If you've followed our articles for a while, the names Frank Tzeng and Yibing Jiang will probably sound familiar.
Tzeng is Uncharted 4: A Thief's End's Lead Character Artist, and recently he's also helping out with Naughty Dog's mysterious unannounced AAA game. we previously featured his amazing art twice, here and here.
Yibing Jiang works on Uncharted 4 as a Senior Shading Artist, and her shaders turned the game's reveal at PlayStation Experience into a seriously spectacular show.
The two talented artists collaborated in a new project that was just published, and it's absolutely impressive: an ultra-realistic CG render of popular actor Robert Downey Jr.
Before you head at the bottom of the page to do some obligatory drooling while checking out Downey Jr's handsome features recreated in perfect 3D, you can read what both Tzeng and Jiang wrote about the project in their respective ArtStation profiles.
Me and my friend Yibing Jiang just finished a collaboration project together, so we would like to share with you guys here!
My name is Frank Tzeng, currently the lead character artist at Naughty Dog.Yibing Jiang is the shader artist in our team at Naughty Dog.
The goal of this project is to make the most realistic CG render of Rober Downey Jr out there, Yibing and me have been working really hard on this on our free time every weekend together!
Yibing did texturing, shading and render them out in Vray, also make the hair in Hairfarm base on the fibermesh hair that i made from zbrush and made them even better! Including eyelashes, brows and beard.
I provide the 3d model and gave feedback almost every week and paintover/changing 3d model in order to make the renders more realistic and get to the quality we both want.
Here are 3 different of render results: The first one is more dramatic lights to show the shape and anatomy, the second one is lit by lit by neutral HDRI lights, third one is lit by neutral lights with Lambert shaders.
We also created an bonus piece by compositing the render result with ironman digital panel to match the iron man feeling.Created with Zbrush, 3ds Max, Vray, Photoshop, Mari and Hairfarm.
My friend Frank Tzeng and I just finished a collaboration project together, so we would like to share with you guys here!
I did texturing, shading, lighting and rendering part, I also re-created the hair in Hairfarm base on the fibermesh hair that Frank made from zbrush, including eyelashes, brows and beard.
Frank provided the 3d model and gave feedback almost everyweek and paintover/changing 3d model in order to make the renders more realistic and get to the quality we both want.
This is my first time doing likeness render, it's way more difficult than I thought it would be. Camera, lights, model, textures and shaders are all play important role for the final result, and how to balance them is the most tricky part. After a lot of back and forth with Frank, and a lot of redos, and here are the finals:
The first one is lit by dramatic lights to show the shape and anatomy, the second one is lit by neutral HDRI lights, third one is lit by neutral lights with Lambert shaders.
Now, it's time to be thoroughly impressed. Just check out the gallery below, but secure your jaw before you do.
Just remember; this is one of those personal projects artists often create in their own free time in order to hone their skills, and it's not in any shape or form an indication that Naughty Dog is working on an Ironman game.