Frankenstein Chronicles

Sculpting for actor face replacement special effects while working with ScreenScene Post production in Dublin for ITV's show 'Frankenstein Chronicles'.

Client
ITV

Agency
ScreenScene

Role
CG Modelling, ZBrush Sculpting, Texturing

Date
2014

ScreenScene Post production house in Dublin, Ireland hired us for a ZBrush sculpting project, working on scanned 3D heads.

The scene we worked on required CG face replacement visual effects, swappign out a characters face for a CG model. The two actors in question were first cast in silicon and the resulting casts were sent to a traditional sculptor to add the necessary rotting and detailed skin work. The final sculpted heads were then scanned using a DSLR Camera, shooting from multiple angles and elevations, before being processed using Agisoft Photo scanning software to generate a 3d mesh.

To make sure the scans were of the highest possible quality and to reduce clean-up work, we sprayed them in a Matte grey finished with dusting of Matte white. This removed any reflection but exaggerated surface detail. We took these scans into ZBrush and decimated them down to a usable level, then we used  Maya to retopologize them and Headus UV layout to give them a set of UV co-ordinates.

We then took the clean mesh back into ZBrush and projected the high resolution detail back on. As there was no skin texture to capture we re-painted the texture by hand inside ZBrush. All of the rigging, compositing, and animation was done by the talented team at ScreenScene.

"Frankenstein Chronicles" - VFX Breakdown