Little update: I've mainly been busy on the rendering side of things: now I have a better ambient lighting system, so the in shadow surfaces look a bit nicer. I also implemented a slightly better AA solution.
Also, now I've got one of those juicy LUT shader for color grading. So I can make my presentation look all moody if I so desire.
Hello people, after a looooong time, I can finally go back to this project. I missed working on my personal projects very much!
I have been redoing this lady's hair from scratch. There's still more work to do on it but I'm quite pleased with how this is going so far. So, here's an update:
A bit of progress on this piece: I have been reassessing some of what I originally had in mind. I kept being unhappy with her hairstyle. So I decided to change it. I think it looks much nicer now. It's still unpolished though. Also I ditched the raincoat. Reason being: achieving everything I had in mind would require a huge amount of research. And while I focus on research, my portfolio keeps looking like ass. So I figured that will be a challenge for another project.
Really good job so far! I especieally like her hard features and angular shapes, a very unique face but it looks great.
One thing I think you should add is that both the bag but also the straps on the legs should affect the fabric a bit. But adding the backpack is way more interesting than with the raincoat from before. So keep going in this direction and it should be gold.
Thank you @Nuclear Angel. I'm glad you like the direction this is going!
I'm planning on adding the influence of the backpack on the t-shirt. For now I just chucked the backpack model in there and moved a few vertices just to make sure the straps don't clip inside the t-shirt. Just wanted to check that it looks good volume-wise. That is still very wip.
The strap around her right leg won't have any influence on the fabric though as it will be allowed to slide up and down a bit. I still want to demo my rigging skills on this character.
Awesome work man! Been following this thread for a little while and it's cool to see your workflow. Just out of sheer curiosity, did you ever continue to work on that plugin for Maya to convert MD mesh to quads?
@HarlequinWerewolf Last time I updated it in February this year. After that I had too many other things to worry about. But just in case you're not aware, it's out already!
I remember following your progress with this months ago, and she turned out great. Awesome work, Jacopo. What makes this crazy that it's rendered in your own engine, instead of Marmoset or UE4. How can you be so damn good with both character art and programming at the same time? You must be one of those game dev gods! You eved wrote that "jQuadrangulateCloth" tool of yours. Mindblowing.
I'm trying hard to be just a 3D character artist, and not knowing or understaring code at all, haha. I'm not worthy, lol.
@FourtyNights Thank you, man! Really appreciated! Been good at many things comes with a catch though: one's ability to focus gets spreaded over many things. So it takes longer to improve or get anything done. While if you focus on just becoming good as a character artist, there is a pretty good chance that you'll eventually become better at that than I am. Also many game studios tend to promote specialists rather than generalists. Just keep doing what you like and try to learn something new with each project. Eventually you'll look back at your former self and realise you came a long way and will suddenly be able to lift Thor's hammer! XD
Wow, amazing work my friend. And a great thread! just read the entire thing, good stuff!
Where did you learn to write your own render engine? For the underlying theories I mean, any YT channels or blogs that where of particular help to you?
@tgm79 Well I was going for realism but I might not be quite there yet.
@m00k Thanks man! Well to me it all begun with wondering why some things used to be more flexible and look somewhat better in UE3 than in UE4. So I started by learning the difference between "forward rendering" and "deferred rendering". At the time I couldn't really wrap my head around that difference so I kept googling stuff and checking random OpenGL YouToobe tutorials for beginners. It really was just a process of piecing things together in the beginning. As I was learning more and more I decided that it was time to get some proper references and got myself a copy of "Game Programming Patterns" by Robert Nystrom and, after that, "Game Engine Architecture" by Jason Gregory (from Naughty Dog). The second one is really good to get a good idea of how the whole thing is supposed to work. It's a rather massive and quite pricey book. Meanwhile I was gathering PDFs of many white papers about many different rendering techniques. Some of the techniques I'm using I came up with myself (e.g: the skin shader is all myself). Others are implemented by studying the researches in those whitepapers (currently I'm using something called "stochastic transparency" for things like the hair of my character and "moment shadow mapping" for the shadows). That still is basically a matter of googling techniques for doing a specific task. Much more recently I discovered the existence of a really nice YT channel called "The Cerno" and the guy explains a lot of stuff about C++ and OpenGL in general and, more recently, he started a series about how to write a game engine. I checked many of his video and the quality of the teaching is really good. So I guess that could be a pretty good place to start.
@jacopoS Thanks for the lengthy response man! I'll look into those sources! I've always been a why guy so I like to know at least some of the underlying technologies and theories of the stuff I'm using, I might not end up programming an engine like yourself but I'll be a little wiser nonetheless. Thanks again!
Replies
I've mainly been busy on the rendering side of things:
now I have a better ambient lighting system, so the in shadow surfaces look a bit nicer. I also implemented a slightly better AA solution.
Also, now I've got one of those juicy LUT shader for color grading. So I can make my presentation look all moody if I so desire.
after a looooong time, I can finally go back to this project.
I missed working on my personal projects very much!
I have been redoing this lady's hair from scratch. There's still more work to do on it but I'm quite pleased with how this is going so far. So, here's an update:
I have been reassessing some of what I originally had in mind. I kept being unhappy with her hairstyle. So I decided to change it. I think it looks much nicer now. It's still unpolished though.
Also I ditched the raincoat. Reason being: achieving everything I had in mind would require a huge amount of research. And while I focus on research, my portfolio keeps looking like ass. So I figured that will be a challenge for another project.
One thing I think you should add is that both the bag but also the straps on the legs should affect the fabric a bit. But adding the backpack is way more interesting than with the raincoat from before. So keep going in this direction and it should be gold.
I'm planning on adding the influence of the backpack on the t-shirt. For now I just chucked the backpack model in there and moved a few vertices just to make sure the straps don't clip inside the t-shirt. Just wanted to check that it looks good volume-wise. That is still very wip.
The strap around her right leg won't have any influence on the fabric though as it will be allowed to slide up and down a bit. I still want to demo my rigging skills on this character.
Head over to my ArtStation for more shots and fun stuff!
Cheers man!
It means a lot coming from you. I really admire your work!
@Ashervisalis
Thank you!
Unbelievable tekkers
Thank you!
@HarlequinWerewolf
Last time I updated it in February this year. After that I had too many other things to worry about. But just in case you're not aware, it's out already!
Thank you, man! Really appreciated!
Been good at many things comes with a catch though: one's ability to focus gets spreaded over many things. So it takes longer to improve or get anything done. While if you focus on just becoming good as a character artist, there is a pretty good chance that you'll eventually become better at that than I am. Also many game studios tend to promote specialists rather than generalists.
Just keep doing what you like and try to learn something new with each project. Eventually you'll look back at your former self and realise you came a long way and will suddenly be able to lift Thor's hammer! XD
Where did you learn to write your own render engine? For the underlying theories I mean, any YT channels or blogs that where of particular help to you?
Thank you so much!
@tgm79
Well I was going for realism but I might not be quite there yet.
@m00k
Thanks man!
Well to me it all begun with wondering why some things used to be more flexible and look somewhat better in UE3 than in UE4. So I started by learning the difference between "forward rendering" and "deferred rendering". At the time I couldn't really wrap my head around that difference so I kept googling stuff and checking random OpenGL YouToobe tutorials for beginners.
It really was just a process of piecing things together in the beginning.
As I was learning more and more I decided that it was time to get some proper references and got myself a copy of "Game Programming Patterns" by Robert Nystrom and, after that, "Game Engine Architecture" by Jason Gregory (from Naughty Dog). The second one is really good to get a good idea of how the whole thing is supposed to work. It's a rather massive and quite pricey book.
Meanwhile I was gathering PDFs of many white papers about many different rendering techniques. Some of the techniques I'm using I came up with myself (e.g: the skin shader is all myself). Others are implemented by studying the researches in those whitepapers (currently I'm using something called "stochastic transparency" for things like the hair of my character and "moment shadow mapping" for the shadows). That still is basically a matter of googling techniques for doing a specific task.
Much more recently I discovered the existence of a really nice YT channel called "The Cerno" and the guy explains a lot of stuff about C++ and OpenGL in general and, more recently, he started a series about how to write a game engine. I checked many of his video and the quality of the teaching is really good. So I guess that could be a pretty good place to start.
Thanks for the lengthy response man! I'll look into those sources! I've always been a why guy so I like to know at least some of the underlying technologies and theories of the stuff I'm using, I might not end up programming an engine like yourself but I'll be a little wiser nonetheless. Thanks again!