Evan T - Student Portfolio 2024

MAGNETO

This is my one of my last student project at The One Academy. I decided to recreate a Digi Double of Magneto from the X-MEN franchise, as portrayed by Sir Ian McKellen. The fascinating eye expression is a core defining essence of any character he portrays, so it was fun trying to capturing that :)

                                                                           Turntable.mp4

I begin by studying the shapes and planes relation of the actor's face, try to understand the characteristics and subtle nuances that defines the actor's likeness

Zbrush lineups

While sculpting the wrinkles of the face, I tried to be as accurate as I could to the reference photo. 

                                                          Wrinkles in Zbrush Viewport 

Iris was fully hand sculpted for the magneto project. I made sure to accentuate the  separation between the pupillary and ciliary zones on the stroma iris to prevent any SSS from eradicating the form, because SSS is a detail killer :)

                                                                      Final sculpt of the iris

My eye setup was inspired by the talented Michael Cauchi. It includes a cornea with appropriate central corneal thickness, the presence of aqueous humor (fluid), a limbal ring for the blending at the limbal transition, the very significant stroma iris geometry, and the lens. Additionally, I've incorporated the pupillary ruff structure, further enhancing the realism of the eye model.

Eye setup in maya viewport, wireframe shown on transparent mesh for visualization purposes

Composition, I decided to use needles as my primary leading lines to guide the viewer's attention towards the face. Additionally, designing the silhouette and edges to accompany the effect of the needle placed in the scene, which directs the attention to the face even stronger. The shadow shapes were designed as well via the use of light blockers in arnold

                                                                          Aov render passes

Assessing the skin under various lighting conditions, to make sure the skin reads as it should

Albedo was downsized to 8k with the help of Mari, cleaned up the XYZ diffuse map by hand and removed unwanted wrinkles in XYZ by erasing it with a mid value of 0.5

By studying the vascular structure of the face, I was able to incorporate veinage into the sculpt and subsurface radius, doing everything I can to push for the next level of realism

                                                                 Maya viewport Xgen guides

Ian

For this project, my aim was to enhance the skin shader and achieve an even higher level of realism. To accomplish this, I introduced microdisplacement into the skin shader, breaking down the specularity subtly to each individual pore, resulting in a skin texture that resembles realism even closer :)

                                                                  Close up (Zoom for details)

Lookdev process was calibrated carefully with XYZ's provided HDRI and then used photographer Daniel Boschung and Martin Schoeller's lighting setup to finalize the lookdev process 

Stress tests on the skin under various HDRI conditions to identify any potential issues with the skin shader

The final skin shader setup was achieved through procedural workflow iterations within Arnold, eliminating the need for exporting maps back and forth between texture and rendering software

Quad Turbo Engine

Bugatti's W16 quad-turbo setup, with 16 cylinders in the engine head it delivers substantial horsepower

All modelled in under 6 weeks, textured in 2, 8 total weeks was used for this project

Utilized Cave Academy's studio lighting environment to check my textures with physically based lighting

Thanks for looking!