway. At that point my mesh has just as many faces as the multires modifier, resulting in similar render times. Then my options are to render a dense mesh with approximated detail via displacement map, or render the raw sculpted detail.
Sorry for the LONG explanation..it’s a good question. Thanks for asking!
Thank you! That helped a lot. So what you’re saying is that the displacement map you made was just to have the sculpted detail be present in the node setups for the spec materials and what not, instead of a geometry displacing map that replaces the multires, which like you said, would require a denser mesh. So it sounds like both can cause decently long render times, it’s just a choice between how long.
Exactly, the displacement map was baked out for texture purposes instead of geometric.
It’s true that the render times are similar, but for me it’s not so much a choice of “how long?” but rather “which method showcases my detail more accurately?” And at the end of the day when my 2.5 mil multires mesh with 3 sss material components renders in 12 minutes, I’m actually quite happy with the performance. And I’m typically a stickler for “practical” render times
I have a question. When I check receive transparent on my sss_eye_whites material my render times go from 45 seconds to a over 7 min. Is this normal? In your video it looks like it adds significantly less time. I can’t imagine that one transparent material would increase render times by this much. I am hoping that I just missed something because with this much extra render time I don’t think Ill ever get this done. By the way thanks for the tutorials they are fantastic!
Oh my god it has been rendering since I posted that last comment and it hasn’t even finished the SSS passes. Please tell me that there is a way to fix this. I don’t think that my machine is the problem. It is a brand new dual core iMac.
Hi Moxie,
your sss should not take that long to render, check your resolution and perhaps create a material with just your sss, it could be some other setting slowing it down.
-Alex