Plastic Mask Tutorial

Couple weeks ago I came across this fantastic tutorial of applying a plastic mask effect to a portrait. Couldn't really believe my luck to find it on a mainstream website. Anyhoo I started experimenting with the effect with mixed results.

The downside of the tutorial is that it uses Cinema 4D to render the mask, which may not be super accessible by everyone. Luckily I remembered a piece of software I played with years ago called DAZ Studio (a free alternative to Poser). I recall it be faster than poser, less resource hungry, and came with a £0 price tag. So let's see if we can achieve the effect!

To start with, I'd recommend you read the tutorial above and grab the Studio reflection map image, or google for HDRI maps.

Next, you need to download DAZ Studio from the official website.

As of today when the tutorial was written, it comes with a few models including Genesis Base Female. I'm not sure if that will change, but as far as I remember, DAZ Studio always come prepacked with a female model.

Learn the basics of how to use DAZ Studio such as posing your model and what not. I won't go into details here as there're much better tutorials out there.

All set? Let's get started!

For this tutorial I'm using an image from House of Taboo:

This should place your model in the work environment.

Use the camera tools to position yourself at right angle, and pose your model's head using the universal tool. Try and match your subject as close as possible.

You don't have to be 100% precise, but use the eyes, nose and ears as reference and you should get a pretty accurate result.

Next up we're going to close our model's eyes.

This step is optional, but if you don't shut the model's eyes, you've got a lot more work to do later to get the eyes to render right!

Go to parameters on the right edge, select your model > Pose Controls > Eyes and find the Eyelid controls.

Drag the Eyes Closed slider to 1.00 to shut the eyes.

You can also drag the Eyelids Bottom Up a bit to make sure the eyes are shut properly, however I didn't bother to do so in this tutorial.

Next, we're going to make everything except the face invisible.

Use the Surface Tool to select the model. Go back to the Actors, Wardrobe & Props pane, select Surfaces (Color) this time and click on Surfaces.

This will select the entire model's surface, and we're going to turn her opacity to 0%

Find the Opacity Strength option and drag it down to 0.0%. Our model is now invisible!

Now let's turn her face back on. Look for Face and Lips on the list and select them both (control click to add Lips to selection). Turn their Opacity Strength back to 100.0%.

Note: You could also deselected the Face and Lips in the previous step to skip this step.

Now comes the fun part. I'm not an expert on 3D rendering so I haven't actually studied what all the settings actually mean, but the following are what I think are the right settings to go for based on the tutorial I linked earlier.

Keeping Face and Lips selected, go through the following settings:

Diffuse Color - set it to black, set the Map to None (on the square box next to the color pane).

Bump Active - set it to Off, otherwise you'll get a bumpy surface during render.

Specular Color - set it to black and remove the Map as well.

Specular2 Active - set it to Off

Reflection Active - set it to On. For the Map, select White as the colour and choose the Studio Reflection Map you go from the other tutorial.

Now we're ready to render. Go to the Render tab, set your resolution according to your final image's size and subject's face size.

Click Render and save the Image as a png file.

Now we can play with our mask in Photoshop! Load the image up and place it in your target image.

Use the transform tool and position the mask over your subject. Reduce the mask's opacity to see where to place it.

Set the Mask layer's Blend mode to Screen and you're nearly there.

You may need to boost the level a little bit for better results. Add a Level Adjustment Layer and clip it to your Mask layer.

Now you'll never get a perfect fitting mask on your model due to different face shapes. Use the transform tool again and warp your mask layer to get a better fit.

Key areas to look out for are the eyes, lips, chin and cheek.

Now if you're going for the mask effect like I am, then you want to leave the mask slightly larger than the face to give off the mask effect. A perfectly snug fit on the other hand would be more suitable for an actual plastic doll effect.

To fine tune the edges (and sometimes the position of eye, nose and lips), use the Liquid Filter and a large brush to touch up the edges.

Finally as I'm going for a face mask effect, I don't really want the plastic mask to go over our subject's hair.

Put your plastic mask layer inside a Group folder, and create a layer mask for the folder (control click the mask layer, then apply layer mask to the group).

This will create a "raster layer mask", which is necessary for cleaning up the hair area. But before we proceed, let's create a vector mask on top as well.

Use the pen tool (in path mode) and draw a rough outline of the mask around the subject's head. The only "real" edge I want from the vector mask is by the forehead, and I can let it go over the hair and generally overrunning the rest of the face.

Click on the Layer Mask icon again and you'll have added a Vector Layer Mask to the group.

Finally, go back to your Raster Layer Mask (by clicking on the mask in the group) and erase the area that the hair overlaps the mask.

We have ourselves a finished product!

I haven't had time to experiment much yet, but by combining different surface render effects in DAZ Studio and Blending Mode in Photoshop, you should be able to achieve lots of effects including plastic dolls, robots, visor etc.

Hope you enjoy that and I look forward to seeing your results!