The next step was to make multiple copies of the segment and to offset them along the Y axis so they could be merged into one big rope. I just attached all of them together and did a quick weld on all of the vertices, followed by adding a pathdeformWSM modifier. Picking the path and then clicking the Move to Path button does all the magic for you. I repeated these steps for all the ropes and knots seen on the model.

Sculpting

Sculpting the face was straightforward. I took one of the references found in my research and just started sketching (Fig.06). I do all of my sculpting inside ZBrush and I can't imagine my life without it.


At one point Katsumoto was supposed to wear a mask, but I kind of just dropped that idea and decided to give him some facial hair (Fig.07). With the aid of ZBrush's fibermesh that was a piece of cake. I just masked the area that I wanted covered with all the default settings, and lowered the total amount of hair. ZBrush still didn't have export curves option so I had to import the geometry and use this awesome script by Wayne Robson that I found online. Thank you Wayne! I did the same thing with his eyebrows.

Shading and Texturing

Texturing of his face was done inside ZBrush. I added the base color to the entire model and then started painting in red areas where there is more muscle and fat, and yellow in areas that are boney. Once I had blocked in these colors I painted in some of the pores with red and brown color. I tried to add some imperfections to his skin like moles and blackheads (Fig.08).

I finished it off by cavity masking the model and adding in darker tones in certain areas. Normal maps and Displacement maps were extracted from ZBrush with standard settings.


Settings for the SSS2 material used on his face are shown in Fig.09. I love this shader because it gives great results and it's really simple to set it up.