Hey guys, first time poster extremely long lurker, since about 2003 I think - FOR SHAME!
Firstly I have to say the What are you working on thread is an absolute goldmine for any artist out there - I've spent the entire day goig through all 300 odd pages its a goldmine, well done to all participants.
Im working on a mental ray skin shader for skin, have thrown it on some low poly models that ive done up.
Heres what ive got so far
What does everyone think, hit me with the crits - meanwhile im going to start on some heads!
Replies
the result looks spectacular, but i'd love to know how to create it in-game.
/speechless
almighty_gir: Thanks for the compliments, as i mentioned at the top of my post at the moment, its a mental ray shader just for rendering purposes. As for the number of maps, theres 4 in Total
1 x 32bit Diffuse RGB - Alpha containing Bump Data.
1 x 32bit Normal RGB - Alpha containing Specular Level.
1 x 24bit Specular Color RGB.
1 x 24bit SSS RGB for subsurface scattering input.
Just feed the same maps into the different instructions in the shader. Ill have to put up some screens of the setup i think to make it a bit clearer!
NeoShroomish: Thanks, I think haha.
JKMakowka: Thanks for the compliments, indeed its a bit heavy for realtime rendering, although if you look at the cry engine 2 demos and whatnot, i think youll find they are achieving a similar result with their skin, which is totally mind boggling realtime.
What do you suggest I do to the models? can you spot some problems ? if so by all means let me have the crits!!
i started to scroll down the images and i thought: hum. arms.. crap, crap, ohh ok. starting to look good. ohh , oh wow. this is awesome
lol
first i go from crap to wow in the same image. lol
awesme
almighty_gir: Heh, i know your pain, ive spent many a totally frustrated night trying to figure out how these pro's did all thier awesome renders. I was just allways thinking " Man that must be some cronic tweakage of render settings and whatnot to achieve those results "
So yup i will write something up and share it
Ged: Yes Sir!
bitmap: Haha thanks Bioshock arms, yeah i remember seening some footage, but I havent played it yet. Will have to check it out!
Here are the maps & sloppy UVW's -
at first I was looking I was like yeah yeah that looks sweet... a little too shiny though.. then you slap on the second spec and YOU BLEW MY MIND
looks great
Ive just noticed something though. The male arm doesnt have any hair - looks like he shaved his arms. DOH! Ill have to make a hairy bastard next to compensate
EarthQuake: Your spot on, they can be.
Comments / Crits welcome
Mouth might be a bit big tho ?
Johny: Thanks, I will keep postin! Holy shite man your folio is nutz! If I can be as good as you some day ill be a happy artiste'!
The distance from the bottom of the nose to the top lip is pretty long, you might want to reduce this for a more "average" face. It might be that the nose is too short as well.
The eyes should fall almost exactly half-way down the head. Yours seem a little high, especially in the profile shot. I think you might need to add a bit more forehead/skull, rather than moving the eyes down though.
Male foreheads tend to slope backwards and the direction changes quite abruptly around the widow's peak/hairline area. The smoothly rounded forehead you have here is a bit more like a female head shape.
Nice meshflow though, should work really nicely as a general purpose base mesh.
Its using the same shader, just with a raytraced material applied to a duplicate mesh a smidgen larger than the actual ball.
I think the reflections and whole wetness factor needs some work still. what do you guys think ?
nice eyes, although i think the iris/ pupil would be the only part with that kind of reflection.
Not sure if u could slightly mask the white part of the eye?
Just checked out your folio and thats the sickest grenade I've ever seen, nice work man
What are the texture resolutions? They seem quite high to me, but then again, I'm an environment artist. Our model-to-texture ratio is absurd
rawkstar: Correct these are not real-time, I hope I havent misguided anyone here. Ive been working on a MR shader for rendering good skin, and testing it on some low res models ive been building.
Im pretty sure you can get a fairly close result with shaderfx however. the skin is Crysis is even superior to what I've got I think.
coldwolf: I start off with a base of skin hues, and generate some cloud maps using render clouds , to give me a nice rough base of skin tones. from there I add in vein layers, patchy bits and various other things like tonal variations for the usually paler underarm, at a really low opacity, until I get something that im happy with.
Finally I use various textures from 3d.sk for specific wrinkles, skin pores etc. And blend these in again using really low opacities, or layer strengths etc.
I will explain a bit more in my tutorial hopefully!
The texture res atm is 512x512.
What do you think guys?
Anyhoo, i dont have enough time to finish my dominance war entry so i piked out and just decided to get her head done. Im definately goingto continue at my own pace and finish her off.
What do you guys think ?
Will add eyelashes and hairstyle after going back for some more skin imperfections and a redo over the lip textures etc.
All polypainting in zbrush so far, and this is just a zbrush viewport capture so ive hastily drawn in the reflection on her eyes in Photoshop! gahhh!
Ill get that sorted once she goes into max.