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Once I’d set the lighting to my satisfaction, I rendered the image as a TIFF file. In Photoshop, I smoothed out the area around the eyes and worked a blending the surface, to reduce that “computer graphics look.”
For the second image, I wanted to create an image of cracked paint, but my earlier tests (using crackle medium on a board and painting over it with acrylic paint) didn’t give me the type of crack I was looking for. So I began to scour the Internet, looking for textures that would fit the bill. I found them at Mayang’s Free Textures. Specifically, I was looking for several images of cracked, peeling paint, but also for pitted paint as well, both of which were available on this site.
Once I downloaded the textures, I began to experiment with them in 3D Studio Max by creating a composite Bitmap, meaning that I could layer a variety of textures.
Once the textures were in place, I experimented with different placements, rotating the textures, etc. The one effect that made the difference was turning one of the layers into a Bump map, which made the surface appear as if it was deeply pitted, as if the surface of the mask had been worn away by many years of exposure to wind, grit and rain.
Once I had the textures I wanted, I rendered two version of the mask, one with the smooth surface of a paint texture; the other mask was rendered with both textures on so I would have a surface with all the deep pitting created by the bump mask. In some areas of the mask, especially the lips and around the right eye, I felt the pitting and smearing effect was too strong. To compensate, I placed the smooth mask rendering below the bump mask rendering and simply erased parts of the lip and eye area to let the smooth lip show through.
This screenshot shows the heavily textured mask on the left as it was originally
exported from 3DS Max and the mask on the right shows the mask after retouching
in Photoshop.
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Created: June 5, 2003
Revised: December 12, 2003
URL: http://webreference.com/3d/column7
