Hey guys, lots of great stuff up here I've been on this thing for awhile and sadly I don't think it is portfolio worthy. I was trying out a new hair technique and it took me way too long and it, to me, doesn't look that great so I don't think I'll do hair this way again. However I did learn a few things for the next time. This was mostly me learning how to normal map a human face and it was difficult. I'm definitely making a thread for my next model so I can get some help along the way cause I need it >_>
A glimpse of a 3D character I am working on at the moment in my spare time, thinking about the color palette again because the character has been going through some design changes since I first started modeling her. Modeling work isn't finished yet.
Turnaround sample: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rJrC84L9COc&feature=player_embedded
Hey guys, lots of great stuff up here I've been on this thing for awhile and sadly I don't think it is portfolio worthy. I was trying out a new hair technique and it took me way too long and it, to me, doesn't look that great so I don't think I'll do hair this way again. However I did learn a few things for the next time. This was mostly me learning how to normal map a human face and it was difficult. I'm definitely making a thread for my next model so I can get some help along the way cause I need it >_>
I like that char Truth be told, for long hair those aren't that bad. What strikes me the most is how your normal map is handled. It seems a bit too choppy, not smoothed enough (for a face). Maybe the resolution of your map isn't quite enough or it's in your nm itself, maybe the hipoly yhou baked it from wasnt smoothed enough, or maybe something in the baking went wrong ;o
Character wise, i think her eyes could be a little smaller. Tweaks those few things and in no time it could be folio material
I made another hand-painted texture for a cobble wall.
Then after all of my hard work, I had to make it tile with Offset :S
Does anyone have a better method for making tileable hand-painted textures?
How about doing the offset after blocking in the main shapes, then a final offset later on to clean up the seams? Nice paint, but looks a little washed out - could do with a quick levels adjust to boost the darks!
@ebagg- I really think that you could stand to push this guys proportions and anatomy around- right now it feels very cut and pasted together. Which is unfortunate because its sculpted well. But the design is unappealing IMO.
Okay, i'll cross post from my "speedscultday" thread (which i haven't updated in ages because I started doing fullon char back...yeah i'm a lazy ass) here
I haven't spellchecked it, so sorry for mistakes and errors in advance Let's Rock !
ALPHA HAIR TIPS & TRICK & BITS
So here I am, sitting in front of my computer, TV is on and a beer at my side. Everything is set so I can start writing this thing. As for now I have absolutely no idea if i'ts going to be a packed wall of text or not. Just saying, while coming from work i thought about all the application for what i'm about to show, and I must say it holds a tremendous power.
First thing first, this might bit a let down for some people and a relief to a few : I used Softimage XSI in order to make those hair. I'm pretty sure that you can do almost the same in maya, and hardly in max. Fear not, voyager, because XSI has the amazing ability of using maya hotkeys (it asks you at the beginning). I will, nonetheless, be using the original XSI interface as for the shortcut and all.
Anyway, let's start, shall we ?
1/ ON BUILDING DEM ALPHAZ
Ok so first and foremost, before setting up my planes and all my stuff, I like to have a proper and clean alpha map to work with. Not the final, epic hair you guys will make, just a placeholder so you'll see where it goes right and where it goes wrong. This is important, truly important as setting your planes without seeing how the alpha (and the diffuse) looks can get you in some troubles.
For easy, real easy and epic hair alpha, I use Zbrush. Most of all (if not all) are familiar with that technique but i'm gonna show it anyway while I'm at it, it can't help to remind it and maybe some of you don't know about how awesome zbrush is for making Hair diffuse and alpha.
Pop in Zbrush, and clic on the quicksketch icone. You'll have a somewhat grey canvas. We'll have to turn it white. Take any brush you want, choose some white and pub RGB on and Zadd/Zsub off. Paint it.
Now that everything's white, this is where the magic begins : Press space, in the icone above brushes choose the 2.5D brush : decobrush. Get rid of the texture it comes with, change the alpha (Alpha 37 is really neat for that) and choose your colors. Start to draw and you'll immediately see the epicness of this brush
Now you just have to go in document : export in psd and voila, your placeholder is set up (it takes less that five minutes, hurhurhur)
2/ XSI, THE SOFTWARE POWERING GOD
Now we'll start getting in the heart of it. You guys got your model, your alpha and you have in your mind the idea of the haircut you want to create. You need nothing more.
For XSI, you will have to set up project (ala maya) otherwise he's a pain when you want to save on your HDD. Go to import -> import OBJ and look for the lowpoly (or like me the decimated one) of your char. Note that XSI, being the awesome software that it is, is able to handle a great deal of polygons.
When you have your model, you will have to create your planes. For those who don't know XSI, i'll try to explain how to get there briefly.
As shown on the image, go to primitive -> polygon Mesh -> Grid. The box that appear is self explanatory, it manages the caracteristics of your plane. Nothing to do more.
Now, you will have to set up a projection (a contrario to maya where every mesh already have a projection mapping and you just need to pop up the windows, in XSI you'll have first to give them the property "projection". This is because XSI is a nodal softwarre (although not as much as houdini) and allow a lot of transformation in between different operation without breaking the mesh or crashing. Did I say is was frigging powerful ?)
As show on the screen, you just need to go to property -> texture projection-> choose whatever projection suits you best.
When this is over, you can use the shortcut alt+7 (for the shortcuts, it will always be the number above the letter, okay ? ) to pop up the uv editor. Arrange everything so it fits your alpha. Remember, it's only a placeholder, nothing prevent your from making only 1 alpha for every strands now, and go back to do a lot of different alpha later. You'll just have to select the mesh you want to change and move it on the texture editor. And since you'll have uv'ed it BEFORE deformations occurs : Epic stuff will happen.
(From now, i'll explain the rest using my already made model)
So here's where i'm at right now. Alpha and diffuse are far from perfect but I don't care, what is needed for now is good plane placement. I'm not a boss at making hair so it's kind of iffy right now, but you'll need to know that it took me less than an hour to put everything.
Small note regarding your planes (and this, in my opinion, is really important) I always tend to make planes with around 6 to 8 horizontal edges and 1 vertical. That one vertical is crucial, it'll help your hair not look flat as f***
See, not flat. This is crucial, like your life. Also, do not make the same mistake as me there, my hair have slightly too much horizontal edges. What i thought through is that it's better to have fewer edge and apply a smooth/turbosmooth later, it'll subdivide everything evenly and give and awesome flow to your hair.
To put textures on your model in XSI (this is the part I hate, XSI have some problem with alpha managment and it's always a frigging pain to set the material, i'll try to explain it to the best of my extent).
To pop up the material editor, use CTRL+7 to pop up the windows, then in create-> choose whatever material you want. From there it looks like maya except it's a little bit tricky to import maps.
When you got that, apply the newly made material to your hair strands and close the windows. Use 7 to pop the material Editor windows (yeah, diff/ window for the same shit...You'll have to select only 1 strand (doesnt work with multiple object) to have your material in it)
Go to texture->image -> drag and drop it next to your material and clic on it.( 1 and 2 ) Then clic on new (3) and new from file (4) to import your image. Repeat and rinse to import the diffuse and the alpha.
Clic on the red dot to create a link between your image and the material, and drop them in there rightful place. Now's the real tricky stuff. Sometime it works, sometime it don'. As of now, XSI decided that he was able to use my diffuse as alpha (he converted everything that was white as alpha) so i don't even need my alpha. That's somewhat weird. I might not know how to explain it so i'll rather show screens of my setup, but it's basically just trial and error
And theeere we go, should be all goodey. Now, we will start placing the hair (yeah, that's the actual fun part, sorry for the rambling before but i thought it was important)
3/ USING CG HAIR METHODOLOGY FOR REALTIME
AS said in the title, the idea came to me after I remembered my teacher's lesson about rendering in 3dsmax. The way you'll use rendered hair is that you can either have a simili of hair & fur, or max will use every guide to create a plane.
Guide to create plane...guides ? Guides are just curves..So what if we could constraint a plane to a curve. This where the fun started for me. Simple enough You will set curves in the way you'll want your hair to be. Needless to say, this gives an AMAZING control for difficult haircut, and we're just scratching the surface of it !*
Almost forgot : Useful thing, you can pop up the explorer (hotkey : 8) to manage your file, and the layer manager (hotkey : 6) well..for layering things)
To create curves in XSI : Easy ! Go to Create-> Curves-> drawn curves By CV's. Then you'll just have to draw it and everything's good. You can then use CTRL+D to duplicate it and make another strand. XSI have an awesome tool called the move tool (HOTKEY M) which let's you freely move your edge/vertices (similar to one of maya's tool, can't remember thy name)
now you finally have your guides and your planes It's better if the beginning of your curves goes inside the head, more on that later !. What's needed next is to constraint them to your curves.Simply enough, select your plane, CTRL+D to duplicate it and go to Deform-> By curves.
This will pop up the window of the gods. The doorway to agharta, the brigde to Asgard. Anything you want.
So when this window pup, you'll see a lot of option. The first to use, is go to contraint (just up the mute button) and clic on "contraint to deformer" This will constraint your plane to your curve. But it looks like crap right now. That's okay ! Under mute, on the axis, choose the axis that your plane was before constraining (i think it's that, but for me I always use Z and it work like magic).
Now, the plane seems to follow the curve but it still look bad. Don't worry, old friend ! Now, it will be a matter of tweaking those parameters. I won't show what is great since it highly depends on what you want, but i'll explain what everything does :
Scaling Along :
Scaling along curves : IT will decide on the actual length of you plane. It will follow the curve from the beginning to the end but isn't bound by it. Meaning if you go farther than the begining, it will take the direction of your last vertex and scale in this direction ad infinitum. Same for the end. You just need to find the proper lenght.
Scaling along Normal : Ha~haaa, remember when I told earlier that the egde in the middle of your plane was really important ? That slider will impact on that ! Meaning you'll be able to make that edge go up or down EVENLY and it's still FOLLOWING the curves. This, coupled with a small smooth gives awesome results.
Scaling along Binormal : There, I won't deny it, i can't remember what the binormal parameter stands for. What I do know, though, is what it's used for now. When you deformed your planed, it's width increased a lot. Well that parameter will impact on the width of your plane. And as the scaling along normal, it'll scale evenly throughout your plane and follow the curve perfectly.
Roll :
This nice parameter allow you to roll your plane in order to put it in the best position on the head. Note that it'll only roll circularly (is that even a word) around the curve.
Translation along :
Translation along curve : pretty self explanatory : It will determine where the plane is on your curves. Aas with the scaling along, once you go farther than the end points, it'll go in that direction forever. That is why I told you to put the first vertex of your curve inside your head : so that when you'll move the plane along the line, if you go farther than the starting point on the curve it'll still actlike it's coming out of the head (this is something important that I alway forget to do)
Translation along normal : Useful thing, it'll translate you plane along the Z axis of your plane, (generally the axis of the spline you use to make the hair rounder.
Translation along binormal : Translation along the x and y axis. Nothing fancy but frigging useful.
Well, here it is : as for now you'll be able to populate your head with planes that'll have a nice good flow. Finally, in the bottom right corner, use freeze so your hair are no longer dependable of your curves, and export (or do whatever you want). BE SURE TO HAVE FINISHED YOUR HAIR BEFORE !
BUT WAIT : THERE'S MORE
4/ IF GOD USED XSI, HE'D HAVE CREATED THE EARTH IN 5 MINUTES
Now, this is completly optional but it surely adds insult to injury. Remember when I told you XSI was a nodal software ? This is where it gets really incredible. You have created your hair along curves : good. But you still want to modify them ? You can do it !
You are still able to select your planes and modify them vertices by vertices, edges by edges, polygon by polygon. Yeah that's right. But that's far from enought. Oh so far.
Remember your curves ? Well then you remember that your hair are CONSTRAINED to them. Yes. I see that light in your eyes. Try to move your curves... Yes, indeed you can still modify them and your hair will follow perfectly.
And to be frank, that's not even the end. I like how SQUEENIX did Lightning's hair in FF XIII. Well, that's easy to do. Select one of your plane (and you can even select one you already placed.) Pop the explorer, go to polygon mesh-> select the curve deformer : Put in on mute.
It's bake where it was before. At that point, you should be able to use any deformer you want (let's say, Twish for some Lightning hair..Wave for the curvy one ?) use your modifier,put your hair as your want. UNMUTE the curve modifier : Everything go back how it was before, except it accepted the modification you just did.
If you have read this up to this point, congratz, but most of all, you might see the endless possibilities that this method can be used with. Beard, Halo, animation, Cloth ect.
XSI might be difficult at first but it definitely pays off in the ends. If you need help in any way, just feel free to ask, i'm always lurking the WAYWO thread like an homeless hobo.
Well, my first beer is finished, starting another. Now 'll have to upload all of that. Sorry for the incredibly long post, but I hope it'll be helpful !
This is what I made the first time I tried this technique, but i'mm pretty sure you cand make amazingly complicated haircut with it !
Last, if you have any problem, don't know how to do or lose confidence in doing your art : look at this video
And now, go make the most amazing art ever
Thx for the feedback Dan, I agree with you, it just dawned on me that I had a decent paintover from awhile back when I started it that I need to change to (middle version);
MisterSande; just wanted to make a Shark human hybrid beast, now tempted to turn into fanart of Armaggon from TMNT!
ged: Nice! Dynamesh made me love 3d again! nyx702: Very cool. Matches the concept very well too! great job man ebagg: Looking sweet as furk man. You should look into the inguinal region. The obliques arent connected to the muscles of the thigh. Reminds me of my childhood scythe: mother of.... thank you so much! Appreciate the help
Sorry for spamming the thread :P But i made some progress still dynameshin :P
Some really awesome work guys/gals. Its been a while since i last posted anything so here is a concept i am working on right now. he is a sci-fi yakuza dude. Just cleaning up the linework atm, going to go back and redo the face later on. If he turns out well i might make him in 3d.
There's a lot im going to change, main things being more interesting stuff on the back, redo the torso area and the folds, legs aren't really looking right at the moment
Anyway it's a bit late over here and I can't really find the energy to go explain everything I wanna change so I did some nonsensical scribbles
Still slowly plugging away at this junk. Finally got around to coloring the outlines. In a nice twist, I was able to use the same technique to color the shadows so I don't have all those deep blacks anymore.
The scene only has a single light in it. All the fill light and such is entirely within the shader. Probably going to post a breakdown soon.
itismario:
I'm planning on posting the whole shader network with a breakdown of how it all works, so no stealing necessary!
ZacD:
Here's what a sphere looks like with some simple crosshatching textures:
ChrisPerr:
It's currently sitting at 90 instructions. That could probably be safely pared down to between 40-60 if it was going to be put into a production environment, but this is just going to be for some portfolio stuff. I don't have a full breakdown of the shader network ready, but here's a little taste of what you're going to be seeing in there:
It has two crosshatch channels. One is designed for the actual shading and one is designed to put finer details like the lines you can see on the guy's face.
In addition to those, there's also gradient ramped shading (just like TF2), an emissive channel that gets modified by the normals, and a custom specular highlight shape to simulate a paint daub with a flat brush.
A lot of it uses textures that can be shared across assets -- such as the gradient ramps and the specular highlight shape -- but the line/hatching textures would almost certainly have to be either hand-painted or extracted from the normals with edge-find filters and whatnot.
Thanks for the appreciation guys it's awesome to have positive things coming from artists I look up to ! I forgot to say it since I was in a writing mood, but this technique blends very well with Hazardous hair technique too.
Just be mindful of zbrush not utterly destroying your uv or you could be in a world of hurt (happened to me once)
@Guedin : nice sculpt, I love it The eyes are bugging me a little though, but it's personal ! those folds though !! they're awesome, how'd you manage them ?
@Intervain : Great to have a confirmation that this method is good. That Sherlock looks awesome. I love the way you tackle the eyes and the lips !
@JFletcher : dood...seriously ? I just fucking love what you did already, and you say those folds sucks ? i'd be happy if i could do half as good. Keep it coming, I can't wait !
@Daven : the world need more useless impractical guns ! As far as I know, the less pratical it is, the more needed it is !
@Chai : Man..aww maaaan ! your hardsurface is daunting. Keep'it coming, i'm watching with all my might XD
@Dustinboy : love it. Even though the cloth are far from finished, they work very well for now. Can't wait to see the end of it !
I remembered that I kept all the text in a file with all the screens, so if anyone need a pdf I think that could be doable.
A glimpse of a 3D character I am working on at the moment in my spare time, thinking about the color palette again because the character has been going through some design changes since I first started modeling her. Modeling work isn't finished yet.
Turnaround sample: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rJrC84L9COc&feature=player_embedded
I am in love with this. Loving the head, the hand fist things, and especially the little bits hanging from behind her shoulders. The color scheme is awesome too! Gogo, I must see textures!
Here is another Old School critter I've been working on. Chainsaw hasn't got a diffuse yet and there are no spec maps at the moment. Blender viewport grab.
Replies
looking forward to it, always have the hardest time doing plane hair!
Then after all of my hard work, I had to make it tile with Offset :S
Does anyone have a better method for making tileable hand-painted textures?
Turnaround sample: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rJrC84L9COc&feature=player_embedded
I like that char
Character wise, i think her eyes could be a little smaller. Tweaks those few things and in no time it could be folio material
Here is a mental ray render of this chick I posted a few pages back. I don't understand MetalRay...
How about doing the offset after blocking in the main shapes, then a final offset later on to clean up the seams? Nice paint, but looks a little washed out - could do with a quick levels adjust to boost the darks!
and please provide feedback on this rock guys !
I haven't spellchecked it, so sorry for mistakes and errors in advance
ALPHA HAIR TIPS & TRICK & BITS
So here I am, sitting in front of my computer, TV is on and a beer at my side. Everything is set so I can start writing this thing. As for now I have absolutely no idea if i'ts going to be a packed wall of text or not. Just saying, while coming from work i thought about all the application for what i'm about to show, and I must say it holds a tremendous power.
First thing first, this might bit a let down for some people and a relief to a few : I used Softimage XSI in order to make those hair. I'm pretty sure that you can do almost the same in maya, and hardly in max. Fear not, voyager, because XSI has the amazing ability of using maya hotkeys (it asks you at the beginning). I will, nonetheless, be using the original XSI interface as for the shortcut and all.
Anyway, let's start, shall we ?
1/ ON BUILDING DEM ALPHAZ
Ok so first and foremost, before setting up my planes and all my stuff, I like to have a proper and clean alpha map to work with. Not the final, epic hair you guys will make, just a placeholder so you'll see where it goes right and where it goes wrong. This is important, truly important as setting your planes without seeing how the alpha (and the diffuse) looks can get you in some troubles.
For easy, real easy and epic hair alpha, I use Zbrush. Most of all (if not all) are familiar with that technique but i'm gonna show it anyway while I'm at it, it can't help to remind it and maybe some of you don't know about how awesome zbrush is for making Hair diffuse and alpha.
Pop in Zbrush, and clic on the quicksketch icone. You'll have a somewhat grey canvas. We'll have to turn it white. Take any brush you want, choose some white and pub RGB on and Zadd/Zsub off. Paint it.
Now that everything's white, this is where the magic begins : Press space, in the icone above brushes choose the 2.5D brush : decobrush. Get rid of the texture it comes with, change the alpha (Alpha 37 is really neat for that) and choose your colors. Start to draw and you'll immediately see the epicness of this brush
Now you just have to go in document : export in psd and voila, your placeholder is set up (it takes less that five minutes, hurhurhur)
2/ XSI, THE SOFTWARE POWERING GOD
Now we'll start getting in the heart of it. You guys got your model, your alpha and you have in your mind the idea of the haircut you want to create. You need nothing more.
For XSI, you will have to set up project (ala maya) otherwise he's a pain when you want to save on your HDD. Go to import -> import OBJ and look for the lowpoly (or like me the decimated one) of your char. Note that XSI, being the awesome software that it is, is able to handle a great deal of polygons.
When you have your model, you will have to create your planes. For those who don't know XSI, i'll try to explain how to get there briefly.
As shown on the image, go to primitive -> polygon Mesh -> Grid. The box that appear is self explanatory, it manages the caracteristics of your plane. Nothing to do more.
Now, you will have to set up a projection (a contrario to maya where every mesh already have a projection mapping and you just need to pop up the windows, in XSI you'll have first to give them the property "projection". This is because XSI is a nodal softwarre (although not as much as houdini) and allow a lot of transformation in between different operation without breaking the mesh or crashing. Did I say is was frigging powerful ?)
As show on the screen, you just need to go to property -> texture projection-> choose whatever projection suits you best.
When this is over, you can use the shortcut alt+7 (for the shortcuts, it will always be the number above the letter, okay ?
(From now, i'll explain the rest using my already made model)
So here's where i'm at right now. Alpha and diffuse are far from perfect but I don't care, what is needed for now is good plane placement. I'm not a boss at making hair so it's kind of iffy right now, but you'll need to know that it took me less than an hour to put everything.
Small note regarding your planes (and this, in my opinion, is really important) I always tend to make planes with around 6 to 8 horizontal edges and 1 vertical. That one vertical is crucial, it'll help your hair not look flat as f***
See, not flat. This is crucial, like your life. Also, do not make the same mistake as me there, my hair have slightly too much horizontal edges. What i thought through is that it's better to have fewer edge and apply a smooth/turbosmooth later, it'll subdivide everything evenly and give and awesome flow to your hair.
To put textures on your model in XSI (this is the part I hate, XSI have some problem with alpha managment and it's always a frigging pain to set the material, i'll try to explain it to the best of my extent).
To pop up the material editor, use CTRL+7 to pop up the windows, then in create-> choose whatever material you want. From there it looks like maya except it's a little bit tricky to import maps.
When you got that, apply the newly made material to your hair strands and close the windows. Use 7 to pop the material Editor windows (yeah, diff/ window for the same shit...You'll have to select only 1 strand (doesnt work with multiple object) to have your material in it)
Go to texture->image -> drag and drop it next to your material and clic on it.( 1 and 2 ) Then clic on new (3) and new from file (4) to import your image. Repeat and rinse to import the diffuse and the alpha.
Clic on the red dot to create a link between your image and the material, and drop them in there rightful place. Now's the real tricky stuff. Sometime it works, sometime it don'. As of now, XSI decided that he was able to use my diffuse as alpha (he converted everything that was white as alpha) so i don't even need my alpha. That's somewhat weird. I might not know how to explain it so i'll rather show screens of my setup, but it's basically just trial and error
And theeere we go, should be all goodey. Now, we will start placing the hair (yeah, that's the actual fun part, sorry for the rambling before but i thought it was important)
3/ USING CG HAIR METHODOLOGY FOR REALTIME
AS said in the title, the idea came to me after I remembered my teacher's lesson about rendering in 3dsmax. The way you'll use rendered hair is that you can either have a simili of hair & fur, or max will use every guide to create a plane.
Guide to create plane...guides ? Guides are just curves..So what if we could constraint a plane to a curve. This where the fun started for me. Simple enough You will set curves in the way you'll want your hair to be. Needless to say, this gives an AMAZING control for difficult haircut, and we're just scratching the surface of it !*
Almost forgot : Useful thing, you can pop up the explorer (hotkey : 8) to manage your file, and the layer manager (hotkey : 6) well..for layering things)
To create curves in XSI : Easy ! Go to Create-> Curves-> drawn curves By CV's. Then you'll just have to draw it and everything's good. You can then use CTRL+D to duplicate it and make another strand. XSI have an awesome tool called the move tool (HOTKEY M) which let's you freely move your edge/vertices (similar to one of maya's tool, can't remember thy name)
now you finally have your guides and your planes It's better if the beginning of your curves goes inside the head, more on that later !. What's needed next is to constraint them to your curves.Simply enough, select your plane, CTRL+D to duplicate it and go to Deform-> By curves.
This will pop up the window of the gods. The doorway to agharta, the brigde to Asgard. Anything you want.
So when this window pup, you'll see a lot of option. The first to use, is go to contraint (just up the mute button) and clic on "contraint to deformer" This will constraint your plane to your curve. But it looks like crap right now. That's okay ! Under mute, on the axis, choose the axis that your plane was before constraining (i think it's that, but for me I always use Z and it work like magic).
Now, the plane seems to follow the curve but it still look bad. Don't worry, old friend ! Now, it will be a matter of tweaking those parameters. I won't show what is great since it highly depends on what you want, but i'll explain what everything does :
Scaling Along :
Scaling along curves : IT will decide on the actual length of you plane. It will follow the curve from the beginning to the end but isn't bound by it. Meaning if you go farther than the begining, it will take the direction of your last vertex and scale in this direction ad infinitum. Same for the end. You just need to find the proper lenght.
Scaling along Normal : Ha~haaa, remember when I told earlier that the egde in the middle of your plane was really important ? That slider will impact on that ! Meaning you'll be able to make that edge go up or down EVENLY and it's still FOLLOWING the curves. This, coupled with a small smooth gives awesome results.
Scaling along Binormal : There, I won't deny it, i can't remember what the binormal parameter stands for. What I do know, though, is what it's used for now. When you deformed your planed, it's width increased a lot. Well that parameter will impact on the width of your plane. And as the scaling along normal, it'll scale evenly throughout your plane and follow the curve perfectly.
Roll :
This nice parameter allow you to roll your plane in order to put it in the best position on the head. Note that it'll only roll circularly (is that even a word) around the curve.
Translation along :
Translation along curve : pretty self explanatory : It will determine where the plane is on your curves. Aas with the scaling along, once you go farther than the end points, it'll go in that direction forever. That is why I told you to put the first vertex of your curve inside your head : so that when you'll move the plane along the line, if you go farther than the starting point on the curve it'll still actlike it's coming out of the head (this is something important that I alway forget to do)
Translation along normal : Useful thing, it'll translate you plane along the Z axis of your plane, (generally the axis of the spline you use to make the hair rounder.
Translation along binormal : Translation along the x and y axis. Nothing fancy but frigging useful.
Well, here it is : as for now you'll be able to populate your head with planes that'll have a nice good flow. Finally, in the bottom right corner, use freeze so your hair are no longer dependable of your curves, and export (or do whatever you want). BE SURE TO HAVE FINISHED YOUR HAIR BEFORE !
BUT WAIT : THERE'S MORE
4/ IF GOD USED XSI, HE'D HAVE CREATED THE EARTH IN 5 MINUTES
Now, this is completly optional but it surely adds insult to injury. Remember when I told you XSI was a nodal software ? This is where it gets really incredible. You have created your hair along curves : good. But you still want to modify them ? You can do it !
You are still able to select your planes and modify them vertices by vertices, edges by edges, polygon by polygon. Yeah that's right. But that's far from enought. Oh so far.
Remember your curves ? Well then you remember that your hair are CONSTRAINED to them. Yes. I see that light in your eyes. Try to move your curves... Yes, indeed you can still modify them and your hair will follow perfectly.
And to be frank, that's not even the end. I like how SQUEENIX did Lightning's hair in FF XIII. Well, that's easy to do. Select one of your plane (and you can even select one you already placed.) Pop the explorer, go to polygon mesh-> select the curve deformer : Put in on mute.
It's bake where it was before. At that point, you should be able to use any deformer you want (let's say, Twish for some Lightning hair..Wave for the curvy one ?) use your modifier,put your hair as your want. UNMUTE the curve modifier : Everything go back how it was before, except it accepted the modification you just did.
If you have read this up to this point, congratz, but most of all, you might see the endless possibilities that this method can be used with. Beard, Halo, animation, Cloth ect.
XSI might be difficult at first but it definitely pays off in the ends. If you need help in any way, just feel free to ask, i'm always lurking the WAYWO thread like an homeless hobo.
Well, my first beer is finished, starting another. Now 'll have to upload all of that. Sorry for the incredibly long post, but I hope it'll be helpful !
This is what I made the first time I tried this technique, but i'mm pretty sure you cand make amazingly complicated haircut with it !
Last, if you have any problem, don't know how to do or lose confidence in doing your art : look at this video
And now, go make the most amazing art ever
Stay tuned ! Sorry for the longass post, brah's !
Scythe
MisterSande; just wanted to make a Shark human hybrid beast, now tempted to turn into fanart of Armaggon from TMNT!
nyx702: Very cool. Matches the concept very well too! great job man
ebagg: Looking sweet as furk man. You should look into the inguinal region. The obliques arent connected to the muscles of the thigh. Reminds me of my childhood
scythe: mother of.... thank you so much! Appreciate the help
Sorry for spamming the thread :P But i made some progress
I tweaked the head a little bit more before calling it done :
Here is the next Avenger ;D
I call him done.
Сold steel arms
http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=103229
@PenE: Love the mood!
Small update on the saturation and overall diffuse!
I just started on a new character... its Doom inspired hehe
Scythe - yeah I've been using that method successfully for a while, much easier than tweaking PS brushes all the time, really nice write up
I've had enough of Sherlock sketchin' moving on...:poly142:
Cross posting from ma' thread:
There's a lot im going to change, main things being more interesting stuff on the back, redo the torso area and the folds, legs aren't really looking right at the moment
Anyway it's a bit late over here and I can't really find the energy to go explain everything I wanna change so I did some nonsensical scribbles
so tasty !
The scene only has a single light in it. All the fill light and such is entirely within the shader. Probably going to post a breakdown soon.
I'm planning on posting the whole shader network with a breakdown of how it all works, so no stealing necessary!
ZacD:
Here's what a sphere looks like with some simple crosshatching textures:
ChrisPerr:
It's currently sitting at 90 instructions. That could probably be safely pared down to between 40-60 if it was going to be put into a production environment, but this is just going to be for some portfolio stuff. I don't have a full breakdown of the shader network ready, but here's a little taste of what you're going to be seeing in there:
It has two crosshatch channels. One is designed for the actual shading and one is designed to put finer details like the lines you can see on the guy's face.
In addition to those, there's also gradient ramped shading (just like TF2), an emissive channel that gets modified by the normals, and a custom specular highlight shape to simulate a paint daub with a flat brush.
A lot of it uses textures that can be shared across assets -- such as the gradient ramps and the specular highlight shape -- but the line/hatching textures would almost certainly have to be either hand-painted or extracted from the normals with edge-find filters and whatnot.
I thought it was a high tech dildo in the second one.
10/10 would 3d print.
Are you going to model this? If not I might, I don't wanna go and steal your thunder.
Just be mindful of zbrush not utterly destroying your uv or you could be in a world of hurt (happened to me once)
@Guedin : nice sculpt, I love it
@Intervain : Great to have a confirmation that this method is good. That Sherlock looks awesome. I love the way you tackle the eyes and the lips !
@JFletcher : dood...seriously ? I just fucking love what you did already, and you say those folds sucks ? i'd be happy if i could do half as good. Keep it coming, I can't wait !
@Daven : the world need more useless impractical guns ! As far as I know, the less pratical it is, the more needed it is !
@Chai : Man..aww maaaan ! your hardsurface is daunting. Keep'it coming, i'm watching with all my might XD
@Dustinboy : love it. Even though the cloth are far from finished, they work very well for now. Can't wait to see the end of it !
I remembered that I kept all the text in a file with all the screens, so if anyone need a pdf I think that could be doable.
I am in love with this. Loving the head, the hand fist things, and especially the little bits hanging from behind her shoulders. The color scheme is awesome too! Gogo, I must see textures!
You can divide stripes more at the beginning and the end, where the curvature is more. Other than that, the results are perfect!