An old man

[Hannes]

I recently found a nice free head bust model of an old man on Sketchfab. I made a texture to separate the shirt from the skin and applied a subsurface scattering material to the skin parts.
I then realized that the eyes were scanned as well and somehow looked dead. So I carefully cut out the faces where the eyes were and added my own eye models.
Then I created three hair simulations in 3ds Max (beard, peach fuzz and even nose hairs), meshed them and imported them into TG. I used another mesh for the lashes.

Making masks was a pain in the butt, since the texture wasn't the usual tidy one you can paint on, but a mess of fragments, almost like a puzzle. So I had to create my distribution masks by painting inside the viewport directly on the model.

[Hannes]

Just for fun I made sort of a clay render and found that the area between his lips looks nasty (see image "Grey").
So I cut out these faces, cleaned it up a bit and added some teeth.

[Dune]

  It's great! I really love this guy, he has something vulnerable. The teeth absolutely match him. I only think the beard fuzz is a little too thick. I have that sometimes as well (not me personally ), but always assign a UV to the meshes, so I can play with the opacity from an image map shader; whitepoint down for wider/thicker hairs, whitepoint as is for thin hair. And my mask is a blurred 'pyramid'.

[Hannes]

Thanks, Ulco!!! You mean the single hairs of the beard are too thick? That wouldn't be a problem.

[Hannes]

In case you meant this, Ulco, I guess, you were absolutely right. I reduced the thickness of the hair objects to 50 %, and it looks way betternow (at least in my opinion).

[Stormlord]

Oh my goodness, it's ME !!!!!

STORMLORD

[pixelpusher636]

Hannes this third update is spot on. Is this a hobby for you? You are professional grade, really, really good!

[Dune]

Yeah, Hannes, that exactly what I mean, and it's terrific now! The skin texture (SSS) is awesome too.

[Hannes]

Thanks a lot, guys!!

[Hannes]

I couldn't stop and made him some shaggy eyebrows.

[Hannes]

OK, the last one. I thought, the eyebrows weren't dense enough.

[mhaze]

Brilliant!

[Jo Kariboo]

Impressive !

[Hannes]

Thanks guys!!
OK, here is the final last iteration (?). I reduced the thickness of the eyebrows and I wanted to see, how he looks with hair (on his head). The guy looks quite different somehow...

[Dune]

I think I like him better withouit hair, but it's an interesting addition. How many vertices do you use in the length of that hair? I always try to keep it low (4-6), as MB's grow wild with longer hair and more polys. A bit less reflection on the hair maybe, or higher roughness?