Game ready character - How to do this and that

Obscura

Hi, currently I have to make various game ready realistic human characters, and because I'm not really experienced in character creation I can't figure out how to do a few things. Here are a few of my first questions, maybe more will come later, as things progresses.

I have to do the usual hp-> detailed mesh from Zbrush-> lp-> baking pipeline. I made the highpoly, and I would like to start sculpting it, but I don't know how could I detail the lips properly because the mouth is closed on my hp. There will be inside of the mouth too. Should I open it a little before start sculpting? And here comes the next, similar question. If it would be closed, then later how could I bake that area with not getting the cage going through itself?

Later I will have to do a few morph targets too, and here, my question is again about the mouth. How should I make the mouth morphs? Should I rig that area somehow , so it will be easy to make every morph target? Or should I use simple vertex moving or something like FFD/soft selection moving?

The eyebrows will be separated mesh/textures on the final characters, so we can change the texture (because we want the player to be able to select the eyebrow shape) There will be a few morph targets that will need modified eyebrow position for specific face expressions. So the eyebrow itself is a separated mesh, and when I make these morptargets, should I modify the head too there, or just the separated eyebrow mesh? I think the answer is just the eyebrow mesh, because in the real life just the eyebrow would move and not a that area of the skull.

MarzArt

Answer to first question: It's easier to sculpt, and bake, when mouth is open. If it's closed, you can try to bake the inside area with Xnormal as separated mesh.

2-nd: Doesn't matter. Choose the fastest way) I think it would be easier to sculpt morph targets in zbrush.

TunaSandwich

as Marz Art says, it's much easier to sculpt and bake with the mouth open- What I usually do is, I'd keep the mouth open until I've finalized everything Lowpoly,texture etc- and close it back with soft selection tool when I need to rig.

If its just the eyebrows you can use whatever way is simplest for you- Zbrush is good for exaggeration or details but if you're not gonna have wrinkles everytime his face makes an expression or anything too detailed, I think sticking to your main 3d program would be fine- I'm old fashioned and stick to cluster tools or soft selection in maya- it really depends how detailed you're planning to make it-

Obscura

Thanks for both of you, I opened the mouth in Zb and now everything works fine.

I haven't decided about the morph targets yet, but I think I'll stick with Max.

More questions coming soon

Skinpop

wrong thread.

Brandon.LaFrance

When you're sculpting, it helps to open the mouth on a sperate layer. This way you can continue to sculpt with the mouth closed, which makes it easier to judge form and likeness, and then open the mouth when you're ready to bake.

Obscura

Thanks, I'll do this next time hehe.

Could someone show me a good high resolution subdermal(?) map? Or could someone explain me where I need to paint more red, where I need purpleish areas? Because I googled for it and the pictures that I found are really different and I don't know which I should trust in.

JohnnyRaptor

For your lips, open the mouth on the head so you can sculpt the details of the lips properly, but keep the opening on a layer, so you can switch back and forth for review etc.

When you bake, you bake it with the mouth open to get a clean bake.

For your mouth morphs, there isnt a end all approach. If you open the mouth on your char, its quite easy to set up a quick jawbone to get you started with the shapes. But then again you might find it quicker to use topological move in zbrush on the lowest subdivision.

Regarding the eyebrow, depending on the style of your character, you may only want to move the eyebrow mesh. But if you have a realistic design you probably will want to move more than just the eyebrow itself, since there is a lot of muscles involved in moving your eyebrows and you want to capture all that skin movement.

Obscura

Thanks for the detailed reply! Actually I'm done with the models of this now, but I will have to make many other heads in the next weeks, so the opening on layer can happen with them and I'll definitely keep in mind your answers guys! Now I'm thinking on making the morphs rather in Zb.

About the SSS. We already have a shader implemented in our engine but we would like to make it better. I was looking around on the internet and I think the only usable approach that I found was a screen space based method. A similar one to the UDK implementation. Anyone know a good source about real time sss shaders? Just the offline ones can use diffuse AND epidermis AND subdermis? What would be the best approach(good looking, fast running, customizable, relatively easy to work with)? We are targeting next gen look.

Obscura

Another question, and its shader related again. We would like to colorize the lips(the player can add lipstick color to its character's lips). The first idea was to use separated mesh for this too, but maybe it would be better to use a mask texture and doing a lerp thing so the color/specular/gloss values could be controlled with simple parameters. What would work better here?

willehrendreich

Honestly i really think using substance designer and having the lip color modified based on an exposed parameter in the resulting substance would be a great way to do that. They could realistically produce any lip color at all with that. Substance Designer isnt free, but it is worth every bit. Of course i dont know what engine its going into, but if its unity or unreal, you're gold. Hope that helps.

Obscura

willehrendreich - Unfortunately its not unreal and nor unity

Guys, I'm stuck but so hard this time. After bringing back the model into max, baking, making the diffuse, it turned out as its really doesn't look like how I wanted.
When I made the basemesh, it was looking good in proportion viewpoints. I planar projected my reference to the face and everything was in its place. See on the image below:


Then I just opened the mouth in ZB, made some skin details, minor fixtures on the face, and I didn't realize that something went wrong during the process. After making it lowpoly, baked, it doesn't remind at all to the women at my reference. Don't laugh I know, its very far from the reference. Image again (never mind the red around the eyes, this must not be the thing that makes it look different):

Aaaand, when I add eyes, eyebrows, eyelashes, it completely loose the realistic appearing(even if it already wasn't really that):


So my short question would be how to make my model reminding (not need to be the exact same)to this women:


Maybe the textures are bad? Or the proportions, I just didn't realize in time? I don't know where to go from here, please try to point out whats the problem. I'm not a character artist so yet I don't have good eyes for this things, but I'm trying to get better, but looks like I do something very wrong. This is my first real character project so I'm not really surprised about that it turned out shit, but I would really like to repair it.

Further question:
What I should put into the diffuse map, because I added slight dots, pores, but they doesn't visible, just if I view the model in flat mode.

Thanks!

Edit : I decided to re-Zbrush it, and after comparing the proportions with the reference (now in ps) I noticed that they are way off...So ignore the part that is connected to this, but I would be still interested about how could I make realistic diffuse.

Obscura

Whether I like it or not, if this is what I need to do, then I don't have other option Thanks! I gave it a new try, and its better now, but still needs work. Unfortunately I don't have years, just a few days to make it better. We'll see how much better I can make it in this amount of time.