Cinematic / VFX Specific Workflow Question
polycounter lvl 4
Hey guys,
Please help!
I'm currently working on a character which I aim to get to as high level of quality as I can (hopefully cinematic / feature film grade). Aiming for something of this quality:
I've chosen a famous and an easily recognisable character, so the priority is to get the likeness as close as possible to the real subject. With this in mind, I'd like to incorporate displacement skin scans such as those provided by texturing.xyz / SurfaceMimic. I'm aware that these scans are normally projected/painted in Mari onto mesh to generate the displacement map. However, what I don't understand is...
1. What happens to the sculpted model in this case?
All of the tutorials I've seen for displacement painting, start off with a basic base model (~50k poly head)... so does this mean that the actual sculpting stage (e.g. in ZBrush) is unnecessary, or, is the sculpt displacement baked out (Zbrush) and then somehow combined with the one later painted in Mari? I'm pretty certain that that's not the case, so...
2. If the displacement is solely derived from painting the scans in Mari, then from a likeness standpoint, what's the approach for incorporating unique skin landmarks, bumps, wrinkles etc. which would otherwise be sculpted in by hand?
Basically, I think what I'm getting at is, how do I keep that uniquely sculpted detail in Zbrush whilst also being able to use the realism derived from actual facial scans?
If it's simply a choice between picking one method over the other, then I feel like excluding skin scans is going to be quite a big blow to realism since so much valuable information can be gained from pore details, flow of wrinkles etc, which would otherwise be extremely difficult or impossible to sculpt by hand.
If anyone with industry knowledge can shed some light on how displacement maps are handled for realistic characters, I'd really appreciate a response!
Thank you.
Please help!
I'm currently working on a character which I aim to get to as high level of quality as I can (hopefully cinematic / feature film grade). Aiming for something of this quality:
I've chosen a famous and an easily recognisable character, so the priority is to get the likeness as close as possible to the real subject. With this in mind, I'd like to incorporate displacement skin scans such as those provided by texturing.xyz / SurfaceMimic. I'm aware that these scans are normally projected/painted in Mari onto mesh to generate the displacement map. However, what I don't understand is...
1. What happens to the sculpted model in this case?
All of the tutorials I've seen for displacement painting, start off with a basic base model (~50k poly head)... so does this mean that the actual sculpting stage (e.g. in ZBrush) is unnecessary, or, is the sculpt displacement baked out (Zbrush) and then somehow combined with the one later painted in Mari? I'm pretty certain that that's not the case, so...
2. If the displacement is solely derived from painting the scans in Mari, then from a likeness standpoint, what's the approach for incorporating unique skin landmarks, bumps, wrinkles etc. which would otherwise be sculpted in by hand?
Basically, I think what I'm getting at is, how do I keep that uniquely sculpted detail in Zbrush whilst also being able to use the realism derived from actual facial scans?
If it's simply a choice between picking one method over the other, then I feel like excluding skin scans is going to be quite a big blow to realism since so much valuable information can be gained from pore details, flow of wrinkles etc, which would otherwise be extremely difficult or impossible to sculpt by hand.
If anyone with industry knowledge can shed some light on how displacement maps are handled for realistic characters, I'd really appreciate a response!
Thank you.
Replies
higend stuff is done with three diffrent maps... sculpted dispmap + painted + noise
renderman and redshift does have nodes to combine dispmaps...
https://docs.redshift3d.com/display/RSDOCS/Displacement+Blender?product=maya
or with arnold and plus minus nodes...
https://texturing.xyz/pages/non-destructive-and-interactive-workflow-using-texturingxyz-maps
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what i do is i use the painted/projected textures from xyz to displace my highres sculpt in mudbox...
just create a new layer in mudbox and use displace from texture... i do that cause you can fix issues you cant see in mari or anhance areas you dont like... in the end i bake a new map in mud...
https://texturing.xyz/pages/peter-zoppi-devgru-head-making-of