CREATING ADAM’S MASK
“Adam’s mask went through a number of iterations as we tried to find the right look that best served the story that we were telling. The material for the mask had to be like a 3D-printed surface with imperfections and some layering, as well as some translucency to the material,” explains Plamen Tamnev.
One of the first previz models of the mask resembled a realistic face more than it does in the finished short movie, “but after some iterations, the director decided that he wanted it to look more like a face behind a mask, instead of an actual face, so we started simplifying it until almost all facial features were gone,” says Plamen.
Zbrush was the software of choice for the initial stages of the model, explains the artist: “That helped me to work in a nondestructive way – keeping things in layers, using the Noisemaker and masking to try different levels of weathering, and blending between them on demand.“
For the broken mask, VFX artist Zdravko Pavlov experimented with the intact mask, with the final UVS and textures, to retain consistency with the model’s design. “With the help of the Bullet physics plug-in for 3ds Max he made several destruction passes to choose from for the mask,” says Plamen. “After we settled on the one we liked, I took it and used it as a base to work from, and started to add some additional variety and imperfections. Since it already had the UVS and textures from the intact mask, I only had to add the UVS for the additional geometry for which we kept UV space in the original texture, and then brought it to Substance Painter for the final detail pass and materials.”