This one has been sitting on my to-do list for way too long — one of those “I’ll get to it soon” projects that somehow keeps moving further down the list. You know how it goes: endless tweaks, tiny adjustments, and before you know it, months have gone by.
I started with a 3D scan of the Bust of Nefertiti from MyMiniFactory.
From there, it turned into quite the rabbit hole:
-
Retopologized the model in Maya
-
Created new UVs
-
Back to ZBrush to reproject all that lovely detail
Lots (and I mean lots) of back and forth between apps.
Quick aside — yes, I know most tools have auto-retopo these days. But honestly, I’ve yet to find one that creates an edge flow that doesn’t trigger my perfectionist manenos. So, I still prefer doing it manually. Therapy through topology, maybe?
The scan didn’t come with color data, so I tracked down another version (sadly, I can’t find the source anymore) and after a rather tedious round of projection and correction (repeat was needed), I finally had a texture map that worked.
I brought everything into Mari and cleaned up the color map. I did take a few creative liberties — for instance, the missing-eye situation was not working for me (it honestly creeped me out), so I just… removed it. Created a bunch of other maps, which also happens to be exactly why I’ve now written three “how-to-code-in-Mari-Python” posts in a row.
Finally, I rendered the whole thing in RenderMan at 5K+ — because, why not? (took 24 hrs. + by the way)
CLIENT: ~ Self ~
October 17, 2025
