Adding the Texture

It was finally time to take the checked pattern and turn into something that looks vaguely humanoid

With the unwrapped UVW map we had before, I made a few alterations to it for Photoshop. The main thing is that I scaled it so that it fit cleanly within the bitmap pattern (Inside the blue box). The second part was to alter the aspect ratio (To get the ideal surface to work on). The tutorial stretched it 2 : 1 (Length - height respectively), but that seemed too stretched for my mask. As I would be using snippets of my face, the more that the centre looked 'normal', the better for me. So personally, I found that a ratio of 3 : 2 worked better (The length is x1.5 the height). Taking this and saving it as a jpeg ('Render UVW Template' and click the disc icon), this was sent to photoshop for working on.

What we needed for the guide was the entire gridlines on the top-most layer, but nothing else (That way, you can see through the black areas as you added more, but the top guidelines would still remain visible and on top. Opening the image guide in Photoshop, select the entire image it and copy (Ctrl + A, then either select 'copy' or hit Ctrl + C). Then create a new layer and fill it with a nice bold colour (Preferably one that doesn't come up on your face, such as blue). Then, with the 'blue' layer selected, click the 'Quick Mask' Button on the left-hand set of tools (It's a small box with a circle in near the colour selector). With this enabled, paste the image onto the layer. It should be all pinkish red with blue lines (That's good!). With this, disable 'quick mask' mode and you should have the lines all selected. Now keeping them selected, go over to the bottom right and click 'Add Layer Mask'. This should take your selection and convert it into a mask. And there we go! One guide for the face modelling. Then, to make a space for the face, create a few new layers in between the map and the guide.

Creating the face is then simply a case of chopping and pasting bits of your face onto the document. Every time you save, be sure to disable the 'guide' layer (Otherwise your face and the detail will be covered in blue lines). I used to 2 reference photos (The ones used for the topology) to provide the necessary details. To begin with, I started work with the portrait photo, and selecting the desired area with the lasso, simply dragged the selection out of the original photo and into the map. It's basically like a jig-saw or collage. Luckily, the map was the right shape (The 3 : 2 ratio) so that I barely had to tweak any of the sections I imported. They were all roughly the correct shape and size, which really made life a lot easier

Bit by bit, more was added to the face. The majority of the front was complete, and it was time to start using the profile reference to work in the hair and side burns (What little I have...). It's very rough, and doesn't need to look good yet. Even if the components don't match in tone or obviously overlap, it's fine and will get taken care of later. The vital point here is to get all the essential pieces together in roughly the right place. The 'Warp' tool is also highly valuable here. If you have gaps or slightly off-centre pieces, you can use the warp tool to pull and tweak them, in order to help them fill some gaps.

This is a snap of the map about halfway through, and as you can see, it doesn't need to be neat. It's basically like those old collages you did at school where you had to cut out bits of photographs and stick them together to make a face (Was I the only one who did that?). For the majority of it, you can pretty much see the portrait references in the centre, with the hair and cheeks of the profile shots on the flanks

The next main step was to take care of the ears. Luckily, the entire inner ear shape fit perfectly on the map (albeit after a 90 degree rotation clockwise), and a few tweaks meant that the main part of it was showing. From here, I was pretty much complete with the cutting-and-sticking, and was ready to start fine-tuning and cleaning it up.

This is what the finished map looks like. The main thing to do when happy with the outcome is to merge all the layers together (Except the guide and lower map of course) and begin to clean up. The 'patch' and 'clone' tools were invaluable here and saved a massive amount of time. The 'clone' stamp is the best for filling gaps. Selecting an area to work from, it paints a copy where you desire, allowing you to use parts of the skin to fill gaps in the map (For example, there were gaps around the temples. Using the skin as a guide for the clone stamp, I was able to plug this gap). However, for life-saving use, the prize goes to the 'Patch' tool. I don't know how it does it, but using an area as a guide (much like the clone stamp), it tries to blend the selected area as smoothly as it can. Rough 'connecting' edges on the map can easily be dealt with a patch tool on the edges. Luckily, I've used photoshop quite a lot, so this part didn't take long to do at all...

And here's what it looks like applied! I was very happy to see this result. Not only does it look pretty good, but it also looks less like Richard O'Brien. Of course, something was missing!

That's more like it! The eye texture was found off Google. It was, however, the wrong colour and the pupil was too small. So a bit of messing around with the Hue/Saturation and colour balance gave it a more brown tint (My eyes are really crazy... they're a constantly changing blend of brown and green, with the odd hint of dusty blue around the pupils), and a larger paint brush allowed a clean pupil to be placed in the centre. Nearly there...