Advice on hand tertiary details
Hi
I’m looking for some advice on how best to approach hand tertiary details, specifically on the palms. What do other game character artists do? I mean, for something like the palms, which may not be seen up close, unless you see a character’s hands in a first person shooter, do other artists try to capture all the finer skin details? For instance, I’ve been struggling on how best to approach the directionality of the thinner skin lines (not the thicker ones on top), like you can see in this image:
None of the alphas I’ve found or got have impressed me to be honest. And with alphas, it’s difficult to get precise directionality when you have to keep dragging out a rectangle and rotating them. Do other artists go to this extreme with the tertiary details of the palms? Specifically for game characters? And if so, how do you approach it? I’ve not found any videos or courses that cover the hands with realistic tertiary details, unless others know of some…? It’s be appreciated if links to some could be shared. :)
Thanks
Replies
Actually, giving it some thought, I did discover that in order to add some finer lines the poly count needed to be ridiculously high (mine was around 25 million). Too high to export, which made the file size over a gig. But lowering the subdiv count made them look too blurry and messy. So considering how fine they would need to be, and how dense the mesh would need to be, it wouldn’t be worth adding those kinds of details for a game-ready model.
Plus, I do remember Ethan Winters from Resident Evil Village. His hands are seen often throughout the game. His model looks to be available to download out there, so I’ll have to grab it and examine his hands. :) From the few screenshots I’ve seen, I don’t think that directionality is present. I think it’s just basic lines and creases that have been sculpted on.
Hmm… Took a look at the Ethan Winters model, specifically his hands, and it looks like those fine directionality lines are present in the albedo texture. So I guess my question for advice still stands.
Here's a few screenshots of Ethan's gorgeous looking hand... The attention to detail is awesome!
But it's these skin lines I'm unsure on how to approach:
If you like to make them by hand just do it.
https://twitter.com/round_tail/status/1494973423696502784?s=20&t=r8Iv49C3AMtZD_Gr4W4s0A
Hmm. It's quite a lengthy process though to manually sculpt/paint every single one. If I was doing it in my own time, maybe. But I have a deadline in a few weeks, so I'd love to find a quicker method if possible. :)
You could generate something similar to these sorts of patterns procedurally. Andrei Zelenco is the master at doing this in substance designer - you can see some examples on his artstation here:
https://www.artstation.com/artwork/g2oq8Q
you could also look into doing it in houdini. Using something similar to this:
https://youtu.be/siL-sbLTGe8
I would use a scan as base. If you work only on mid levels for the big shapes all the micro detail is preserved.
Thanks for the suggestions. That's definitely something to consider. I've not used Substance Designer much, so I may have to practise that method in my own time at some point. I've also yet to try Houdini too.
That's a good idea that I didn't even think about. I'll try that next. Thanks. I've managed to find one on Texturing.xyz, which seems to be the only one at half price at the moment. Coincidence. https://texturing.xyz/collections/human/products/displacement-male-arm-30s-handpalm-01
They don't have many on there though for hands. Does anyone know of any other sites, maybe...?
Take a look in the ten24 store.
There should be a good base scan.
https://ten24.info/
I bought myself those hand displacenment maps that were on sale, and following this tutorial - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iV264wpbzBQ&ab_channel=Adamocg - the results have been... crap. If anything, it's just capturing the secondary forms of the mesh. :-\ But I think I've approached it the wrong way anyhow. I'm guessing you never wrap a displacement map, right...? That it should only be the Albedo...? Though the pack I bought doesn't have any Albedo maps, just a Displacement and Tertiary map.
Okay, I'm an idiot. XD I didn't realise you could just plop the maps straight onto your mesh (unwrapped, of course). I'm glad I found this tutorial:
https://texturing.xyz/pages/vface-docs-3-4-a-bake-zbrush-simple