Portfolio Piece - Help me - Textures/Cloth/Hair
sublime tool
Hi,
I have a portfolio piece for my exams, I need your help, please, with few bits. It's going to be a level up
I want to improve my old model, but I'm not sure how..
I have made a sculpt so far,and now I want to create transparent body, as on the picture, sort of like medusa, I was thinking if I copy the geometry, and push it below/underneath a little - do you think that will work if both are are transparent textures? How do I do that glowing X-ray outline, and so that it is efficient for games?
Next I have veils around her body, mainly like wings coming out from her arms, and I want to use a cloth modifier, but never used it before, I've made some researches, and simcloth plugin seems to be good for a cape - it would need to act like cape, you know veils as goldfish long tails? With those textures I won't have a trouble, but if you know a best way to achieve animation for the veils so they flow with Siren's movement I'd appreciate and obviously will share anything I've learned myself and my work..
Later I want to animate her hair which are not even hair but spikes, but I have an idea for that, and will get back to it in the end..
I really really want to make it good - thanks!!!
I have a portfolio piece for my exams, I need your help, please, with few bits. It's going to be a level up
I want to improve my old model, but I'm not sure how..
I have made a sculpt so far,and now I want to create transparent body, as on the picture, sort of like medusa, I was thinking if I copy the geometry, and push it below/underneath a little - do you think that will work if both are are transparent textures? How do I do that glowing X-ray outline, and so that it is efficient for games?
Next I have veils around her body, mainly like wings coming out from her arms, and I want to use a cloth modifier, but never used it before, I've made some researches, and simcloth plugin seems to be good for a cape - it would need to act like cape, you know veils as goldfish long tails? With those textures I won't have a trouble, but if you know a best way to achieve animation for the veils so they flow with Siren's movement I'd appreciate and obviously will share anything I've learned myself and my work..
Later I want to animate her hair which are not even hair but spikes, but I have an idea for that, and will get back to it in the end..
I really really want to make it good - thanks!!!
Replies
To do this kind of transparency, you don't duplicate the mesh and push it inside itself. Instead you use a Fresnel falloff for the transparency mask.
Smooth soft transparency is not very efficient in games, but it can be done for single items like a character. Depends on the context, how efficient it needs to be. Basically, if the frame rate drops, then it needs to be fixed.
The glowing edge isn't glow, it's depth of field.
Cloth is difficult in games. Sounds like you want to render instead.
So basically, I am instructed there is no polycount limit, but I am trying to keep it up to 20,000 max, and the engine is our own choice, let's put it that way, (I exported my previous model to Unity, and have little experience there, only because it is used by studios down in the town where I live) . Anyways as this is my practical portfolio, it would have to be efficient enough to pass exams, I will need to animate her for games standards in order to pass. So rendering at this moment doesn't really apply, I want these textures, to have them to show in my portfolio site, when I'll be looking for some internship later.
Back to the software, yeah, I forgot to mention that I'm using Max for animations and modeling, course requirement.
Thanks for the tip about the textures, I will play around and post updates asking for advice etc.
I will now show you my concept, previous model and work so far on new work.
To export cloth animation to a game engine, I've seen people bind the cloth to a system of bones, and drive the bone animation using a cloth sim. That way the sim is baked into bone animation with vertex weights on the mesh, which is very game friendly. Might take a bit of R&D though.
Check out Tech-Artists.org, lots of resources there for rigging.
http://tech-artists.org/forum/forumdisplay.php?11-Rigging-and-Visuals
Unity is a bit of a pain when it comes to shaders, which is how you would do the Xray effect. You either use their pre-built library of shaders, or if you want anything different you have to download a shader editor that works with Unity's format and build your own shaders. A bit of R&D there as well. Strumpy comes to mind, though I'm sure there are others.
http://u3d.as/content/strumpy-games/strumpy-shader-editor/1C4
You're doing non-standard stuff, so you're in for a bit of pain. But it should be really worth it since you'll learn a ton.
I have finished basic texturing diff, spec and normal, and the sculpt (pic)
Then I followed this bloke - i love this guy
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FZ0-lNBqigI
but it's a rendering tutorial, still exactly what I want
I'm including results of that, but how to make those materials now as maps?? Cuz, I'm not sure can you just simply use some kind of material like that inside unity though? or does it have to be texture maps?
If you have any link that could help me or idea it would be really great - do help me!! please, thanks!
For now I'm gonna go to play with finishing this model with cloth (or will I use garment so it follows) I don't know - I have found the simcloth3 for max and gonna try it, and test how it works in unity..
my old rig was bones on the veils, but it was a nightmare to animate it after, I'm looking for something that behaves naturally and is a quick solution..
There's a water shader in the Standard Assets package that has Fresnel.
http://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/HOWTO-Water.html
Ah, and thanks for Tech Artists site, signed up, and found you there
ohkey