Fund Raising
(done)
Another Day
(done)
<Untitled>
(pending)
Initiation
(done)
Old Man
(closed)
Worker's Web
(done)
Invitation
(closed)
Old Man
This project was started so I could get a better understanding of ZBrush's texturing and sculpting tools. It also serves as an excuse to learn more about displacement maps. Might make a quick body for this guy on day, but as of now he's on hold.
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Created a quick pair of eyes for the guy, fixed up his texture a bit, and attempted to use the new hair plugin in Max. I don't really like using the hair plugin that much. Ran into some problems getting the shadows and lighting to behave correctly. So, for this pic (same as above) I just rendered the hair to a separate layer. I then added a drop shadow filter to the hair and this anchored it nicely to the skin. I also adjusted it's layers to get the correct tonal range. I like the complexity and chaos that the hair plugin gives, but the setup was a little cumbersome. Will try using guide splines for the next iteration and try the mental ray renderer. |
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Drew on the old render to get a sense of where wrinkles should go. Tried adding the wrinkles in ZBrush via displacement and regular painting but could get it done. I seemed to have run into a personal limitation with the wacom. I just couldn't get a nice precise movement that followed the contour of the head while using the wacom. I'm sure I could do it with a Cintiq, but I guess I'll have to figure out another method to get those little details to work... |
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Did a comparison of with/without displacement. Pretty obvious differences for little additional render cost. Not sure how it'll play out come animation time, but so far looks promising.
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Decided to axe the falloff maps for now and rendered with a straight diffuse map. Will probably use a "neyer-blinn" material instead of the default blinn since it's more accurate physically, but for now this will work. |
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Generated displacement maps and exported a low res version of the head. I then brought it into Max and tried the "default" displacement method by using the displace modifier with 2 iterations on the low-poly model. This works fine at this point, but I'll have to switch to Mental Ray's sub-pixel subdivision once I add fine wrinkles and such...there goes my render times...<sigh> This one took about 15sec to render. If my previous tests are any indication, I can expect that to go up to 2min once I use Mental Ray... :/ This material is a pretty simple one. Standard scanline material with a falloff map in the "self-illumination" slot. This gives a nice highlight around the edges of the model. |
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I tried just dumping one of ZBrush's skin shaders onto the model. The shader created some really nice specular and bump, but I lost most of my texture painting. I've seen this same shader used to great effect...I guess I just need to practice a little more. |
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Ok, here's the start of "old man." Started with ZSpheres and modeled this guy in about 2 hours. (Sometimes I love modeling in ZBrush) I then spent another hour or so creating his texture using the projection master. Still not quite used to ZBrush's whole "drop" and "pickup" methodology, but it's getting better. Really large image, so watch for auto-resize on internet explorer... |