LogInPatrick van Rooijen guided us through the process of creating a realistic model of Eminem using ZBrush, Maya, and Marvelous Designer, explaining how each component, including the hat, skin, and beard, was crafted, how the likeness was achieved, and how the overall mood of the model was enhanced.
Introduction
My name is Patrick van Rooijen, and I'm a Senior Character Artist at Rocksteady Studios. I got into 3D art years ago when playing games and watching movies and deciding that that's what I wanted to do. Years later, I went to school for it, but I ended up mostly relying on online schools like CGSociety's CGWorkshops and CGMA classes, along with doing a lot of personal work.
Since then, I've worked on two feature films, as well as the games Horizon Forbidden West and its DLC, and Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League.
About the Eminem Project
I started listening to Eminem's music when I was 12 and have been ever since (I'm 35 now), so his music has been a big part of my life. Ever since I got into ZBrush, I've tried to capture his likeness but never quite got there. So when Şefki Ibrahim launched his course, I jumped on the opportunity, having been a huge fan of his work for years. It felt like the perfect chance to finally get it right.
I wanted to capture Eminem as he looks now, rather than his younger, blonde-haired self that most people associate with him. I gathered tons of references from all over — red carpet photos, live performances, promotional shoots, and anything in between — to get as many different angles of his face as possible, mostly from the time period I was aiming to capture.
Blockout
For the full workflow, I'd highly recommend checking out Şefki's class, but to give a general overview — I started by gathering a lot of different reference photos from as many angles as possible and cropping them down to just the head. Using a VFace head model from TexturingXYZ as my base, I did an initial pass in ZBrush by eye, just trying to get close to the likeness.
From there, I brought the sculpt into Maya and set up my reference images as image planes to align the sculpt as closely as possible from all angles. I used the same approach for the eyes and overall groom, constantly checking from different angles in Maya since it's much more reliable for accurate camera focal length than ZBrush.
Topology & Unwrapping
Since I used a TexturingXYZ VFace, I didn't end up unwrapping the head, as I wanted to keep it intact to use the maps that come with the VFace pack — like displacement, ID, and color — as a starting point for my renders. It was the same approach for the eyes.
For the hat, I did a quick retopology using Maya's Quad Draw tool and unwrapped it with Maya's built-in UV tools. For the shirt, I transferred the UVs from the original Marvelous Designer mesh to the retopologized version.
Texturing
For the skin, I used the VFace color map that came with the pack as a base in Mari. From there, I adjusted the hue, saturation, and brightness to get closer to Eminem's actual skin tone. I also painted out some of the surface detail that was baked into the pack, like small bumps, and added new ones to better match his skin.
For the beard, I relied on Maya's XGen. It's not something I was (and still am not) extremely comfortable with, but with Şefki's videos and feedback, I think I managed to get something I'm happy with. I leaned heavily on hand-painting density, clumping, width, and noise masks for the different groom elements. This helped break up the procedurally generated look and gave the hair a more realistic appearance.
Lighting
For the lighting in my main images, I used some HDR lamp textures from Cave Academy to get more realistic reflections and light behavior instead of relying on the solid white planes that lights usually have. From there, I set up a very basic three-point light setup to achieve the mood I was going for.
For example, in the shot with the heavy shadows under the cap, there's a main light coming from above, two rim lights behind him to bring out the shapes, and peach fuzz and fibers on the hat a bit more. I also placed a plane behind him with a light pointed at it to create a slight natural vignette effect, which meant I didn't need to add it in post — though I still ended up tweaking it a bit afterward.
As for post-production, for the top-light image, I did some color correction and added his handwritten notes to the background, which I found online from his song Lose Yourself, along with some smoke and embers to enhance the mood.
For the other images, I kept it pretty simple, just some color correction, slight exposure adjustments, and maybe brightening the background a little.
Summary
It took quite a while. I started this project when Şefki launched his course back in May of last year, but at some point, I got busy with work and other commitments and didn't give it the attention it deserved for a while. In the end, that might have actually helped because when I came back to it, I noticed a lot more things that needed fixing and felt more motivated to push it further. I couldn't say exactly how long it took to finish, but it definitely took a while.
The main challenge for me was definitely the hair, which is part of the reason why he ended up with the cap. That decision actually worked out, though, since he's almost always wearing one in public appearances.
What I really learned during this project is how much of a difference small tweaks to the model, groom, or shaders can make to the final image. If it were up to me, I probably would have called the model done quite a bit earlier, but Şefki's feedback really pushed me to take it further.
That would also be my biggest advice to beginning artists: ask for feedback. I have friends like Ankit Garg and Thomas Sykutera, whose opinions I often ask for because they'll catch things I might have missed. I also ask my wife, who, not knowing how long something takes or how technical it is, will give me honest, unbiased feedback.