@Fomori
Thanks for the input,you're not the first one to mention the eye distance issue ... might be because i worked without perspective in zbr(bad habit on my part) and later on was carried away on detailing and stuff ... will go back and fix those when i will have the time as well as some tips on metal i got on zbc
some powerful stuff available to artists/game developers directly inside maya ... after working days in a row on one piece surely is rewarding to view it inside maya with all the blings ... so your work will be appreciated by game devs ... i surely do:)
The Maya UberShader fades out tessellation based on camera distance. So it makes sense you cannot see it further away
yeah I guess, I just assumed tesselation would smooth out or perhaps exaggerate the overall character silhouette a bit as well but if the model has enough polys already and is a very close approximation of the high poly then I guess tessellation wouldn't make any difference from a medium distance. Its not a criticism more like an observation, I like the effect a lot, people should watch the video to see it in action.
Thanks for tackling this!! I've been meaning to try that ubershader for a while now, the demo videos from Autodesk sold me on it ... and now this, too!
Seems to me that Maya just beat Max when it comes to realtime presentation ... Viewport 2.0 is nice and sleek now, compared to the mess that is Nitrous.
yeah I guess, I just assumed tesselation would smooth out or perhaps exaggerate the overall character silhouette
If the base mesh was made lower poly and more was left over to tessellation and perhaps a VDM map that certainly would have happened.
In this case Paul choose to model a bit more in the base mesh and use tessellation for fine details..
Its up to the artist to decide.
The model could have been lower poly and still get the same results.
Its fine to observe and ctisize btw. It doesnt bother me at all.
I am glad to see it discussed.
It is a good thing for us to figure out when it makes sense to use tessellation and when not to.
On another note i am giving away some source files for this character ... mainly with the idea to help others that might be on the road to becoming game character artists and want to check out the model/textures/psd layout and what not ... but do with them as you wish.
Awesome work, and even awesomer giving away the source files. Thanks Paul!
Edit, for fun I threw her into Toolbag. If you intend to mess around with toolbag renders anymore (not that you need to, your shots look great) here are some tips. Most of this stuff isn't properly documented (working on that...):
Throw a gloss texture into the specular alpha
Desaturate the skin in the diffuse map a bit, the skin shader will bring the warmth back in
Toolbag has proper gamma correction for diffuse and spec maps, so you don't really need to have blue spec maps (unless this was an artistic choice, in which case disregard)
The translucency mask expects a color mask in the RGB (same as setting the Translucent Color, leave it white if you want to control that with the little color picker) and a depth mask in the Alpha (what you currently have in the RGB)
The Skin Tone/Mask file expects a tint color in the RGb (same as Dermis Color, just leave it white if you don't want an extra tint) and a mask in the alpha, which masks any other materials that aren't skin, so you would have the hair and all the little accessories black in the mask, and the skin white
Scattering slider blends between the standard shader and the skin shader, so crank that up
Subdermis Depth sets the strength for the skin shading gradient ramp, Subdermis Color sets the color, 0.7 or so is a good value
Scatter Smoothing sets the diffuse smoothing, which basically blends the normal map with the vertex normals for smoothing (but doesn't affect the specular). This helps soften up the diffuse lighting, again a value of 0.7 or so is good. Its important to use the skin mask, otherwise non-skin elements like the hair, cloth hair wrap, etc get diffuse smoothing and you don't really want that.
Some Specular Fresnel really helps with skin and hair, try a value of about 2 and then bump up the Specular Intensity to compensate
Unfortunately we can't use an anisotropic/direction map with the skin shader, this hair would be an awesome example for that, though it works really nicely as is with a bit of fresnel.
Anyway, hope this is helpful to you. I'm doing a more thorough writeup but maybe this will suffice until I'm done.
Seeing her spin around here with displacement mapping and all of this is really epic. Again, great work!
@urgaffel
That is a generic ground i used in the past alot ( when sending updates to client and what not ) but could not find the textures for the time being (i was migrating on a new PC while working on this character and not all the stuff i had previously was available on the new one) hence put a transparent mat on it to render it invisible as i was too lazy to re-export / import the geo without it so it showed up in wireframe view
@EarthQuake
Thanks for getting the time and explaining all that stuff ... surely will be helpful in the future
Would have been nice to build more maps for it : spec pow/roughness and reflectivity for start and that will break the materials on it more and add to the overall visuals ... but was short on time and got rushed on finishing it.
@Brygelsmack
I had received the "out of vmem" message a couple of time while working in maya though ... but i had more 4k texture files loaded and was trying to render higher resolutions with hwrender (near 3500 4000 px) so more vmem will surely help.
I have the 2G VMem version because at the time of buy i could not find anywhere on stock in my country any model/make with the 4G .I intend to buy a 30inch display in the future and thought more vmem would help nonetheless on higher resolution.
Can't believe I missed this. Amazing work. Even more amazing you're sharing all this stuff. Can't wait to check it out all. Good write up on the shader stuff too.
It seems Maya 2013.5 or the ubershader supports shadows realtime shadows.Did u use depth mapped or raytraced shadows on ur model in the viewport?Sadly,I am using maya 2013 and the realtime shaders I have tried do not work with shadows in the viewport but the normal shaders work fine.
Replies
Thanks for the input,you're not the first one to mention the eye distance issue ... might be because i worked without perspective in zbr(bad habit on my part) and later on was carried away on detailing and stuff ... will go back and fix those when i will have the time as well as some tips on metal i got on zbc
@Ben Cloward
some powerful stuff available to artists/game developers directly inside maya ... after working days in a row on one piece surely is rewarding to view it inside maya with all the blings ... so your work will be appreciated by game devs ... i surely do:)
yeah I guess, I just assumed tesselation would smooth out or perhaps exaggerate the overall character silhouette a bit as well but if the model has enough polys already and is a very close approximation of the high poly then I guess tessellation wouldn't make any difference from a medium distance. Its not a criticism more like an observation, I like the effect a lot, people should watch the video to see it in action.
Seems to me that Maya just beat Max when it comes to realtime presentation ... Viewport 2.0 is nice and sleek now, compared to the mess that is Nitrous.
If the base mesh was made lower poly and more was left over to tessellation and perhaps a VDM map that certainly would have happened.
In this case Paul choose to model a bit more in the base mesh and use tessellation for fine details..
Its up to the artist to decide.
The model could have been lower poly and still get the same results.
Its fine to observe and ctisize btw. It doesnt bother me at all.
I am glad to see it discussed.
It is a good thing for us to figure out when it makes sense to use tessellation and when not to.
@j3st3r 2.5-3 weeks
On another note i am giving away some source files for this character ... mainly with the idea to help others that might be on the road to becoming game character artists and want to check out the model/textures/psd layout and what not ... but do with them as you wish.
-geometry files ( fbx and ma : maya 2012 , maya 2013.5 )
http://www.paultosca.com/tt1/Nyra_ma_fbx.rar
-textures in tga format ( transparency is on alpha channel of diffuse textures)
http://www.paultosca.com/tt1/Nyra_TGAs.rar
-PSD source for head diffuse
http://www.paultosca.com/tt1/Nyra_head_d_PSD.rar
-PSD source for body diffuse ( since this is 4k and has quite some layers might be a bit unwieldy on systems with lower amount of RAM )
http://www.paultosca.com/tt1/Nyra_body_d_PSD.rar
Thanks, much appreciate!
Would it be possible to see an image with the ground detail as well? It isn't in any of the beauty shots you posted, only the wireframe...
Edit, for fun I threw her into Toolbag. If you intend to mess around with toolbag renders anymore (not that you need to, your shots look great) here are some tips. Most of this stuff isn't properly documented (working on that...):
- Throw a gloss texture into the specular alpha
- Desaturate the skin in the diffuse map a bit, the skin shader will bring the warmth back in
- Toolbag has proper gamma correction for diffuse and spec maps, so you don't really need to have blue spec maps (unless this was an artistic choice, in which case disregard)
- The translucency mask expects a color mask in the RGB (same as setting the Translucent Color, leave it white if you want to control that with the little color picker) and a depth mask in the Alpha (what you currently have in the RGB)
- The Skin Tone/Mask file expects a tint color in the RGb (same as Dermis Color, just leave it white if you don't want an extra tint) and a mask in the alpha, which masks any other materials that aren't skin, so you would have the hair and all the little accessories black in the mask, and the skin white
- Scattering slider blends between the standard shader and the skin shader, so crank that up
- Subdermis Depth sets the strength for the skin shading gradient ramp, Subdermis Color sets the color, 0.7 or so is a good value
- Scatter Smoothing sets the diffuse smoothing, which basically blends the normal map with the vertex normals for smoothing (but doesn't affect the specular). This helps soften up the diffuse lighting, again a value of 0.7 or so is good. Its important to use the skin mask, otherwise non-skin elements like the hair, cloth hair wrap, etc get diffuse smoothing and you don't really want that.
- Some Specular Fresnel really helps with skin and hair, try a value of about 2 and then bump up the Specular Intensity to compensate
Unfortunately we can't use an anisotropic/direction map with the skin shader, this hair would be an awesome example for that, though it works really nicely as is with a bit of fresnel.Anyway, hope this is helpful to you. I'm doing a more thorough writeup but maybe this will suffice until I'm done.
Seeing her spin around here with displacement mapping and all of this is really epic. Again, great work!
That is a generic ground i used in the past alot ( when sending updates to client and what not ) but could not find the textures for the time being (i was migrating on a new PC while working on this character and not all the stuff i had previously was available on the new one) hence put a transparent mat on it to render it invisible as i was too lazy to re-export / import the geo without it
@EarthQuake
Thanks for getting the time and explaining all that stuff ... surely will be helpful in the future
Would have been nice to build more maps for it : spec pow/roughness and reflectivity for start and that will break the materials on it more and add to the overall visuals ... but was short on time and got rushed on finishing it.
glad if it helps others
@NB-DanTE
8 bit
@BradMyers82
happy to hear you like it
@Brygelsmack
I had received the "out of vmem" message a couple of time while working in maya though
I have the 2G VMem version because at the time of buy i could not find anywhere on stock in my country any model/make with the 4G .I intend to buy a 30inch display in the future and thought more vmem would help nonetheless on higher resolution.
Added to the wiki here, will upload the files too, for redundancy.
http://wiki.polycount.net/NyraCharacter