Superimposing for 3D Portraits

Heidi Maiers · 10-04-2004, 03:31 PM

Here is a technique that some of you may find helpful if you are working in 3D. This is a bust I have roughed in

Heidi Maiers · 10-04-2004, 03:33 PM

2. Create a new layer on your clay photo and copy/paste the reference photo into that layer.

3. Reduce transparency of the new layer to 50%. Drag the layer to the correct position and if needed, transform by scale until the bust is the same size as the underneath layer.

Now you can observe the areas that need more or less clay. Areas in red need to be reduced and areas in green need to be added to. As you can see, the ears need to come up and forward just a bit.
This method is especially useful if you don

Josef Sy · 10-09-2004, 08:25 AM

Thanks for posting this Heidi. Do you compensate for the perspective? Actually the picture has perspective too. Nevermind. I work in computer 3D and we have a user view which is isometric and has no perspective that's why I asked that question.

Heidi Maiers · 10-10-2004, 04:16 AM

Hi Josef,
I've never worked with any of the 3D graphics applications. What sort of things do you do with them? For fun or for work?
Getting the same perspective for both photos is key to get them overlaid correctly. Sculpting a head is a little tricky from photos since there are over 360 different perspectives you need to see and usually only have a handful of them. I don't know if I'll take on any more jobs where the photos submitted are few and bad quality. That just makes things so unnecessarily difficult. Twice, all I had to work from was one obituary photo from a newspaper.
For this one, I took the photos myself so I have lots of reference material. At 30 inches, it's also the biggest one I've ever made and I am having a ball. Here's a front view.

Allan Rahbek · 10-10-2004, 04:29 AM

Heidi,

I have only made some sculptures from live model, so this will be a wild guess.
How about making a grid pattern on your background wall, like the ones the police uses when photographing criminals? They use horizontal lines. But if you make a grid and take the pictures from the same distance, you will have a direct reference between the model and your work.

Allan

Heidi Maiers · 10-10-2004, 04:40 AM

Hmm,
Interesting idea Allan. It might even be helpful to lay a grid over some of the reference photos and print them off. How did people ever get by without digital photography? It's so darn useful.