Trying to figure out Cinematic Pipeline for Hero character

ISUther

Hello, 

I am struggling to find out good pipeline for hero character, 

1. Character is sculpted in Zbrush
2. Retopology is done using Topogun 2
3. UV-s are done using Unfold 3D (UDIM-s)
4. Texturing is done in Mari. 
I have multiple maps
 * Base color
 * Displacement
and Multy channel maps from XYZ texturing

Now i am trying to figure out best method how to proceed. 

1. I wanted to build VFX effect on top of the mo9del using Houdini
But i am having some problems. 1. is that not getting skin shader to work in Houdini very well. 
Tested with Mantra skin shader
Tested with Redshift rendering nodes also (in Houdini)
could not get arnold rendering engine to work in Houdini
Lack of UDIM tutorials and guides. 

Anyone here has worked of works in films? Has worked with game cinematic characters and shaders?
What pipeline would you sudgest?

RS7

Hi there,

What do you mean by "not getting skin shader to work in Houdini very well"?

Does it look bad or it does not render at all or what?

UDIM has very little to do with all that you are describing. UDIM is just alternate version to the traditional UV maps, it just has benefit of getting higher resolution textures. That's basically all there is. The rest of the lookdev workflow is pretty much the same. If you need to use UDIM, then you have to use software that supports UDIM and just place your texture sequence files to the correct coordinates. I'm sure there's some basic tutorial how to work with UDIMs in Houdini.

ISUther

Hey

I am so sorry for late reply. 
I managed to get some sort of skin shader with Redshift. 
And now trying to see what i can get with Arnold (i use Arnold in Houdini). 
Haveing mutilple issues. 
Here is list of those. 

Arnold renderer bug?
(Demo version) - Demo as i want to see what renderer can produce BEFORE i buy it. 

Houdini version is 17.0.416
Arnold renderer version is 3.2.1 -2711242
​Please take a look at short video i recorded with OBS
​Displacement works when i leave subdivision Iterations to 1 in geometry node arnold tab.
​But instantly when i increase it (to get more detail) i get gray render. 
​I atm exported out as exr from Mari. 
Displacement map are exported out as exr fromat
And as sRGB channel
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2fdACD704Ao&feature=youtu.be&fbclid=IwAR2p7n0-IG5LzYO1i3p8eldxS1YdyITW2W_XtLeSXEDXkjysFPG7ucpucOc

Other issue is that i get confused where to i plug in those different sss maps. 
As i am noob regarding shaders and especially skin shader day by day learning and trying to find information how to set up nodes correctly. 
1.) I exported displacement maps from mari as .exr files 
2.) SSS seems to work but having questions and issues how to shopw veins as i need veins in Skin shader and they have to look like they are under the skin. 
I managed to get skin shader to Ok result in Redshift renderer but i want to see what i can get with Arnold. 
Difference between arnold and Redshift is that Redshift is GPU rendering engine and Arnold is CPU rendering engine. 
3.) Old Skin shader (deprecated) had options for 
Shallow scatter color input

mid scatter color input

deep scatter color input

But as they say now use Standard surface shader. 
But this one under SSS has following inputs

subsurface

subsurface_color

subsurface_radius

subsurface_scale

Subsurface_anisotropy

And this confuses me. 
I can find a lot maya tutoprials but not houdini tutorials regarding arnold. 
And arnold for houdini and arnold for maya are not same. 
Shallow scatter color map (Seems to be same as Epidermal color map. This is Outer layer of the skin. Dead skin layer) currently i have pluged  this one in to "Standard Surface" shaderand in to "Subsurface color"

And getting confused where to plug those other 2 skin layer texture maps. 
As i have also Mid scatter map (This is layer where i wanted to paint also veins)

and also have Subdermal map (Deepest layer of skin)

I need to have option top plug in also veins for my model. 
Below you can see also what renders i got with using redshift.