First ZBrush Spotlight Test

Using the average head I made in FaceGen, and a photograph of classmate Christer, I used ZBrush's spotlight feature to project the photograph onto the object. The photograph was scaled, rotated and nudged (aka. Photoshop liquify feature) to fit perfectly on to the head model.

I used my Blackberry Curve to take the photograph, which is known to have a very poor quality 2.0 MP camera, but this was the only smartphone I had access to at the time.

Blackberry Curve 8500 camera specifications:

• 2.0 MP camera
• Fixed Focus
• No Flash
• 5X digital zoom
• Video Camera Recording:
  Normal Mode (320x240 pixel),MMS Mode (176x144 pixel)

As you can see, the quality is poor, but this is all down to the poor camera quality of the Curve 8500. The source photograph lacks colour, contrast and there is a lot of noise, as well as the obvious lack of crisp detail.

I carried out another test using the 'average male face' photograph I used to produce the head model, a fairly good photograph, and the results were much, much better.

It is clear that the quality is far better, rendering a usable texture for a head in game. Though the source photograph was surely not taken using a smartphone, there are a number of smartphones on the market right now that can take as good, or even better of quality photographs, and I'll be researching smartphone cameras to determine a target market for application development.