3D portrait in 3D max and Zbrush. Preview. 

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3D Portrait of Nina.
The goal of this work was to create a tutorial that explains in the most effective way - how to create a realistic portrait in 3D. It was designed for intermediate artists that work in 3d max, Zbrush, V-ray, but the principals going to be shown would be appropriate for other programs too.

The creative workflow began in Character Creator 3 (iclone) for base mesh posing on a PC powered by a GeForce RTX 2060 GPU. I created a base model in a pose and recorded an Alembic file of pose transition from base A-pose into sitting one and unwrapping UV, translating 3D mesh into 2D data so a 2D texture can be wrapped around it.

Afterwards, used standard brushes with some custom ones in ZBrush to sculpt facial proportions, finer detail. With a set of photos for model reference and custom brushes, I created the main textures in Zbrush, before returning to 3D max and applying new textures to the 3D model.
My priorities in achieving a highly photorealistic look with detailed, lifelike hair, created with the Ornatrix groom editor within 3D Max. Before starting, it’s very important to study the hairstyle flow so that I can decide into how many hair parts I would need to break the creation of the main hairstyle. The girl, for example, has been made with 5 hair descriptions, such as head, ponytail, frizzy hair, finer hair surrounding main hair growth along the face.

Afterwards, I begin to test scene lighting. Here, the GPU-accelerated interactive renderer enables incredibly smooth, interactive 3D modeling. I can play with the lighting, shadows, groom and more in real time, without having to wait for the system to render it out.
The final image was rendered using V-Ray 5 render engine. No scans were used. Modelled and textured in 3D Max and Zbrush, touchups done in Photoshop.