Alright, final version. Done. Ton left I could do but don't have the time or energy, and I'm feeling good about where I left most things. Learned a lot.
Ysalex damn you getting fast man i need to pick up the pace and practice some more. awesome stuff by the way really love the natural look of her face, i would watch out for the bumps in the body and make them smaller cause right now on the chest it kinda looks like she has goosebumps but other than that it looks ACE
Thanks guys. Froyok, I've been using alphas, the standard brush, and also the slash brush. Also recently I've been playing around with using surface noise and tiling alpha textures, but these are limited to broader areas of skin, and I don't believe there are any in this image.
Also, the best thing you can do for skin texture is to do a good spec map which highlights all the peaks and valleys. I typically bake out high-res normal maps to make cavity maps out of in nDo, which I lay over my specular to get all that fine detail in there.
I use a pore alpha I found somewhere. I also have an alpha called something like fdsfd.psd, that I made, it's basically just single pixels with slight blurring. Other than that I use the standard zbrush brushes and alphas with various settings. My portfolio in my sig. has a link to a tutorial I made which has all the alphas I use and some of my brush settings.
Thanks guys. Froyok, I've been using alphas, the standard brush, and also the slash brush. Also recently I've been playing around with using surface noise and tiling alpha textures, but these are limited to broader areas of skin, and I don't believe there are any in this image.
Also, the best thing you can do for skin texture is to do a good spec map which highlights all the peaks and valleys. I typically bake out high-res normal maps to make cavity maps out of in nDo, which I lay over my specular to get all that fine detail in there.
Thanks for the tips ! :thumbup:
(And the nipple alpha of course)
I love this thread ysalex, keep up the great work. I personally find your work inspirational. Are the eye reflections on your model real time or pre-rendered?
Game-res in Marmoset. 13K tris, not a single texture sheet because the clothing are meant to be interchangable, but added up it's less than a 4096 map.
Not done. Got to add a minor amount of wear to the clothes (belt needs the most attention), although they are supposed to look pretty clean, add a true overshirt, and get a nice hair style done. Should be finished with this one in the next two days or less.
The shoes were done only in zbrush. My workflow is pretty simple. I do a dynamesh to make the super low version of the shoe, then I sketch the lines for all the different components on this.
I go into retopology and use the base and lines to make each different component, giving them thickness. Then I just start working on the pieces till they're finished.
Hope that makes sense, I can get shots of the process if anyone wants to see them.
Here we go, some shots and a couple comments. Note that I switched up the dynamesh shoe that I used to do the retopo, but it didn't look much different than this one, but I didn't have the one I used (just a couple tweaks) - still this shows it just fine.
Offtopic, I was making this while I was watching the seahawks make their comeback to win. Jesus, feel like I'm going to vomit. Amazing game.
So it looks like you've got separate geometry for all of the clothing elements, no doubt to aid in switching clothes. When I have tried this in the past, I ran into clipping issues. Has this been a problem for you?
The skin diffuse is also much simpler than I imagined. Is all of your skin detail really coming out of the normal and specular? I've really got to step up my detail sculpting game.
About the skin, yes, it's mostly normal info. For the womans diffuse I wanted her to look 'clean', so I have very little baked lighting. There is no AO or anything, it's just the base diffuse, plus a cavity map.
To keep the cavity maps from darkening the skin and making the skin look 'ruddy', in photoshop I turn the blacks to red using 'selective color'. Then I multiply this. It makes her pores and creases more red, which is its own kind of fake SSS. It's a subtle thing but I think it helps.
The more important element though is a really good spec map. Typically I have more lighting info in the spec map, AO and such, plus two levels of cavity maps. I found trying to do the non-realtime render characters that the biggest component to skin is the spec, so I make these as detailed as possible, plus you can add baked lighting to this without it being so obvious what you are doing. To make this though you need the really detailed high-poly for the cavity map bake and the AO bake.
As for the clipping, yeah, it's a problem. The easiest way to keep this at a minimum is to try to make the mesh on the clothes as similar as possible to the mesh of the body, although it's not always possible, for instance the shirt. In that case, I tried to give myself enough of a border that I get some leeway.
whoa mindblowing work I just learned about your thread yesterday and damn you have progressed fast as hell keep that drive and you will be unstoppable. I think you should keep practicing even more extreme poses using valid reference of course. I am no anatomy expert still I feel like you have some poses but not enough. I would really love to see from you two people posed together I think its an avenue you haven't yet traveled. Maybe they are dancing whatever the case be creative use proper reference, throw your own style into it and its golden.
Thanks nufftalon, I would really like to find more time for anatomy studies. Doing a double would be fine. I'd also like to do a hardcore ecorche, with muscle fibers and veins and everything. I could imagine myself buying some books and being content doing that for months.
Just wondering what your hair alpha look like? Mine really doesn't look as defined as that in marmoset.
Amazing work as usual the only thing I could say is that her shirt really look paper thin. Maybe it could help addind a little bit of actual volume to it (inside border)
Yeah, I agree with you, personally I like the shaved head. I'm the end she should have around 5 haircuts to chose from and 5 outfits (plus colors of each outfit), I'm hoping one of them will be a nice Afro.
Hey Marie, I agree looking at it about the depth. For the hair, my alphas look a lot like yours from Ellie, I doubt I am doing anything different, probably it's just that marmosets alpha is not so good, and were both displeased with the effect zoomed in, but out like this they look better. Up close I'm not fond of it either. I guess I'm not sure, I'll put together my alphas and post them and we can compare notes.
It's just when I look at them in max with the alpha they look so nice and defined, I can see all the small little hair detailed etc, it's pretty smooth. and then I put them into marmoset and it look like they are just smudge and you cant tell the details at all.
It's just when I look at them in max with the alpha they look so nice and defined, I can see all the small little hair detailed etc, it's pretty smooth. and then I put them into marmoset and it look like they are just smudge and you cant tell the details at all.
Almost like a pixelated smear of gradient? I'll take a shot later but I get it too, it's like a grid around the actual cutout that throws off everything, including the specular and shadows and stuff.
Heeeee I'm not to sure I would need to see a shot to be able to tell, I'll try and do a quick shot comparaison of the hair on my character between max-marmoset and cryengine
dude! great character! Are you considering this done? Your post in the WAYWO makes it sound that way, but she's nooootttt quiiittteee theerrrreee
I think she just need a bit more work, mostly in textures, to really make her top row material. If the textures are still WIP, this might all be stuff you're planning to do, so feel free to ignore.
- Texture the clothes - Right now they just look like flat colors, which I'm pretty sure they are, so this is probably an unnecessary crit.
- color variation - this is a good rule for everything, but her skin still looks a little off. Black people tan too, try and work some light/dark variation into areas that are more or less exposed. Spec variation too, she's a little too evenly shiny overall.
- Kill the whites! Seriously, the whites of the teeth and eyes are destroying everything. Tone those babies down with a little tan/red/brown action and the whole thing will read much better. The lips might be a bit too bright as well.
- Tiny hands?! Her hands look a little on the small side, try scaling them up a smidge and see how they look.
Overall this is a great piece dude, looking forward to seeing her done.
yea a few lil tweaks and I think she will look fantastic. For me the delts need softening, at the moment when her arms are down your getting a cut which you dont really need.
The belt is really flat, it's only in the normal map, I wish I had the geo to spare. I feel as though one of my weak points is translating the highs to the lows under budget, I'll be working on that. I think it also looks much more flat because of the flat diffuse texture, it's a single color, need to rectify that.
I agree about the textures in general actually, I'd like to add some noise to the jeans, and something to the shirt. It's based on one of my wifes shirts, and the texture is very subtle, some horizontal thread color differentiation, but that's about it, athough I think that I can find some macro discoloration to add. I will eventually get the chance to touch things up, but right now I'm being tasked to other things.
Ferg, thank you for the very thorough critique, I agree with what you've written (actually everyone who's critiqued is pretty on point). Much appreciate.
Very clean and accurate stuff as always. My only very minor crit would be about her bottom... Looks too soft, too easily squashed by the pants. Black girls usually have rounder and more muscular bottom that the others.
Just my two cents
I love these, and I'm a huge fan of your work, but I definitely feel that the long, straight hair doesn't really "work" for her. It might work if it was a bit more frizzy, or of the hair was styled in another way.
Replies
I'm jealous of your skin detail, do you have any tips you would be willing to share ? Or some good references ?
Also, the best thing you can do for skin texture is to do a good spec map which highlights all the peaks and valleys. I typically bake out high-res normal maps to make cavity maps out of in nDo, which I lay over my specular to get all that fine detail in there.
Here's a shot that shows the skin texture better.
I use a pore alpha I found somewhere. I also have an alpha called something like fdsfd.psd, that I made, it's basically just single pixels with slight blurring. Other than that I use the standard zbrush brushes and alphas with various settings. My portfolio in my sig. has a link to a tutorial I made which has all the alphas I use and some of my brush settings.
So here it is, ysalex nipple alpha release version .99 (beta).
Thanks for the tips ! :thumbup:
(And the nipple alpha of course)
-alice
Not done. Got to add a minor amount of wear to the clothes (belt needs the most attention), although they are supposed to look pretty clean, add a true overshirt, and get a nice hair style done. Should be finished with this one in the next two days or less.
Is this mostly poly modeled?
The shoes were done only in zbrush. My workflow is pretty simple. I do a dynamesh to make the super low version of the shoe, then I sketch the lines for all the different components on this.
I go into retopology and use the base and lines to make each different component, giving them thickness. Then I just start working on the pieces till they're finished.
Hope that makes sense, I can get shots of the process if anyone wants to see them.
Yes please.
Offtopic, I was making this while I was watching the seahawks make their comeback to win. Jesus, feel like I'm going to vomit. Amazing game.
So it looks like you've got separate geometry for all of the clothing elements, no doubt to aid in switching clothes. When I have tried this in the past, I ran into clipping issues. Has this been a problem for you?
The skin diffuse is also much simpler than I imagined. Is all of your skin detail really coming out of the normal and specular? I've really got to step up my detail sculpting game.
To keep the cavity maps from darkening the skin and making the skin look 'ruddy', in photoshop I turn the blacks to red using 'selective color'. Then I multiply this. It makes her pores and creases more red, which is its own kind of fake SSS. It's a subtle thing but I think it helps.
The more important element though is a really good spec map. Typically I have more lighting info in the spec map, AO and such, plus two levels of cavity maps. I found trying to do the non-realtime render characters that the biggest component to skin is the spec, so I make these as detailed as possible, plus you can add baked lighting to this without it being so obvious what you are doing. To make this though you need the really detailed high-poly for the cavity map bake and the AO bake.
As for the clipping, yeah, it's a problem. The easiest way to keep this at a minimum is to try to make the mesh on the clothes as similar as possible to the mesh of the body, although it's not always possible, for instance the shirt. In that case, I tried to give myself enough of a border that I get some leeway.
I've completed the hair, moving on to a second shirt and I think that will be the last update on her for awhile.
_______________
Completed model with a clothing change.
personal taste most likely.
Amazing work as usual the only thing I could say is that her shirt really look paper thin. Maybe it could help addind a little bit of actual volume to it (inside border)
Almost like a pixelated smear of gradient? I'll take a shot later but I get it too, it's like a grid around the actual cutout that throws off everything, including the specular and shadows and stuff.
I think she just need a bit more work, mostly in textures, to really make her top row material. If the textures are still WIP, this might all be stuff you're planning to do, so feel free to ignore.
- Texture the clothes - Right now they just look like flat colors, which I'm pretty sure they are, so this is probably an unnecessary crit.
- color variation - this is a good rule for everything, but her skin still looks a little off. Black people tan too, try and work some light/dark variation into areas that are more or less exposed. Spec variation too, she's a little too evenly shiny overall.
- Kill the whites! Seriously, the whites of the teeth and eyes are destroying everything. Tone those babies down with a little tan/red/brown action and the whole thing will read much better. The lips might be a bit too bright as well.
- Tiny hands?! Her hands look a little on the small side, try scaling them up a smidge and see how they look.
Overall this is a great piece dude, looking forward to seeing her done.
I can see that the blue top is textured, it's just really subtle. The jeans definitely need more texture. Texture in the normal map as well.
The belt looks really flat. Is it in the normal map at all? If you could spare the polies maybe have it as geometry?
She's awesome though. Love the proportions and pose. Those are clearly your strong points.
fantastic job matey
I agree about the textures in general actually, I'd like to add some noise to the jeans, and something to the shirt. It's based on one of my wifes shirts, and the texture is very subtle, some horizontal thread color differentiation, but that's about it, athough I think that I can find some macro discoloration to add. I will eventually get the chance to touch things up, but right now I'm being tasked to other things.
Ferg, thank you for the very thorough critique, I agree with what you've written (actually everyone who's critiqued is pretty on point). Much appreciate.
Just my two cents
Regardless, it looks great.