@Slosh: I think I have the iris size fixed, along with the negative space area underneath them. How's that look to you? @stickadtroja You were right, the eye shape needed to be smaller. Several hours of toying with it, and now it looks more reasonable.
I'm still not getting the satisfactory volume and look that I want, and I can't specifically tell if it's because I'm not using enough hair planes, or if it's the alpha.
My suspicions: 1) It's the alpha. 2) Need more hair planes. 3) It's the texture itself.
Regarding the alpha, the bakes I'm getting Knald are not aliasing as I would like them. Only reason I guess is that because the strands are so small that aliasing at that resolution doesn't help. If this is the issue, does anyone have any advice on how to doctor it to something useable? Thank you in advance!
To note, I haven't done a clean transfer normal operation yet. I have a feeling that won't solve the foundational issue I think I'm seeing here.
To see the progress in this thread is pretty awesome. Shes coming along very nicely, the only thing that is bothering is the white of the sclera, it feels almost like pure white, it looks like you have some red to the side of the eye, but it is not coming though in the latest renders.
The best tip that I can give you for hair is that you should model it with the alpha already on there, even if it's a temporary alpha and unwrap. This will allow you to judge whether there are any visible gaps. You have to model the planes snugly enough that you can't see into or under them. You will also need to increase the polygon density on the hair strips, at least for the top layers. That will actually allow you to make them more snug without intersections. You should try and avoid intersections as much as possible.
Other than that, I would also paint hair on the head mesh, to make sure you can never see parts of the scalp and also to create the impression of baby hairs near the hairline.
Make sure your normal has actual depth to it, and not just a strand-like mess without apparent volume. You'll want to give the impression of deeper locks of hair and an overall wave.
Also, hair will only really look good if you have an anisotropic shader applied.
Anyway, I hope that helps. Hair is certainly one of the toughest parts of character creation to get right.
I've decided to resculpt the bust since the low-poly model is terribly off.
Reference photos seem to all have the landmarks of the face in different positions most likely due to camera angle, FOVs, and facial expressions, so my hope is that I've gotten it to a happy medium.
Everyone else who's better at likenesses than I am, what can I do to fix this?
My desire is to make this as photo real as possible, but I'm not sure how to go about that with purely brush-based means. @ysalex old tutorials have been very helpful though.
If I'm supposed to use photo references where the skin lacks shadow, can anyone point me to a free resource for that?
Or push comes to shove, a paid resource for that?
The second image I've attaches is the results I'd ideally want to end up with on the final textures.
Is there anyway to avoid having to clone/stencil in skin textures from photo references to achieve high-quality, photoreal skin textures, or is it recommended to stencil in the skin textures from a photoreal source, while making adjustments with painting programs?
Current skin pores make her skin look too "grainy" at the moment, and it's overall a tad too strong. Look more at some photo references to see that the size of the pores and skin details vary a lot on the face. It's also a good idea to completely desaturate photo references to black & white and play around with brightness and contrast to pop out details for references.
What comes to painting the albedo of the skin, I was actually using photos to project a skin texture, but I noticed that I got some blotches of color not matching up neighbour areas of projections. I guess it was just a lack of my skills to use projection painting properly.
I was like that I can't create anything with that, but it actually helped a lot. But you also have to consider the color zones of the face (without make-up, of course, heh), roughly like this. This is usually added after Yuri's basecolor of the skin:
- yellowish forehead (not much, but a little bit) - reddish nose, cheek area and ears - purpleish/blueish hues on the eyesocket area - reddish-purpleish lips if not using any lipstick
Looking at your current skin textures of your character, they feel slightly "too realistic" compared to your style. She's in more like a bit stylized realism now, which isn't a bad thing. For example eyes are bigger than normally. Nevertheless, she's looking good and this hand painted technique could give her personal touch and "not so realistic" end result, depending on your painting skills. So, after all I recommend to paint the skin by yourself. (;
Summarizing my criticism:
- redo the pores/details of the skin - hand paint skin textures
What has been accomplished: - Hair textures redone. I think I solved a BIG issue with my pipeline. Thank you @Slosh, Mike Steele, and Charles. - Adjusted skin shader in Marmoset to look "better." (Been blowing out my lights past value of 1 too much in a lot of places. Thank you @MrHobo!) - Added Bottom Eye Wetness mesh. - Added frayed jean ends. -
What I am seeing that I need help with - The skin looks "flat" to me still, and lacks "body." Not sure what else I need to do, or what I need to fix, to make it look better in terms of "as realistic as bloody possible. I think I may have forgotten some bits of information from MrHobo. What do I need to do to improve it? Do I need to resculpt it? - Hair needs more love. More variety of card flow, etc. I'm looking at the recent Uncharted 4 character art as a guide. - Adjustment for likeness will be done at the end once I have my textures locked in. - Rig needs to be done.
Did more work on the hair and eyelashes. The actress' hair sticks quite close to her scalp, so I'm keeping the volume relatively where it is now. Maybe I'll make a more volumnious alternate.
So from what you guys can see from my skin layers, is there anything I'm missing to help add depth to the skin textures?
Right now, I'm reading it as flat still, but I might be overthinking. Other people have told me it's in the right direction, but just want to make sure.
Hi Brian. I have been recently learning about creating hair in ue4, I am not sure if this has the feathered feeling, but I think you just need to make the hair strands thinner and/or make the hair strands less opaque near the ends.
Also, adding some variety to your hair map can help; By adding a few that are meant for filling in the volume to make sure no gaps appear in the inner most layers and thinner ones on the top most to give a more unique feel to it, and it also helps to add depth to the hair. I also think that having the edge loop in the middle is kind of a waste, instead having more horizontal divisions or having another strip of hair will probably be polygons better spent.
I believe you need more layers. I was only using two as a test, so you can see the edges of the hair planes fairly clearly, but adding more will probably yield better results and can be used to hide them.
@stororokw Would you mind sharing the texture work files you have for those hair textures? I think I get what you mean geometry wise, but I swear this might jsut be a texture issue for me. Your black hair test on your artstation is the next baby step I want to at least get to.
@stororokw Would you mind sharing the texture work files you have for those hair textures? I think I get what you mean geometry wise, but I swear this might jsut be a texture issue for me. Your black hair test on your artstation is the next baby step I want to at least get to.
I dont mind. I updated some of the textures since then. I think it is best to test in an outdoor scene with direct and indirect (skylight) right off the bat. There are quite a lot of textures that need to be baked though and some are specific to UE4's hair shader:
For the tangents: green stretches the specular horizontally, red vertically, yellow (mixing green and red) diagonally, and blue inverts the direction. Heres a gif showing just the specular highlights and how it shifts.
@stororokw Your alpha map almost looks like a depth map. Gradations in each strange clump instead of a flate white cut out.
I'm extracting mine from a bake that has all the strands flat against a plane. I extract white vertex colors, and get a flat white cut out.
Maybe it's that, but how did you extract your alpha from whatever hair mesh you were baking from? It wasn't a depth map bake was it?
The depth map looks similar because it was rendered with an opacity map, I stopped doing that, but was too lazy to redo the render. I am using hair and fur with v-ray in 3dsmax. You can get the alpha channel through the frame buffer.
@stororokw There's gotta be a way to do get the"alpha map from frame buffer" with what I have. I've got Knald, toolbag 3, and Maya. No vray or Max that I can rely on.
I'm at a loss ><. Maybe there's a way to blend the maps in PS from the bakes I get.
@stororokw There's gotta be a way to do get the"alpha map from frame buffer" with what I have. I've got Knald, toolbag 3, and Maya. No vray or Max that I can rely on.
I'm at a loss ><. Maybe there's a way to blend the maps in PS from the bakes I get.
You can use xgen with mental ray, arnold, or renderman. use a ramp node mapped to the transparency and render it out. You can get the opacity from the render view/window.
Really nice progress! I don't know if it's the angle or fov but her head looks slightly too big on that petite body. Other than that I have nothing to add, great work!
I think the opacity from the roots are extending too far out. I found this breakdown helpful(https://www.artstation.com/artwork/lakRG). the opacity at the roots only extends a small amount into the main bulk of the hair. I agree with TeriyakiStyle. I think there needs to be some layers. You can try looking at the tutorial below for some ideas. http://area.autodesk.jp/column/tutorial/character_arpeggio/03_hair/ You can try watching the video at 15x speed or something since there is a lot of vert pulling.
Replies
I'm still not getting the satisfactory volume and look that I want, and I can't specifically tell if it's because I'm not using enough hair planes, or if it's the alpha.
My suspicions:
1) It's the alpha.
2) Need more hair planes.
3) It's the texture itself.
Regarding the alpha, the bakes I'm getting Knald are not aliasing as I would like them. Only reason I guess is that because the strands are so small that aliasing at that resolution doesn't help. If this is the issue, does anyone have any advice on how to doctor it to something useable? Thank you in advance!
To note, I haven't done a clean transfer normal operation yet. I have a feeling that won't solve the foundational issue I think I'm seeing here.
Cheers!
Other than that, I would also paint hair on the head mesh, to make sure you can never see parts of the scalp and also to create the impression of baby hairs near the hairline.
Make sure your normal has actual depth to it, and not just a strand-like mess without apparent volume. You'll want to give the impression of deeper locks of hair and an overall wave.
Also, hair will only really look good if you have an anisotropic shader applied.
Anyway, I hope that helps. Hair is certainly one of the toughest parts of character creation to get right.
I just became SUPER particular about making sure the planes weren't intersecting in separate skull caps.
I've decided to resculpt the bust since the low-poly model is terribly off.
Reference photos seem to all have the landmarks of the face in different positions most likely due to camera angle, FOVs, and facial expressions, so my hope is that I've gotten it to a happy medium.
Everyone else who's better at likenesses than I am, what can I do to fix this?
Thank you!
My desire is to make this as photo real as possible, but I'm not sure how to go about that with purely brush-based means. @ysalex
old tutorials have been very helpful though.
If I'm supposed to use photo references where the skin lacks shadow, can anyone point me to a free resource for that?
Or push comes to shove, a paid resource for that?
The second image I've attaches is the results I'd ideally want to end up with on the final textures.
What comes to painting the albedo of the skin, I was actually using photos to project a skin texture, but I noticed that I got some blotches of color not matching up neighbour areas of projections. I guess it was just a lack of my skills to use projection painting properly.
So, then I found out this great hand painting guideline made by our dear member, ysalex here:
https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/85/c6/2e/85c62e7c59ab1d6b77d7aa8971436246.jpg
I was like that I can't create anything with that, but it actually helped a lot. But you also have to consider the color zones of the face (without make-up, of course, heh), roughly like this. This is usually added after Yuri's basecolor of the skin:
- yellowish forehead (not much, but a little bit)
- reddish nose, cheek area and ears
- purpleish/blueish hues on the eyesocket area
- reddish-purpleish lips if not using any lipstick
Looking at your current skin textures of your character, they feel slightly "too realistic" compared to your style. She's in more like a bit stylized realism now, which isn't a bad thing. For example eyes are bigger than normally. Nevertheless, she's looking good and this hand painted technique could give her personal touch and "not so realistic" end result, depending on your painting skills. So, after all I recommend to paint the skin by yourself. (;
Summarizing my criticism:
- redo the pores/details of the skin
- hand paint skin textures
Blocking in Textures in Substance Designer.
Also spent time creating fabric substance materials for this and others.
Missing elements:
- Fingernails
- Frayed Jean edges
- Rig and Pose
- Move the face closer to Johanna Sotomura's likeness.
Does anyone have any critiques about where it is at now?
What has been accomplished:
- Hair textures redone. I think I solved a BIG issue with my pipeline. Thank you @Slosh, Mike Steele, and Charles.
- Adjusted skin shader in Marmoset to look "better." (Been blowing out my lights past value of 1 too much in a lot of places. Thank you @MrHobo!)
- Added Bottom Eye Wetness mesh.
- Added frayed jean ends.
-
What I am seeing that I need help with
- The skin looks "flat" to me still, and lacks "body." Not sure what else I need to do, or what I need to fix, to make it look better in terms of "as realistic as bloody possible. I think I may have forgotten some bits of information from MrHobo. What do I need to do to improve it? Do I need to resculpt it?
- Hair needs more love. More variety of card flow, etc. I'm looking at the recent Uncharted 4 character art as a guide.
- Adjustment for likeness will be done at the end once I have my textures locked in.
- Rig needs to be done.
Its a little hard to tell whats been updated or not due to your lighting. Bring up your main light so we can read your textures more clearly.
Did more work on the hair and eyelashes. The actress' hair sticks quite close to her scalp, so I'm keeping the volume relatively where it is now. Maybe I'll make a more volumnious alternate.
I still need to soften that philtrum.
So from what you guys can see from my skin layers, is there anything I'm missing to help add depth to the skin textures?
Right now, I'm reading it as flat still, but I might be overthinking. Other people have told me it's in the right direction, but just want to make sure.
Roller Girl WP35a
Right now focusing on trying to get the face as close as possible to Johanna Sotomura's face.
If anyone has any advice, please let me know, because I can't seemm to get a bead on her likeness.
Also replaced the eyebrows with alpha cards like Uncharted 4.
Beelining to finish this out. Does anyone have any final pieces of feedback I can implement to get this polished as much as possible?
Also, adding some variety to your hair map can help; By adding a few that are meant for filling in the volume to make sure no gaps appear in the inner most layers and thinner ones on the top most to give a more unique feel to it, and it also helps to add depth to the hair. I also think that having the edge loop in the middle is kind of a waste, instead having more horizontal divisions or having another strip of hair will probably be polygons better spent.
I believe you need more layers. I was only using two as a test, so you can see the edges of the hair planes fairly clearly, but adding more will probably yield better results and can be used to hide them.
Would you mind sharing the texture work files you have for those hair textures? I think I get what you mean geometry wise, but I swear this might jsut be a texture issue for me. Your black hair test on your artstation is the next baby step I want to at least get to.
Result
- Alpha map
- Ambient occlusion
- Zdepth
- Normals
- Unique strand variation
- tangent map
- Noise to break up specular
For the tangents: green stretches the specular horizontally, red vertically, yellow (mixing green and red) diagonally, and blue inverts the direction.Heres a gif showing just the specular highlights and how it shifts.
Your alpha map almost looks like a depth map. Gradations in each strange clump instead of a flate white cut out.
I'm extracting mine from a bake that has all the strands flat against a plane. I extract white vertex colors, and get a flat white cut out.
Maybe it's that, but how did you extract your alpha from whatever hair mesh you were baking from? It wasn't a depth map bake was it?
The depth map looks similar because it was rendered with an opacity map, I stopped doing that, but was too lazy to redo the render. I am using hair and fur with v-ray in 3dsmax. You can get the alpha channel through the frame buffer.
There's gotta be a way to do get the"alpha map from frame buffer" with what I have. I've got Knald, toolbag 3, and Maya. No vray or Max that I can rely on.
I'm at a loss ><. Maybe there's a way to blend the maps in PS from the bakes I get.
@storotokw Thank you so much! The hair has made leaps and bounds!
Anything else I can do to improve this?
I agree with TeriyakiStyle. I think there needs to be some layers. You can try looking at the tutorial below for some ideas.
http://area.autodesk.jp/column/tutorial/character_arpeggio/03_hair/
You can try watching the video at 15x speed or something since there is a lot of vert pulling.
Samulnori inspired Tshirt