Zombie Beast

Japhir

Hey guys.
I know there are quite a few tutorials on painting fur, but i just can't get it right for my current Character. I tried painting it in with a blotted brush, and with a brush with a couple of hairs (and then with some jittering here and there) but both didn't work out very well. The problem really is, that i've already laid in so many colors and shapes that i find it very hard to make good looking fur. and there's also the fact that he's... blue. and a zombie. so any ideas on how to do it?

here is a shot of my character:



any and all help is appreciated!

Mark Dygert

Well fur would replace some of the finer muscle details you have. If you're to paint fur on this character its going to require quite a bit of rework and you'll probably need to dig up a bunch of ref.

You can apply a hair/fur modifier and bake that into you're diffuse. You can also bake hair/fur to planes to make tuffs of hair. I've done this many many times for our characters.
http://www.vigville.com/tutorials/hair/

Daaark

Why not a few quads that have an alpha'd hair texture bit? he'd have fuzzy arms and legs that way.

Japhir

thanks guys!
i already knew about alpha mapping hair, but i didn't know your little trick there vig, so thanks! i tried it out in a new scene, but somehow the renderer won't render the fur... it first says: rendering scene (or something like that) and then after a while: rendering fur and hair (or something similar) but it doesn't show anything. i loaded a default one.

but either way, this doesn't solve my problem, because i'm out of triangles for this character, so i need to paint it all in there.
thanks again!

Eric Chadwick

Katherine Dinger has some good hair/fur tuts.
http://div.dyndns.org/EK/tutorial/

Japhir

thanks eric! great tut.
here is what i've got so far:

Joao Sapiro

dude that texture needs anything but fur at the moment, the lightsource is really weird and it is also very muddy , just look at bobo work , or b1ll etc, so many good artists that you can study the work

Rick Stirling

I recommend a minor adjustment to the UV's. Instead of having the head sideways, rotate it 90 degrees and place it where the belt and foot are at.

Japhir

thanks guys.

Johny, could you be more specific? what areas look muddy and how do you think i could improve them?
good suggestion rick, thanks.

update:


hmm, this might need to be moved to Pimping and Previews ... under the title "Zombie Beast" or something? anyone? .

monster

BoBo has a couple of nice fur creatures on his site...

http://www.bobotheseal.com/portfolio/TitanQuest/IL_RatMan_TQ_Texture.jpg
http://www.bobotheseal.com/portfolio/Contract/beastwarrior_skin.jpg

Joao Sapiro

i could be more specific, but its so obvious , just look at bobo work or b1ll , peppi , etc all the great master and youll see a good texture with color , lightning usage and shape , just look and learn

Japhir

thanks monster, forgot about those.

Johny: hm ok, will do .

zombeaahhhrrhg


i wanted to add some more grossness and wounds etc. and added color variation. the shape/definition of the fur still isn't there yet.

Em.

It's getting better, definitely in the right direction.
I think the problem with the fur is right now it's kind of got a waterfall effect going on, it's all just running down his leg. If you look at the fur that Bobo painted up there some of the hairs have subtle flicks to the left and right and bends. He goes in and pops some highlights and darkens other areas to give it depth and an undercoat. Right now you have pretty much just 2 dominant colors, dark blue and the whiteish grey highlight color. Try being more selective aboue where you're putting your highlights and maybe try concentrating on clumps and shapes of hair esp on the leg. Keep it up, you're not too far away from getting it.

ScoobyDoofus

above and beyond the fur, you're global lighting is irregular and I think thats what Johny is trying to get at.

Try baking a nice directional and GI bake lighting pass and layer those into your diffuse map. Work in grayscale only to get nice volumes defined and all your critical stuff reading well at intended viewing distance. Then drop in a layer or 12 to colorize your result.

artstream

Really amazing work. Just wow. The one thing I see though is the green looks too green; almost looks healthy. Maybe add in some dirty yellows and tone back the strength of the green.

Japhir

small update, i baked some lighting and added some subtle fur variation. and i toned down the green gooey stuff. this image is unlit.

oglemeanimations thanks! i added some variation and got rid of the waterfall effect. I'll still work on the rest of your crits!
ScoobyDoofus thanks! done and done. oh, but i didn't do the black and white stuff yet, i'll look into that.
kaoticvisions thanks! desurated and darkened the green some, good suggestion.

Wells

I think it would be cool to have large patches of fur missing, like he has the mange.

question: what color is Beast's skin?

His fur is too long. Need lots of little strokes. He's more furry than hairy, i believe. he needs some color variation to his blues to make it more visually interesting. looks like you've mostly shaded with black and white over the blue.

i like his crookedy pose.

Japhir

thanks sectaurs!
googling mange ... without filters is not very good. all the references of horrible wounds i had to go through for this project so far are kind of disturbing .
the beast is blue.
i'll work on it! thanks again!

Wells

omg another sectaurs paintover!



i tried to make the fur much more subtle - it's tough! continued the fur onto his chest - it would be vertically aligned, not horizontally like the muscles. added more hues and splatters to the blue fur, with greens in the shadows to give it an unhealthy pallor. Punched up the belt a lot with some orange shading and bloooooood. tightened up the graphics on level Face to try and read a bit better. copy-pasta'd some gore into his wounds.

Japhir

Sectaurs you sir are a hero, and not just some hero but MY hero. thanks a lot .
i applied it to the model and the gore bits look especially good. the belt is awesome too. thanks again! (just when i added loooads of blooood right before i saw your post )

Vitor

Perhaps my crappy screen is not helping, and I apology for that, but I I think the more you work on it the hardest it is to understand what is going on the model. Too much stuff, too much noise all around, saturated blue, red, green all over, hard contrast, no light source clearly defined. I'd take a step back and block out the major forms before you start detailing it. And would let the fur for the very end, giving it just a very subtle touch.

By no means I'm a great texture artist, so doing a paint over might sound a bit ironic, but I think it helps showing my point. Basically, work on the big chunks first, make it easy to understand even from far, using a classic light source. And just then start the details.



Hope it helps, and I did got some fun on the overpaint. I miss diffuse map painting...

Japhir

thanks Vitor! nice paintover.
i did what you suggested, partially. i started from scratch, made that work (with lighting etc.) and then merged some parts together with the old version, and then painted some more.
i really want to stop working on this now (the deadline for the comp also passed), but crits are still welcome. i'm not too proud of this one . i think i did learn a lot though, so thanks for that!


thanks again for all the comments i received!

Mark Dygert

And now we have forms!! Nice going!

Grats to Vitor for the paint over.

BradMyers82

Yeah, having the contrast like this helps the readablity of the character a ton.

I like the detail in the other version, but it lack contrast and wasn't reading very well like others have said. My guess, is you probably got too caught up in working on it that you couldn't step back and look at it subjectivly (which happens to me all the time).

Its a shame you couldn't have transfered some more of that detail from your previous version and keep the forms working as well as you do with your last update.

Do you save all your work on various layers in photoshop? I was thinking that you could have gotten a bit more color variatioin in there from your previous diffuse. I get what your saying about not being the most happy with the turn out of this one, I have seen some really awsome stuff from you, but as long as you learned something valuable from this, that will serve you better in the long run. Congrats on seeing this threw.