Texturing Characters and more...
polycounter lvl 6
Hey I'm in to making characters and want to know some good techniques, tutorials, or applications for texturing them. I went to school for game dev. but that was not enough. They taught me some techniques but the program needed more texturing classes. When we had to make a character they gave us no texturing techniques for skin or even texturing hard surface objects. I want to find the most efficient way of texturing.
I really want to know how to texture skin well. I use DDO at the moment and it's nice how you can select a material and you get gloss specular and an updated normal. But I want to know how to create those from scratch and understand the fundamentals of texturing instead of clicking on a material and watch everything create itself. I see others using Zbrush and Mari but not sure which program I want to get into.
I know how to sculpt and UV ( I do need more practice) but what really gets my characters failing the most is the texturing. I need nice clean textures.
I also have other questions regarding character creation.
1. When posing my character.... Is it better for the whole character to be UVed onto 1 map? Because if my maps are separated into 3 different UV maps (which I see other modelers do) and I try to pose it into Zbrush, I can't do it properly. I would need to pose each separate part separately (head, body, legs). Even If I attach the my parts together, Goz in Zbrush, pose him in Zbrush, goz back to max I come back as a non textured character. When I slap one my textures onto my character it stretches through the whole character because all the UV's are attached because I attached my character for posing.
(sorry if that was confusing)
2. When modeling the mouth do I model it open so I can place the teeth in properly? I never see professional work like this but some artists said to do so.
3. When modeling an army guy for example.... and he has lots of gear and pouches... Would it be more efficient to model the base mesh of the pouches as best to the shape as possible then goz in zbrush add details and bake normals??? Or sculpt the pouches in zbrush then retopo in Max/Maya and bake normals with something like Xnormal?
I probably will ask more in this thread If I have more questions
I really want to know how to texture skin well. I use DDO at the moment and it's nice how you can select a material and you get gloss specular and an updated normal. But I want to know how to create those from scratch and understand the fundamentals of texturing instead of clicking on a material and watch everything create itself. I see others using Zbrush and Mari but not sure which program I want to get into.
I know how to sculpt and UV ( I do need more practice) but what really gets my characters failing the most is the texturing. I need nice clean textures.
I also have other questions regarding character creation.
1. When posing my character.... Is it better for the whole character to be UVed onto 1 map? Because if my maps are separated into 3 different UV maps (which I see other modelers do) and I try to pose it into Zbrush, I can't do it properly. I would need to pose each separate part separately (head, body, legs). Even If I attach the my parts together, Goz in Zbrush, pose him in Zbrush, goz back to max I come back as a non textured character. When I slap one my textures onto my character it stretches through the whole character because all the UV's are attached because I attached my character for posing.
(sorry if that was confusing)
2. When modeling the mouth do I model it open so I can place the teeth in properly? I never see professional work like this but some artists said to do so.
3. When modeling an army guy for example.... and he has lots of gear and pouches... Would it be more efficient to model the base mesh of the pouches as best to the shape as possible then goz in zbrush add details and bake normals??? Or sculpt the pouches in zbrush then retopo in Max/Maya and bake normals with something like Xnormal?
I probably will ask more in this thread If I have more questions
Replies
1. Try using transpose master, in the zplugin menu. It allows you to pose multiple subtools at once. At some point it's worth learning how to do proper skeleton creation and weight painting in Max/Maya/Modo etc. though. It'll help you understand what makes for good animation-friendly topology.
2. You can model it closed, then create a zbrush layer with the mouth open so you can place teeth and inner mouth more easily. Toggle the layer on or off again any time.
3. Entirely up to you. If you get familiar with insert mesh brushes, you can quickly build up a handy library of buckles, straps and other gubbins to allow you to more easily make this stuff directly in zbrush.
Like 1 UV for the head? another for pouches? If someone out there knows let me know please
1.The character is made of modular pieces, for clothing customisation, npc/background character generation etc.
2.You need higher resolution textures for some parts of the model. Heads/faces often get extra texel res because they're often seen in close-up.
3.You need a special material for some parts of the model (e.g. hair, skin) and not the rest. These materials often require additional texture maps or channels, such as subdermal for skin or transparency for hair. For example, it's a waste to have an alpha channel in a 2048x2048 texture that is only used for a bit of hair in the corner of the map, which will double the memory usage of that texture. Better to make a smaller, dedicated hair texture instead.
So for your generic soldier example, you might have a skin material and texture for the head and hands. Another standard material and texture for the main clothing. Another for hair. Finally, if the accessories are used on several other characters, they may also get a dedicated texture sheet with multiple items in it (all the pouches, knife sheaths etc.) This gives you the flexibility to swap out head models, uniforms and accessories and get a lot of re-use from a handful of materials and textures. It also cuts down on draw calls if used well, which is another thing you should look into.
That's the basics. Different studios will all have different approaches though.