Harrison Ford 3D sculpt - Deckard (Blade Runner) - v2.0

Bloop

Sr Member
NEW UPDATE (Nov. 14th, 2023 - v2.0 in progress - see pg 7 for more)
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UPDATE: (Nov. 11th, 2021 - 3D print & painting v1.0 complete, pg 4):

<I decided to add a current progress pic to the original post, partly so you don't have to scroll down if you don't want to, and partly because my first progress pic looks pretty bad in comparison. I know I was just starting out, but I don't want any new viewers to only look at the initial pics and think it's not worth scrolling through. Plus, this shows just how much progress I've made. Sorry if this is a bit of a "spoiler" for what's below! (still a Work In Progress)>


HF 41b 5.png


(Nov. 6th, 2021: 3D Print v1.0 painting complete):

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(October 28th, 2020) I've had Blender for a while, but I never really learned how to use it. I bought a 3D printer last year partly with the intention of making my own 3D models to print, but so far I've mostly printed other people's work, or some very basic things I cobbled together in Meshmixer. So I figured I should finally figure it out. I watched a bunch of tutorials, and while I still don't know most of Blender's functions, I finally had a break through in using the sculpting features.

I was recently reminded of a project that I posted years ago that I never finished - a miniature bust of Harrison Ford as Deckard from Blade Runner, sculpted from clay (I'd put a link to the project, but the pics have disappeared). I had never done much sculpting, especially not of a recognizable human, so it was somewhat of frustrating experience. Since I never finished it, I figured that I'd give it another shot, this time in digital form.

I started completely from scratch, sculpting from just a sphere. Here's where I'm at right now:

Harrison Ford 3D Progress 15.png


I'm pretty pleased with my progress in just a few days. Here's some progress pics. It seems like Blender's camera view for sculpting gets distorted as you zoom (like a real camera) which makes things look a bit off if you zoom too close, so I had some issues where I overcompensated for it at times. I also had some issues with the eyes - I originally sculpted them, but I eventually decided to cut them out of the mesh and replace them with spheres (you can also see I made the eye-spheres way too big at first). I keep tweaking everything, trying to get it as accurate as possible.

Harrison Ford 3D Progress 1.pngHarrison Ford 3D Progress 4.pngHarrison Ford 3D Progress 6.png

Harrison Ford 3D Progress 8.png Harrison Ford 3D Progress 9.png Harrison Ford 3D Progress 10.png
Harrison Ford 3D Progress 11.png Harrison Ford 3D Progress 14a.png Harrison Ford 3D Progress 15.png

My plan is to get the basic sculpt as good as I can before changing the expression and adding details to make a Blade Runner specific statue. That way, I can use the basic Harrison Ford sculpt for other projects if I want to.
 
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It seems like Blender's camera view for sculpting gets distorted as you zoom (like a real camera) which makes things look a bit off if you zoom too close, so I had some issues where I overcompensated for it at times.
I recently just got into sculpting using Blender as well. You can adjust the “lens focal length” in the view settings so the distortion won’t be as apparent. Try something like 50 or 85. I’m assuming it’s at a default setting of like 35, which would make it pretty wide and would distort things the closer you got to the model. Your sculpt looks great though, way better than what I’ve been able to do in the few days I’ve been messing around with it!
 
I've had Blender for a while, but I never really learned how to use it. I bought a 3D printer last year partly with the intention of making my own 3D models to print, but so far I've mostly printed other people's work, or some very basic things I cobbled together in Meshmixer. So I figured I should finally figure it out. I watched a bunch of tutorials, and while I still don't know most of Blender's functions, I finally had a break through in using the sculpting features.

I was recently reminded of a project that I posted years ago that I never finished - a miniature bust of Harrison Ford as Deckard from Blade Runner, sculpted from clay (I'd put a link to the project, but the pics have disappeared). I had never done much sculpting, especially not of a recognizable human, so it was somewhat of frustrating experience. Since I never finished it, I figured that I'd give it another shot, this time in digital form.

I started completely from scratch, sculpting from just a sphere. Here's where I'm at right now:

View attachment 1362691

I'm pretty pleased with my progress in just a few days. Here's some progress pics. It seems like Blender's camera view for sculpting gets distorted as you zoom (like a real camera) which makes things look a bit off if you zoom too close, so I had some issues where I overcompensated for it at times. I also had some issues with the eyes - I originally sculpted them, but I eventually decided to cut them out of the mesh and replace them with spheres (you can also see I made the eye-spheres way too big at first). I keep tweaking everything, trying to get it as accurate as possible.

View attachment 1362692View attachment 1362694View attachment 1362695

View attachment 1362696 View attachment 1362697 View attachment 1362698
View attachment 1362699 View attachment 1362700 View attachment 1362691

My plan is to get the basic sculpt as good as I can before changing the expression and adding details to make a Blade Runner specific statue. That way, I can use the basic Harrison Ford sculpt for other projects if I want to.
Wow!
That's amazing, to have gone from a new user of Blender to this sculpt is a great achievement.
 
I never knew Blender could model like Z-Brush! Damn, this is inspiring! Time to give it another try.

You did that using just a sphere and lots of picture reference? Holy cow!
 
Thanks for the tip HMSwolfe, I'll try that!

UPDATE: New pics
Still plugging away, may not look like a lot of progress at first glance, but I've done a lot. I spent hours trying to fix a problem where I had a small crease by the right eye, not very noticable, but I wanted to see if I could fix it. I tried various things that didn't work, ultimately using the clay brush to shrink and grow the area till the crease was gone. Unfortunaetly, that meant all my details around that area had to be redone. I'd say it was hours wasted, but I learned from my mistakes, so I figure it was worth it.

I keep trying to get the eyes right, and make sure they're in proportion with the rest of the head - I think it's closer now. Spent some more time on the nose, particularly the nostrils. I added more details everywhere, especially the mouth and the general face area.

Harrison Ford 3D Progress 17c.png


Harrison Ford 3D Progress 17.pngHarrison Ford 3D Progress 17a.pngHarrison Ford 3D Progress 17b.png

These pics were taken by using "Viewport Render Image" in Blender, instead of screenshots, but for some reason, they turned out less shiny than the way the it looks in Bender's sculpt & object modes. I adjusted the contrast a bit to compensate, just so they'd look closer to the origina images I posted for comparison (but they're still noticeably duller). Anyway, a minor caveat, but figured it's worth mentioning.
 
Quick update: overall fixes, worked a lot on the ears, still tweaking the nose, and made the neck larger. Adjusted the lens focal length to eliminate some distortion, which also helped me adjust the shape of the face properly and get the ears in the right spots.

Harrison Ford 3D Progress 18.png
 
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Update:
More refining, lots of little adjustments. I made some more changes to the eyes, and the ears are more finished now, too. I redid the eyebrows because somehow I accidentally smoothed over one of them while I was working on a different area and didn't notice until it was too late to undo it. Whoops. Not a big deal, though. I used my Wacom pad and pen for them since it's easier to draw fine details with a pen. I mostly use a mouse for everything else though.
I'm realizing I could keep tweaking this forever. Working from different reference photos means each expression is slightly different, so if I work to try to get it as close to one pic, it'll still be slightly off from another. So I think I'm pretty close to where I want to be for the "basic" head, just need to smooth out some of the extra bumps then detail it some more before moving on the a specific pose. I may also add more upper body before moving to the next step too.
I'm debating weather to add hair by making a whole new object or just sculpting the hair right on the existing model. I'll be saving the model without hair anyway, so I'll always have something to go back to, but if I create a new mesh for the hair, it may be easier to work on, since if I make any mistakes, it won't affect the head.
I haven't done anything with real rendering of the model. Since this is going to be 3D printed, I wasn't that concerned in trying to learn the render functions of Blender right now, but it'd be nice to see the model rendered in a little more detail.
Harrison Ford 3D Progress 22.png
Harrison Ford 3D Progress 21.png Harrison Ford 3D Progress 23.png
 
Another update:

I changed the eyes again, lowered the size of the spheres to try to get them more accurate to Ford's. I've been adjusting the head and neck shape too, and worked on the mouth/chin area a lot.

I also played around with lighting and cameras, partly so I could try to match the lighting of my reference photos. I did an actual render of it, as opposed to the viewport renders I've been doing. I still had to heavily adjust the brightness and contrast afterward, since I'm not familiar enough with Blender's lighting to get it looking how I want it:

Harrison Ford 3D Progress 24 - Render w_Lights.png


And here's a viewport render with the regular lighting, from another angle, just to compare:

Harrison Ford 3D Progress 24a - viewport render.png


I think I'm getting close - I know I said that last time, so take it with a grain of salt.
 
You've made great progress! As a long-time blender user I'd advise you make sure that your 3d viewport camera is set to an FOV of about 90 degrees. It looks pretty close from what I can see but at lower values it can distort your perspective view.

Great work!
 
Thanks everyone!

New update: Hair! Just roughed in for now, but it helps with the likeness. Here's a side-by-side comparison. The angle and lighting aren't exact, but close enough to get the idea.

Harrison Ford 3D Progress 31 Comparison.png


Here's a couple more angles, rendered in "solid" and "render" modes.

Harrison Ford 3D Progress 31b - Viewport Solid.png Harrison Ford 3D Progress 31a - Viewport Rendered.png
Harrison Ford 3D Progress 31e - Viewport Solid.png Harrison Ford 3D Progress 31e - Viewport Render.png
 
Update: Adjustments to lips and nose, including the philtrum, and more detailing (plus other adjustments here and there). I think I'm finally getting things more accurate. Of course, every time I think that, I come back to look at it after taking a break and realize it wasn't as good as I thought it was at the time. I guess that's the reason why you have to take a step back sometimes, reset your mind.
Anyway, I realized his mouth is more asymmetrical, which can look "wrong" but asymmetry also makes sculptures (and faces) seem more real. Ford's nose is also a tad askew, bending toward his right. He also tends to have a crooked smile, bending up on his right as well, which pulls his nose over even more. As I mentioned, I'm trying to get a "flat" expression first, and figure out if I want to adjust it for more emotion. As it stands right now, I think the expression could be decent for a bust, which historically have often had rather plain expressions.

Harrison Ford 3D Progress 33 - Render.png
Harrison Ford 3D Progress 33a - Viewport Solid.pngHarrison Ford 3D Progress 33c - Viewport Render.png
 
good practice when doing portraits is to take the pictures of the subject and do a paint over of his skull. Find all the boney land marks of the skull and connect the dots. It will really help tighten up the overall sculpt. Keep at it, it's looking good. On the left side of his face you may want to look at how the nasal labial fold wraps behind the orbicularis, from the front it looks like it may be overlapping it.
 
Been a few weeks, not that I haven't worked on this, but my progress is more in the finer detail phase now, though I still have made adjustments to overall face structure, and expression, and I keep adjusting the eyes. But I was waiting to post until I had a little more progress.

I started refining the hair, though I still haven't decided exactly on how it will end up. I may simplify it more, but here's where it stand now:
Harrison Ford 3D Progress 40.png


I also did a couple more subdivisions of just the lips and around the eyes, so that I could add more detail to those areas. It seemed that when I applied another subdivision to the entire head, it caused Blender to slow down due to the extra detail, and I couldn't work very well - the cursor would lag behind so I couldn't draw in any detailed way. I'm not sure if it was only a temporary problem or it's just due to my older laptop not being powerful enough to handle it.

Since the lip area now has more vertices and faces, I was able to refine and add some more lip texture. I looked at tutorials on using alphas to add these details, but I just decided to sculpt them in using the normal Blender brushes instead. I mostly used the Draw Sharp and Draw brushes at low pixel sizes and medium strengths. I also used the Fill brush to flatten out the details, which looked good close up, but further away were a little too deep. It made the texture more subtle. I still may tweak them as I go. Here's two pics from the same angle, first with standard "solid" shading, then with rendered lighting.


Lips detail - new 1.png

Lips detail - new 1a.png



I'm not sure how necessary the extra lip detail is, given I my original plan to 3D print this as a mini bust around 6" in height or so. There's no way my printer will be able to show that level of detail at that size. But I plan on subdividing the eyebrows as well, as they look a little too pixelated right now. Plus, the more detailed I make it, the more I learn, and it never hurts to have more detail in case I want to print it larger or use it just as a digital render.
 
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If your going to print this out of resin you will most likely end up making different versions where you have to hammer in the details to the point that it looks horrible on screen. A trick you can do is figure out the real world scale, then hold up a ruler to your monitor and scale the head to fit and see what details vanish and which details still show. Either way it will take some testing. Looks good, keep it up.

I don't know if you have heard of zbrush mini, it's a free version of zbrush you may want to give that a try if your having performance issues in blender.
 

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