Hi, and welcome to my first tutorial (ever). My name is Carsten Holtmann, and I'd like to show you a few things about my latest work "The Last Knight".

Software used: 3dsMax6, Brazil R/S, Zbrush, Photoshop

The first step is by far the most important one - Reference! As I chose to build a fantasy medieval knight, I had to find some good references for armour, swords and a character to suit this theme. So I started with a "Google" search for all this.

The Head

I used some pictures of Sean Connery as a reference for the character, because he played a knight and has the age and experience that I'd like to show in my picture. (By the way, I'm also a fan of his.)

After all, my knight has only a little likeness to Sean Connery, but this is ok, because I want to capture the general character and not Sir Sean Connery himself. (Ok, perhaps I don't quite have enough talent to capture an exact likeness, but I won't tell.)

I used Zbrush for modelling and textures. I won't go into all the details because there are plenty of good tutorials about Zbrush all over the net. 3DTotal.com and ZbrushCentral.com are great places to start! So, search the net if you want to know more. For mapping, I used Zbrush GUV tiles. I've taken screenshots of the textured model, so you can get an idea of the textures.

I don't use displacement maps, because Brazil does not support microdisplacement at rendertime. So, I export the level 3 mesh and import it into 3dsMax.