I am learning Maya mostly to do hair for a character. I am using GMH2 with Vray but I am not having luck baking the strips (the bake returns black) despite adding a Bake node on a uved strip. You mentioned in an earlier post that it takes some effort to get it to work with Vray, could you please give me your quick workflow in such a case? Do you need a VrayPhysical Camera for it to work? Convert the GMH2 hair to polygons?
Thank you in advance and keep it up. Loved your eye tutorial. A real eye-opener! (I'll show myself the way out, it's ok).
What I did was convert my polygon hair to flat hair strips. I did this by going into zbrush, plugins, UV tools, flatten, and exported that. It exports as flat planes in the shape of your UV's.
Then I import that into maya and create GMH2 hair using those flat strips.
I set up a camera over the top with a very, very low FOV, like <5. Setting it to 0 gives me errors in rendering.
Then I render at 4096x4096. Two passes, one with color, and one white hair on black background. White becomes alpha, color is your diffuse.
Import the hair textures into photoshop and make sure they align with the UV's.
I assumed GMH2 hair was bakeable per se. So I have to either find a way to flatten my GMH2 hair (assuming that's doable) or simply give up on the baking idea (I wanted to make a game character out of my little dude) or do the hair manually in PS using those strips. Dang.
I don't think you can convert to geo. GMH2 is creating Nhair, which is dynamic curves that don't have a set width. I might be wrong.
However, flattening your GMH2 hair should be easy enough with zbrush. Take the hair strips you made to generate the GMH hair into zbrush, UV them the way you want, then do ZPLUGIN-->UVMASTER-->WORK ON CLONE-->FLATTEN
Then export that flattened mesh.
Import the flattened mesh into Maya, and use the same presets you used to do the current GMH hair, on the flattened poly-strips.
Then render out in whatever, Vray or Maya or since it's Nhair even Maya Hardware renderer.
You can use something like KNALD or NDO2 to generate a normal map from the diffuse or alpha map you render.
Then finally you can bake the non-flattened hair strips in Xnormal to the simplified hair on your zbrush sculpt, I noticed it didn't have any individual hairs drawn in. This will give you an overall normal curve. Overlay the normal curve over the GMH2 hair, and you should get a decent result. If you are doing Marmoset2 you could even bake out a directional map.
I don't think you can convert to geo. GMH2 is creating Nhair, which is dynamic curves that don't have a set width. I might be wrong.
However, flattening your GMH2 hair should be easy enough with zbrush. Take the hair strips you made to generate the GMH hair into zbrush, UV them the way you want, then do ZPLUGIN-->UVMASTER-->WORK ON CLONE-->FLATTEN
Then export that flattened mesh.
Import the flattened mesh into Maya, and use the same presets you used to do the current GMH hair, on the flattened poly-strips.
Then render out in whatever, Vray or Maya or since it's Nhair even Maya Hardware renderer.
You can use something like KNALD or NDO2 to generate a normal map from the diffuse or alpha map you render.
Then finally you can bake the non-flattened hair strips in Xnormal to the simplified hair on your zbrush sculpt, I noticed it didn't have any individual hairs drawn in. This will give you an overall normal curve. Overlay the normal curve over the GMH2 hair, and you should get a decent result. If you are doing Marmoset2 you could even bake out a directional map.
There is an option that says "Polygon hair" in the pfx brush options I think (I don't have Maya open atm). Now I am not an expert so maybe your're right.
I was getting to the send to ZB idea trying to tie-in your workflow with my existing work. What kills me is that GMH2 doesn't save distribution ramps and to get the results I wanted I had to tweak a lot of those in some areas. While googling "baking maya hair gmh2" I found out that there is a comment that seems to come from the author referring to implementing "Baking" but once you click the page it's not showing anywhere in the actual comments of the GMH2 sales site so I decided to ask the author directly (I'll update if I get any info).
For reference, this is the character I am talking about:
I am converting this sculpted hair into strips and whatnot (apologies for de-railing your thread a bit).
Lastly, even though it seems I have more work ahead of me (I'm a maya noob) at least I'll be able to give a female study I did a while ago some proper hair, so not all this time is wasted, I'm still learning.
Anyways, thank you very much for such quick replies and insights. Keep up the good work.
Haha I must have forgot he had that helmet, this is great, he has a lot of character.
Depending on the style you are going for, doing some small hair strips for the ends of the hair would look pretty cool, but a solid hair piece would be cool too.
Since most of the hair is hidden it would probably be quickest to do it all in photoshop.
Haha I must have forgot he had that helmet, this is great, he has a lot of character.
Depending on the style you are going for, doing some small hair strips for the ends of the hair would look pretty cool, but a solid hair piece would be cool too.
Since most of the hair is hidden it would probably be quickest to do it all in photoshop.
Sorry I couldn't be of more help.
No, it's all good, trust me. I guess I was an idiot into assuming I could bake it (we'll see what Phung has to say about that, tho). I should have done a quick dry test with one strip before going in.
I want "real" hair cos I think a piece of sculpted hair doesn't look as good IMO, and Marmo2 is going to show me the finger if I do that anyways.
Thx a lot for your time and input and fast replies. I'll keep you posted.
Shes supposed to be younger so I tried not to impose so much of what I know or don't know about adult facial anatomy. Kids have kind of fucked up proportions. Everything in the face (eyes, mouth, nose) are all kind of bunched up, and then they have massive craniums, I guess because their brains are bigger than ours.
Was actually the same base-mesh as before, but I started over. Sketch before other work. Might use it for a personal project later this summer.
Nice job here man, overall it looks very realistic although I agree that she looks maybe not so young. I think the biggest thing is the nose. It looks more like an adult nose to me than a very young person. Perhaps your reference has some unusual characteristics which you are sculpting correctly but isn't helping in terms of making a young looking individual.
I think maybe something that is weird about this kid is that the size of the details in the features are off. Kids faces and our faces use the same building blocks. In other words, a kid and an adult have both the same thickness to their skin so that the relative thickness means that forms are much softer on kids.
Especially on that ear. If you make all the fleshy parts thicker and less defined that will help a lot.
Also the creases around the edges of the mouth are too sharp.
It seems you have moved on from the "hipster", but I figured I'd comment on it anyway.
I remember reading that this was based on your wife, so I understand that it is a personal piece.
Critique on this probably is a delicate issue so I'll just include a link to a paintover and spoiler my critique. Decide for yourself if you want to see the "changes to your wife"/critiques.
I feel like the head/face is lacking in terms of quality compared to the rest of the model. For example, the head almost looks grey to me.
All of her skin on her body looks nice and fleshy (plenty of saturation/red), while the head looks like it uses various photo sources, without them being matched properly. (Not sure whether you actually used just photosources or hand painted or whatever, but it just looks like that to me.)
It also looks like it is using a different shader/material. Like it lacks any SSS.
When it comes to the beer... I dont drink. Cant even remember the last time I drank beer.
But I'd probably make it a bit more bright yellowy, make the foam a bit more irregular.
It also looks too murky, it should be a bit more clear imo.
Maybe add some bubbles, some drops/condensation on the glass, to make it look cold.
You probably answered this a bit higher up, ysalex, but are the shaders to your eyes done in zbrush in realtime? Or are they rendered after? It breathes so much life into your stuff.
I feel like the head/face is lacking in terms of quality compared to the rest of the model. For example, the head almost looks grey to me.
All of her skin on her body looks nice and fleshy (plenty of saturation/red), while the head looks like it uses various photo sources, without them being matched properly. (Not sure whether you actually used just photosources or hand painted or whatever, but it just looks like that to me.)
It also looks like it is using a different shader/material. Like it lacks any SSS.
Hey man thanks for the critique.
The project was pretty rushed initially, I had a lot going on and just wanted to do the outfit justice, so I stole the other models from older projects. So while the project isn't based on my wife at all, the head that I stole from an earlier project was the 'portrait of my wife' project, so its definitely her likeness.
This is the project I had used it from, forgive the loading I re-rendered it at a huge resolution for a 3dtotal book: http://i.cubeupload.com/BoRAH4.png
while the head looks like it uses various photo sources, without them being matched properly.
No photosources, it was all handpainted. However I did do some repainting when I switched the project, so its possible that that is what you're seeing. I am definitely not going to argue with you, I see the gray as well. Her head also has a seperate shader from the body, and while they are mostly tuned together, she doesn't have a secondary specular, and she doesn't have as much SSS, so that was probably a bad call on my part and I can see where you are seeing that.
I appreciate the paintover, I think it looks better in areas with more warmth. The features, maybe its just personal preference.
But I'd probably make it a bit more bright yellowy, make the foam a bit more irregular.
It also looks too murky, it should be a bit more clear imo.
Ha, I can see your point. To be honest I gave it more amber than maybe people are used to in traditional promo shots of beer, specifically because I knew people would do the old 'pee?' gag, which is so funny on the internet with any yellow liquid. But also because I love good beer and I prefer darker or more amber beer, which typically has a deeper and less transparent body. The foam, yeah, more irregularity would sell it. I really tried hard to come up with a procedural shader that I could paint with some paintfx onto the glass, to give it, you know, those like snaky lines where the foam is sliding down the interior of the glass, but that was way too ambitious for this, since the company/people who wanted this second set of alternate renders didn't have that much time, and also I didn't have much time either. So in the end, even, uninteresting foam. I probably wouldn't have given it any foam at all, but I thought I would get even more of the 'pee?' comments, so I did.
You probably answered this a bit higher up, ysalex, but are the shaders to your eyes done in zbrush in realtime? Or are they rendered after? It breathes so much life into your stuff.
Not sure if you are meaning the beer girl or the kid/tween - if you mean the beer girl, they are rendered, and I have the eyes/texture up on my site for download in the tutorial section. If you mean the sketch of the girl, they are realtime in zbrush, no post work, I just project the eyes somewhere towards the end, and then paint out anything that shouldn't be there, so mostly I mask the iris, fill the rest with mid-low white, and thats it. It helps that the eye matcap has a huge fat square highlight. It is zbro's eye matcap, if you google it you will find it and other amazing matcaps.
I think maybe something that is weird about this kid is that the size of the details in the features are off. Kids faces and our faces use the same building blocks. In other words, a kid and an adult have both the same thickness to their skin so that the relative thickness means that forms are much softer on kids.
Especially on that ear. If you make all the fleshy parts thicker and less defined that will help a lot.
Also the creases around the edges of the mouth are too sharp.
Will do, thanks Muzz. Honestly I feel very lost with this age kid, I don't even know how old she is, maybe 10? So anything helps. Also people have said that he ears stick out too far and are too wide in the front view and I think they are right, so maybe that will help. Its a good point you make about skin thickness being standard and not variable, so thanks, I will try to keep it in mind, it makes a lot of sense.
The beer/pee problem could have been solved colouring the glass, in green (Heineken) or brown (Ichnusa) or if it needed to be transparent, by filling it with Guinness.
Haha I suppose, probably best would have been a straight beer bottle, since I've never seen colored glass mason jars. Guinness would have been good too. In the end I recognized the overplayed 'beer in mason jar' hipster thing but did it anyways, because I felt the haircut, plus the dress gave her a slight hipster vibe and figured I'd just play into it. Next time, beer bottle.
This hipster behaviour is new to me, but fits very well the composition, although at the beginning I thought it was honey but then I noticed the foam.
With the bottle would have lost the "weirdness" and peculiarity (depends on what kind of bottle), not that the whole outfit and hairstyle are ordinary, very cool design indeed.
First, south-eastern US has a tradition of moonshine, and moonshine is typically sold in milk-juggs and drank out of whatever is handy, for a long time that was mason jars, so drinking moonshine out of mason jars is seen as equal parts 'authentic' and 'rustic'.
Eventually the hipsters got ahold of it, since they tend to cannibalize anything authentic. So for awhile drinking anything alcoholic, beer, hard liquor (none of it moonshine at least in my area). So it was pretty trendy for awhile to drink out of the mason jars.
More lately the trend has grown, so now you see all sorts of restaurants doing it, and just normal people doing it, since it does have more rustic and authentic roots. I think more as housewives take it over, it is seen as less and less desirable to the hipsters. But it is still sorta the symbol of the hipster drink, since they kinda brought it out.
Personally, I don't care, and I definitely am not meaning hispter as an insult. Life in america is a sea of sweatpants, oversized football jerseys, and sneakers. I am definitely not going to demonize the one group of people who seem to be super concerned with style. It can get a little ridiculous when people are super vein about it, but in general they just seem to put value in different places. I live a little south of seattle, and just a ways north of portland, so I am sandwiched by arguably the two hipster mecca's. I would much rather be surrounded by 10,000 hipsters than 10,000 obese people riding scooters and wearing football jerseys, but thats just me.
Some more on this one. The nose is messed up, I am having a hard time finding the shape. Also some other stuff.
Here is a shot of the references I am using, she is the daughter of a famous photographer hence there are a lot of refs, and of several ages. I tried to pic refs from one age.
Here is some of the overlays, I mostly have it matching from these two views, but definiately there are some discrepancies. The FOV on the left is low, its like 17.5, FOV on the right is more normal, about 30 as far as I can tell.
If anyone has reference matching techniques I would love to hear them.
This looks better! I kinda feel the top corners of the forehead need a bit of flat pointy shape.. Could you show the sculpt without texture? The lights in the texture hide the sculpt..
Adding texture added a lot of age to her, I think there is too much color/texture in it, so I will repaint it to make it look more 'young'. Photoprojection and repainting. Cheating, but it'll do.
Shes got that awkward early teens look to her where the parts of her face and body are developing at slightly different rates and there are parts of the face that are adult and others that are still immature. That's not wrong as such - kids around that age often look like that, but she's always going to look a little odd.
I think part of your actual issue at the moment is that everything thing looks a little too sharply defined. I think if the skin looked a bit more translucent, it'd help significantly. Alternatively, you could go through and give her a smidgen more baby fat to soften things up, particularly around the eyes and the cheeks up around the nose.
Thanks Jackablade, I think you're spot on. I took a minute to buff out some of the edges and add just a little fat, more to places like the cheeks, but also skin thickness in general.
Also retextured most of her to give it a bit of translucence. I think the effect lowers her age back to near where it should be. Still a lot of work to do, but I like this direction much better.
Here is a test render. I'm not making this into a project at this moment, but maybe down the road. The point of this one was to test some microdisplacement and making tiling detail displacement.
Right now I have one tiling micro map, spammed over the whole thing, but I hope to make one for each feature of the face, to give each areas its own look. Forehead, nose, cheeks, ears, chin, lips, neck, and possibly temples.
This is getting really rad, Yuri, great job ! My only remark is that the small hair on the face shouldn't be so visible (at least on her chin) it looks like she's starting to beard ^^
Thanks guys! Yeah that bounce light is really illuminating the hairs under her chin, its pretty funny looking actually. I am trying to solve it, I think I will remove most those hairs, and give them a better falloff/tip fade like battlecow said.
The details on the lips are very impressive. Nice work !
As some other said, the little hairs (especially on the chin) is maybe too much visible, but you seem aware of that already.
Great work, Ysalex, I really like the eyes and lips. Amatuer questions: I assume you use displacement along with a normal map? Also, the use of displacement require the mesh to be very dense, in order to have microdetails in it? As dense as the sculpt?
Mr Significant - Not sure to be honest, there have been some discussion around the forums recently about whether it is best to start off learning zbrush, or start off learning the more technical 'bread and butter' skills like poly modeling (is that what you mean by 'theory'? or did you mean like anatomy studies etc?)
marie - Thanks!
Starkist - I don't use normal maps, just displacement. Vray subdivides at render time, so my meshes are pretty light (40K about), and you have the option to set the edge length of the polygons (my edge length is pretty low, about 1, for better quality). So it is dividing a huge amount, but it happens at render time, so I never actually see it in maya.
Brad - The hairs are just fibermesh, and I agree with everyone that they are too much. The problem is they take forever to render, so I don't get to test render them to the extent that I would like. I set the render and go to bed, so testing it out takes a long time. I didn't expect that the ground plane would bounce light like that up onto the chin and illuminate them so much, so as others mentioned they are going to need a falloff map, and that means doing it all in Nhair so I can get some texture control.
Ysalex - ohh, I see. hmm.. I wonder if I should try that, my mesh is just around 80k but with normal map, I'd assume it takes longer to render though. I think my head render took around 10 mins to render with the hair, and the default rendering settings. Thanks a bunch.
A normal map isn't the best option, since vray isn't going to take the normal map info into account when calculating the sss, and it also throws off the lighting (not always but this does happen).
Displacement takes a while to render but for good reason and good effect.
Replies
... I mean, she is standing there with her legs crossed so you never know. Maybe it was a desperation move.
I am learning Maya mostly to do hair for a character. I am using GMH2 with Vray but I am not having luck baking the strips (the bake returns black) despite adding a Bake node on a uved strip. You mentioned in an earlier post that it takes some effort to get it to work with Vray, could you please give me your quick workflow in such a case? Do you need a VrayPhysical Camera for it to work? Convert the GMH2 hair to polygons?
Thank you in advance and keep it up. Loved your eye tutorial. A real eye-opener! (I'll show myself the way out, it's ok).
Then I import that into maya and create GMH2 hair using those flat strips.
I set up a camera over the top with a very, very low FOV, like <5. Setting it to 0 gives me errors in rendering.
Then I render at 4096x4096. Two passes, one with color, and one white hair on black background. White becomes alpha, color is your diffuse.
Import the hair textures into photoshop and make sure they align with the UV's.
I assumed GMH2 hair was bakeable per se. So I have to either find a way to flatten my GMH2 hair (assuming that's doable) or simply give up on the baking idea (I wanted to make a game character out of my little dude) or do the hair manually in PS using those strips. Dang.
Thank you again.
However, flattening your GMH2 hair should be easy enough with zbrush. Take the hair strips you made to generate the GMH hair into zbrush, UV them the way you want, then do ZPLUGIN-->UVMASTER-->WORK ON CLONE-->FLATTEN
Then export that flattened mesh.
Import the flattened mesh into Maya, and use the same presets you used to do the current GMH hair, on the flattened poly-strips.
Then render out in whatever, Vray or Maya or since it's Nhair even Maya Hardware renderer.
You can use something like KNALD or NDO2 to generate a normal map from the diffuse or alpha map you render.
Then finally you can bake the non-flattened hair strips in Xnormal to the simplified hair on your zbrush sculpt, I noticed it didn't have any individual hairs drawn in. This will give you an overall normal curve. Overlay the normal curve over the GMH2 hair, and you should get a decent result. If you are doing Marmoset2 you could even bake out a directional map.
There is an option that says "Polygon hair" in the pfx brush options I think (I don't have Maya open atm). Now I am not an expert so maybe your're right.
I was getting to the send to ZB idea trying to tie-in your workflow with my existing work. What kills me is that GMH2 doesn't save distribution ramps and to get the results I wanted I had to tweak a lot of those in some areas. While googling "baking maya hair gmh2" I found out that there is a comment that seems to come from the author referring to implementing "Baking" but once you click the page it's not showing anywhere in the actual comments of the GMH2 sales site so I decided to ask the author directly (I'll update if I get any info).
For reference, this is the character I am talking about:
I am converting this sculpted hair into strips and whatnot (apologies for de-railing your thread a bit).
Lastly, even though it seems I have more work ahead of me (I'm a maya noob) at least I'll be able to give a female study I did a while ago some proper hair, so not all this time is wasted, I'm still learning.
Anyways, thank you very much for such quick replies and insights. Keep up the good work.
Depending on the style you are going for, doing some small hair strips for the ends of the hair would look pretty cool, but a solid hair piece would be cool too.
Since most of the hair is hidden it would probably be quickest to do it all in photoshop.
Sorry I couldn't be of more help.
No, it's all good, trust me. I guess I was an idiot into assuming I could bake it (we'll see what Phung has to say about that, tho). I should have done a quick dry test with one strip before going in.
I want "real" hair cos I think a piece of sculpted hair doesn't look as good IMO, and Marmo2 is going to show me the finger if I do that anyways.
Thx a lot for your time and input and fast replies. I'll keep you posted.
Was actually the same base-mesh as before, but I started over. Sketch before other work. Might use it for a personal project later this summer.
I did a quick google search and found this which might be useful: http://www.beautyanalysis.com/mba_facevariationsbyage_page.htm
I think maybe something that is weird about this kid is that the size of the details in the features are off. Kids faces and our faces use the same building blocks. In other words, a kid and an adult have both the same thickness to their skin so that the relative thickness means that forms are much softer on kids.
Especially on that ear. If you make all the fleshy parts thicker and less defined that will help a lot.
Also the creases around the edges of the mouth are too sharp.
I remember reading that this was based on your wife, so I understand that it is a personal piece.
Critique on this probably is a delicate issue so I'll just include a link to a paintover and spoiler my critique. Decide for yourself if you want to see the "changes to your wife"/critiques.
All of her skin on her body looks nice and fleshy (plenty of saturation/red), while the head looks like it uses various photo sources, without them being matched properly. (Not sure whether you actually used just photosources or hand painted or whatever, but it just looks like that to me.)
It also looks like it is using a different shader/material. Like it lacks any SSS.
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/2784626/ysalexHead.png
This is how I would have changed the head. (shape and colour) I also added a lttle bit of specular, so it is more similar to the rest of the body.
When it comes to the beer... I dont drink. Cant even remember the last time I drank beer.
But I'd probably make it a bit more bright yellowy, make the foam a bit more irregular.
It also looks too murky, it should be a bit more clear imo.
Maybe add some bubbles, some drops/condensation on the glass, to make it look cold.
I thought "pils beer" and beer were the same thing. Appearantly beer is an umbrella term. :P
Hey man thanks for the critique.
The project was pretty rushed initially, I had a lot going on and just wanted to do the outfit justice, so I stole the other models from older projects. So while the project isn't based on my wife at all, the head that I stole from an earlier project was the 'portrait of my wife' project, so its definitely her likeness.
This is the project I had used it from, forgive the loading I re-rendered it at a huge resolution for a 3dtotal book: http://i.cubeupload.com/BoRAH4.png
No photosources, it was all handpainted. However I did do some repainting when I switched the project, so its possible that that is what you're seeing. I am definitely not going to argue with you, I see the gray as well. Her head also has a seperate shader from the body, and while they are mostly tuned together, she doesn't have a secondary specular, and she doesn't have as much SSS, so that was probably a bad call on my part and I can see where you are seeing that.
I appreciate the paintover, I think it looks better in areas with more warmth. The features, maybe its just personal preference.
Ha, I can see your point. To be honest I gave it more amber than maybe people are used to in traditional promo shots of beer, specifically because I knew people would do the old 'pee?' gag, which is so funny on the internet with any yellow liquid. But also because I love good beer and I prefer darker or more amber beer, which typically has a deeper and less transparent body. The foam, yeah, more irregularity would sell it. I really tried hard to come up with a procedural shader that I could paint with some paintfx onto the glass, to give it, you know, those like snaky lines where the foam is sliding down the interior of the glass, but that was way too ambitious for this, since the company/people who wanted this second set of alternate renders didn't have that much time, and also I didn't have much time either. So in the end, even, uninteresting foam. I probably wouldn't have given it any foam at all, but I thought I would get even more of the 'pee?' comments, so I did.
Not sure if you are meaning the beer girl or the kid/tween - if you mean the beer girl, they are rendered, and I have the eyes/texture up on my site for download in the tutorial section. If you mean the sketch of the girl, they are realtime in zbrush, no post work, I just project the eyes somewhere towards the end, and then paint out anything that shouldn't be there, so mostly I mask the iris, fill the rest with mid-low white, and thats it. It helps that the eye matcap has a huge fat square highlight. It is zbro's eye matcap, if you google it you will find it and other amazing matcaps.
Will do, thanks Muzz. Honestly I feel very lost with this age kid, I don't even know how old she is, maybe 10? So anything helps. Also people have said that he ears stick out too far and are too wide in the front view and I think they are right, so maybe that will help. Its a good point you make about skin thickness being standard and not variable, so thanks, I will try to keep it in mind, it makes a lot of sense.
With the bottle would have lost the "weirdness" and peculiarity (depends on what kind of bottle), not that the whole outfit and hairstyle are ordinary, very cool design indeed.
First, south-eastern US has a tradition of moonshine, and moonshine is typically sold in milk-juggs and drank out of whatever is handy, for a long time that was mason jars, so drinking moonshine out of mason jars is seen as equal parts 'authentic' and 'rustic'.
Eventually the hipsters got ahold of it, since they tend to cannibalize anything authentic. So for awhile drinking anything alcoholic, beer, hard liquor (none of it moonshine at least in my area). So it was pretty trendy for awhile to drink out of the mason jars.
More lately the trend has grown, so now you see all sorts of restaurants doing it, and just normal people doing it, since it does have more rustic and authentic roots. I think more as housewives take it over, it is seen as less and less desirable to the hipsters. But it is still sorta the symbol of the hipster drink, since they kinda brought it out.
Personally, I don't care, and I definitely am not meaning hispter as an insult. Life in america is a sea of sweatpants, oversized football jerseys, and sneakers. I am definitely not going to demonize the one group of people who seem to be super concerned with style. It can get a little ridiculous when people are super vein about it, but in general they just seem to put value in different places. I live a little south of seattle, and just a ways north of portland, so I am sandwiched by arguably the two hipster mecca's. I would much rather be surrounded by 10,000 hipsters than 10,000 obese people riding scooters and wearing football jerseys, but thats just me.
Here is a shot of the references I am using, she is the daughter of a famous photographer hence there are a lot of refs, and of several ages. I tried to pic refs from one age.
Here is some of the overlays, I mostly have it matching from these two views, but definiately there are some discrepancies. The FOV on the left is low, its like 17.5, FOV on the right is more normal, about 30 as far as I can tell.
If anyone has reference matching techniques I would love to hear them.
I think part of your actual issue at the moment is that everything thing looks a little too sharply defined. I think if the skin looked a bit more translucent, it'd help significantly. Alternatively, you could go through and give her a smidgen more baby fat to soften things up, particularly around the eyes and the cheeks up around the nose.
Also retextured most of her to give it a bit of translucence. I think the effect lowers her age back to near where it should be. Still a lot of work to do, but I like this direction much better.
Really appreciate the crits!
Here is a test render. I'm not making this into a project at this moment, but maybe down the road. The point of this one was to test some microdisplacement and making tiling detail displacement.
Right now I have one tiling micro map, spammed over the whole thing, but I hope to make one for each feature of the face, to give each areas its own look. Forehead, nose, cheeks, ears, chin, lips, neck, and possibly temples.
the skin really looks lifelike, great spec values. I like this !
Appreciate it.
As some other said, the little hairs (especially on the chin) is maybe too much visible, but you seem aware of that already.
Ysalex, I want to start to learn about sculpting characters. I know ZBrush prety well. Where to start ? First of practice tutorial ? Or more theory ?
Sorry for my english .
How did you do those tiny hairs (people are saying show too much)?
Mr Significant - Not sure to be honest, there have been some discussion around the forums recently about whether it is best to start off learning zbrush, or start off learning the more technical 'bread and butter' skills like poly modeling (is that what you mean by 'theory'? or did you mean like anatomy studies etc?)
marie - Thanks!
Starkist - I don't use normal maps, just displacement. Vray subdivides at render time, so my meshes are pretty light (40K about), and you have the option to set the edge length of the polygons (my edge length is pretty low, about 1, for better quality). So it is dividing a huge amount, but it happens at render time, so I never actually see it in maya.
Brad - The hairs are just fibermesh, and I agree with everyone that they are too much. The problem is they take forever to render, so I don't get to test render them to the extent that I would like. I set the render and go to bed, so testing it out takes a long time. I didn't expect that the ground plane would bounce light like that up onto the chin and illuminate them so much, so as others mentioned they are going to need a falloff map, and that means doing it all in Nhair so I can get some texture control.
s6 - Thanks!
Displacement takes a while to render but for good reason and good effect.
Do you know if this is a Vray thing? Same situation with Mental Ray?