silver

@Anthony Owen - yes, that's exactly what I'm using. Although the shot will be only a few seconds long... @spiralstair - thanks, yes the flickering and lens flar is in post. i try to cheat early ;)

Thank you, Erick and Digitvision! Here is an update on the interior model

Gorgeous stuff!

Here's a link showing the continuous refinement of the shot as I go along - Due to my workflow I have to work this way with small increments. C&C as you like :) I update every couple of days thanks to the new replace video function in Vimeo... very useful... Here are some others ...

Here is a WIP (no comp, brute force low quality render) C&C very welcome. If anybody is interested I can put the animated versions online.

Thank you Dan! The combined approach with a fading thickness map and an irregular polygonal selection seems to work best. The density would add even more realism, but I find it too difficult to fine-tune. But the result is much better now! I also used a separate "hair-line" layer with very thin hair to make a better transition. Adding another one connecting the face even more would be great, but I can't generate convincing Octane-blond fine hair atm.

Thanks a lot to both of you - for the encouragement and the tips about the hairline! I will definitively implement this when I fix up this character (hopefully in my timeslot tomorrow) In the meantime I've had a quick stab at textures with Substance Painter... that was fun! :)

Here is my newest head. I studied a lot of the references I was pointed to and some additional ones. I really tried to get into the Hair module this time and gave the bust something like a haircut. It's far from perfect, but it looks like a start. Here are the main issues I ran in (maybe somebody has solutions) Hair density maps are somewhat hard to control: The "levels" should probably indicate how fast the hair thins out, which I think is very important for the hairline - I didn't found it working very intuitively up to now, but I might be doing something wrong. Bake sculpting still doesnt make me happy. I get a lot of weird small mistakes around the eye sockets, where the model AND the sculpt is quite detailed. The irregular baking is also why the skin structure on the forehead is too low-res Octane only handles intensity centered displacement? Maybe I could get much better quality if it would recognize the other output modes of the baking process. Maybe I'll take this model into Substance Painter to get some normals and a texture painted. I've tried to warm up to Bodypaint, but I just can't seem to get a good workflow going. C&C welcome!! I probably am going to keep this thread as I don't want to clutter the forum with my heads :)

thanks a lot! I've been studying your references and links, very very helpful!!!! I think my next model will have much better anatomical features, I'm still fighting with sculpt baking (for Octane) and hair issues, but I hope to post it soon! thanks again for all the encouragement!

Here is my latest effort - still all in C4D (approx 10h of which 4 were spent with technical issues). Brows are still difficult to do nicely... Biggest improvement: Focused on better anatomy (thanks to Dan for pointers) and watched some Ryan Kingsley stuff. Slightly better eyes. Texture was slapped on, not painted. Ears are very rudimentary... Questions: 1. How can I make hair (stubble) stick to the surface of a displaced/baked sculpt? 2. Many problems when baking sculpt. Tried to change the UV layout after starting to sculpt, but baking ignored it... 3. A good workflow from Sculpting -> Octane, including displacement/normals. My results are better, but still way worse than the internal renderer with the same maps. If you have any idea about C&C welcome! (added

Thanks again for the feedback from everyone - Dan did a beautiful correction pass, which I'd like to share as a GIF anim. It gave me a lot of new ideas for improvement and I'm sure it can be of help to others too who are trying to model a human face! @anthony: Thanks for your suggestion. My problem is rather specific - I can't seem to get sculpt bakes from C4D to look good in Octane. Displacement sort of works, but normal maps just look really funky in Octane. Here's a little fun I had (it's the unchanged model, I was just having a test run with blendshapes)

I've been busy modeling a new head (took my approx 10 hours from nothing). I've tried to follow the advice that the other forum members have given me - ie. focus on anatomy (I can already name some of the bones ;) ), overall "likeability", bony landmarks and so on. Everything was done in C4D - I did a little touchup with Photoshop, adding a tint of red to the lips and a hint of makeup around the eyes. I know it's still far from perfect and I am also struggling with the baking process in the C4D Sculpting (always errors here and there). Eyebrows ie are a pain to paint onto the mesh. But my biggest problem seems that I can't get an undistorted UV Layout going within C4D doing all the relaxing, etc. Is there an alternative to Headus? It's quite expensive and if I don't have to... maybe I'm just doing something completely wrong. Also - does anybody have any hints on the best workflow with Octane v3? Any C&C very welcome!!!

@Rectro: I limit myself to 2 hours mainly because I don't have much more time per day to work on my modeling. I've just started working on a semi-animated film that requires quite a bit of head modeling and animation. (And I'll be looking for interested head mod specialists :) )

THANKS to all of you for the great and detailed feedback you have given! It's a lot of input and it will definitively keep me busy for a while :) @Rectro: Thank you very much for your kind offer to draw over my pic - at this moment I don't feel confident enough to subject it to one yet - Actually, I can immediately spot the points you have made in your post). But for my next approach, where I hopefully have incorporated all inputs, I'd be very happy to ask for a correction! As for the ears, yes, I didn't model them - I try to stick to my 2 hour limit each day, and ears are not (yet) that important for general likeness. Also, as an exercise, I only use a single reference photo with the intention of "learning to model what I see". So yes, I hid those ears ;) @grain: Thanks for your thumbs up! Just for fun - here is the picture where I was four weeks ago (it's my first 2h session ;) ) - and the wireframe model (3x2h from ground up). I didn't "perfect" it, because of my 2h limit, so I know there are many n-gons especially around the sides, back and neck.

Four weeks ago, I started practicing 2h daily on head modeling (low-poly modeling). This is a result after this time - It's all low-poly modelled, with some sculpting - the only software used was C4d (and some Photoshop for the final pic) - There are some problems with baking and the lips, but I left that in as a "happy accident". I still find hair very very hard to do convincingly, especially eyebrows. Next up are rigging and other things. C&C very welcome. Where should I focus on? Any good pointers on head modeling/uv layout/sculpting?