Finally done

Holy crap. It's done. The turntable is still rendering its last frames as we speak, but the stills and the model itself is finally done. Enough yappin', lets see the goods. The video will be up sometime later this week.

Skin texturing in MARI

The final texture for this project is starting to take shape, hoping to be able to get most of it done tonight so I can start messing around with the SSS shader tomorrow. The texture for the body itself is made up of three 4096x4096 patches for each shader channel, so 18 texture maps total when all is said and done (diffuse, subdermal, epidermal, bump, reflection amount+glossiness, displacement).

Tricky part so far is getting all of the different projections to blend together nicely as far as brightness and color go.

When the base texture is done, I plan on tweaking it to a more olive type tone, as well as putting in some tattoo details on the left arm side.

Aaand done

Finally finished one of the 2 pieces I've been raving on about. Still need to render a spin of this one, but all the bits and bobs are in there now, and the still image gave me a good opportunity to try out some grading and color choices in Photoshop. Hope you like it. If you don't, I'll probably start crying. Please don't make me cry.

Final graded version

Clay

Ungraded render straight from vray

More SSS testin'

Did some more tweaks on the SSS shader and the texture maps themselves today. Was looking very rubber-masky, and while the latest tweaks takes out some of the subsurfacy goodness we all love too much, I think it looks a lot more realistic this way.

Eyebrows still crazy (vray fur), eyelashes way to dark and opaque (exported fibermesh from zbrush).

SSS skin shader tests

Man, skin shaders are a lot of work. My inner render dude is loving it. My inner sculptor is crying a silent tear for all the details that get blurred out by the SSS.

Almost there

Here's a couple of wip grabs from the two pieces I've been working on lately, the first being one of the test renders I did earlier today of the orc model. Still some tweaking to do on the metal shaders, as well as getting the body itself textured etc, but it's still a major relief to finally have all of the pieces present in the maya scene.

I just did the count, and jesus christ, with all the displacement maps, spec, glossiness, bump, and diffuse maps, and with many parts using multiple UV patches, this thing now has exactly 100 texture maps applied to it. Stupid, right?

The second image is where I'm currently at with the skin textures for the monster bust I posted last time. What you're feasting your eyeballs on here is an ortographic screengrab of the flat shaded base texture in Mari, from which I'll be deriving all the textures for the SSS skin shader except for the displacement (diffuse, subdermal, epidermal as well as the two specular maps).

Expect more updates over the next week or so as I try to finally get this thing done.

L

quickie 09 monster bust #2

Taking a brief pause from Mari and the seven hundred textures left for the orc project, I started playing around with blocking in some high frequency skin detail for the monster bust / quick sculpt thingy.

Spent most of last night trying to take some high res close up shots of my own mug to use for the skin texture on the orc. While looking at pics of myself at night is already one of my favorite passtimes, it does leave you with feeling somewhat narcissistic. I also made a soft box for my camera flash using toilet paper. Yeah..

quickie 09 monster bust #1

Just a work in progress screen grab of a quick little thing I've been playing around with as a distraction from the never ending orc warrior model.

Quickie 03 - Orc

Messed around in zbrush for about an hour before work today, sketching on an orc. Ork?

Quick sculpt and Monster Month

Hey y'all.

Another morning coffee quick sculpt. I also put in a rough start of what hopefully will be the first of many monsters this month. Inspired by Caesar Dacol's ongoing Monster Month, where he sculpts (in clay) a new monster design every day for a month, I thought I'd try doing the same for each week day for at least a while, as long as work and time permits it. I'll keep going with this one tomorrow, then on to another one on Wednesday.