Walter Kovacs/Rorschach 3D Portrait

Likeness and Face Sculpting

Since this project started several months ago as a learning practice for likeness and facial sculpting, in the beginning my main focus was on getting my model as close as possible to Jackie Earle Haley, the actor that played Rorschach in the 2009 movie Watchmen. 

The sculpting was done entirely in Zbrush using the Geometry HD workflow, which allowed me to reach a pore-level detail, since the model reached around 58 million polygons. All the brushes were created in Zbrush, no external alpha/brush pack was used, also as a practice to push myself into making my own set specifically for my needs.

The head base mesh was retopologized and UV unwrapped in Maya, then brought back to Zbrush before starting the sculpting and painting process. Since the head UVs cover the most part of a single UDIM, all the maps were exported at a resolution of 8k. 

Grooming

All the grooms were done in Maya using a mix of xgen core and interactive, according to the level of control I needed.

Clothing

The body base mesh I used was purchased from 3D Scan Store, modified in Zbrush to better fit the character height and muscle structure, brought into Mixamo for a quick auto rigging and posed in Maya. I then exported the animation in alembic to be used in Marvelous Designer as an avatar.

Once created, the clothes were retopologized and UV unwrapped in Maya, then imported into Zbrush to refine the shape and add more details. 

Shading and Rendering

The character was rendered in Maya using Arnold. The skin shader is quite simple, the only maps used are the subsurface color, the specular/coat and the displacement, all of which were painted and sculpted by hand in Zbrush. 

For the full body render I used an HDRI and a 3 point light setup for the closeup, since I wanted to give it a more cinematic look and more contrast.

The textures for the garment were done exclusively in Substance Designer, which gave me the freedom to experiment with several patterns and create ones that best fit the materials from the references. The texturing of the garment was then integrated with the fuzz made in xgen.

The wooden board and the shoes were modeled in Zbrush and retopologized and UV mapped in Maya, then textured using materials created in Substance Designer.