MDS > Adahy WIP

[morph106]

Hey Guys

My name is Josh and this is a character im working on for my production. He is to be an American Indian but creative licence may pull me in other directions. I gotta give props to a lot of the gnomon dvd's because they have really opened my eyes to creating a workable workflow between other apps which is what im attempting to do with him. The guinea pig...

**Latest Update**
comparison01xo2.jpg

**Start of Thread**


Concept Sketch
adahy01xu5.jpg
Initial Block In
zbrushgrab00oe7.jpg
Progress to date
mayaupdate01rt9.jpg


Also, I've notiecd one thing about Zack Petrocs workflow which promotes exporting a finished zbrush mesh into an external app(Maya) to rebuild an animation friendly mesh. My quam is the rough tesselating that i can only get rid of by converting Poly>>SubD>>Poly. Can i get some feedback on other peoples workarounds? Thankyou

C&C welcome :-)

[aminuts]

hi

nice start...looks to be an adventure watching you find your way...and ya seem to have a few skills there so should be rather enjoyable

welcome to the madhouse...

[morph106]

@Aminuts
Thanks a lot for the support. Im really excited to be working on something challenging and hopefullly attainable..[fingers crossed]

For the last week however, ive been stuck for a while on a way to animate displacement maps in Renderman. I was converted to the shading network "showcased"(notice how i didn't say 'taught' :-)) in the alias hyper-realistic creature creation book but alas, all i ended up with was a bloated head that i assumed was a result of the difference vector not correctly subtracting the difference of my blend shape and my default head before connecting to the multiply/divide node. I also made feeble attempts to use the layered shader but to no avail. I've searched through the forums but haven't found a workflow suitable. im hesitant to go back to Mental Ray as well because the render time automatically doubles.

Any advice would be really appreciated..

I also posted a comparison between my zbrush snapshots and renderman renders. if anyone can offer any advice on getting the crevices in his skull to be as detailed in the RM renders, im open to any suggestions. This was a blendshape that i put together on the fly so disregard any crits on the modelling for now.

comparison01xo2.jpg

Thanx all :-)

[aminuts]

you might want to check the new zwiki ..i believe i noticed some additions to it regarding maya, xsi, etc and zbrush work flows so perhaps you can find something there. else a search on maya should turn up quite a bit here.

[morph106]

thanks to aminuts for the heads up with my lil displacement problem. the past two weeks have been spent losing myself in an attempt to solve the problem and yes! i did it!!

now back to modelling once again and this is a lil update on my character. i changed the head a bit because the concept sketch didnt follow along quite well. i stole sum reference from my brothers' face and im ready to start unwrapping him and finishing off his accessories i.e. breastplate, leggings and breechcloth.

all01yj3.jpg

and Head Shot

head01yc4.jpg

c&c's welcome :-)

[womball]

Watch the O shape on the one blendshape. Its not quite write at the bottom, the lipss need more stretching, and the O may be too severe, it hard to tell without teeth.

[morph106]

your absolutely right womball. those 2 blendshapes need sum serious reworking and i plan on making all the facial blendshapes next week(incl finer details)

thanks for the heads up!

[doron]

nice work :tu: :tu: :tu:

wouldnt it be better to live the mouth and jaw movement for skinning and rigging? bland shapes are great but they dont give you the 3 dimensional movement a jow joint can have.

[morph106]

thanks Doron

one of the things i plan to implement with this rig is an upper and lower jaw joint that can both move the corresponding halves of the head independantly. This should give me more control over the headrig for sum insane screams and roars :-) hehe, crazy times...

[baker17]

hey man... saw your thread on cgtalk... good to see another new zealander using ZB! looks like a good start... but i got some pointers for ya...

the over all shape is good, but i would check closely, the muscular formation around the torso region... especially where the deltoids meet the pectorils, and also the lower abdominal region, look a little too wide at the moment. i would beef up the legs a little too to match the upper body strength this guy has. but i look at probably way too many anatomy books... artistic lisence allows for a lot of movement with muscular formation... look at comic characters... just keep in mind what you want to focus on.

i did a little paint over on the face too, hope you don't mind. think this model will look cool... keep it up man... will keep posted.

attachment.jpg

[morph106]

@baker17

thanks a lot for the pointers re. the anatomy tweaks and even the paint over of the head. at this point, everything i do is fair game until im happy with his form overall. i changed sum of the proportions in his upper torso and neck too which i will post with my first pass of the skin texture. i gta say aswell man, i really look up to the work your doing. i saw your dark elf pic as an avatar on cgtalk and it floored me bro. i was actually gna hit you up as to the kinda MR setup you rendered it in but then i read your thread on zCentral and found out you rendered in ZBrush. A shame cos i wuda loved to do the same kinda thing as an animation with my character.

nuff sed.. this next post, as stated above, is the unwrap of Adahy and i should tackle my first skin pass later tonight and tomorrow.

uvunwraplz0.jpg

[baker17]

hey man,
thanks for the compliment :)

for the dark elf (naiya) i actually used antropus' skin shader, and in photoshop, made two layers and desaturated the one right down, and just brought out the colour i wanted... if i were doing it in MR, would've used the MiSSS skin shader... i use it for all my skin. im doing her sister now, will be posting the results soon... she's gonna be done in maya.

keep up the good work bro!

[morph106]

thanks for sharing the gold Andrew! out of curiosity, with Kris' shader, are you using a high-ish rgb value of your textures when in pm to even out the blowout of light from his custom light setup?

now a question for anyone who can help. i seperated my uv's into seperate 0-1 co-ordinates for the purpose of generating larg-ish displacement maps on each part but realised i have no idea how to apply the seperate color maps to the model once ive finished doing them. can anyone recommend a workaround for this as i read in a cgtalk thread that you couldnt work with multiple maps in bodypaint which was gna be the program i use to get rid of texture seams.

thanks peeps!

[morph106]

ive been tryin' out sum colors for my character. kinda walkin blind but if anyone has any suggestions...thank you!

i did sum hue and level alterations of the right side of the face to try and get a warmer/darker native feel. again, walkin blind. any pointers on texturin would be great.

texturetest01sr2.jpg
texturetest02fb5.jpg
texturetest03nj3.jpg

[morph106]

just a small update to show my progress.

adahycomp01ox3.jpg

hope to post full body render by tomorrow

[baker17]

hey man... lookin good so far...
what shader are you using? lookin slightly too bronzy at the moment (if ther is such a thing) maybe tone down the reds a little more.

keep it up ;)

[morph106]

thanks for the pep bro

my eyes need to look at anything other than this character right now..:-) everything i see is startin to become one big blur lol

i was jus using a blinn shader for the render w/ color, bump, spec, displacement maps. Than i did a bunch of tweaks in Pshop.

Heres a tweak on the last post..

adahycomp03el9.jpg

seems tomorrow hasnt arrived yet tho i will post the body render very soon :-)

feedback welcome!

[baker17]

are you using maya?
you should use the MiSSS shader the fast skin one... you'll get a good result with that... :)

[morph106]

thanks for the suggestion Andrew

I just lost about a day and a half tryin to get a decent result w/ the fast skin shader in Maya. I figure the problem is my lack of knowledge re light setup and shader fine tuning. Still pluggin away but at the same time im tryin' my hand at the leggings, breastplate and hair.. Ill post my progress tonight.

oh, and if anyone has any info regarding the fast sss shader id be gratefull for any advice :-)

[morph106]

one step forward, 4 steps back :-)

adahyhead01lq8.jpg

i like the white face paint better but other than that, the head texture is done.
still workin on the rest of the body texture as well as rigging and blendshapes... hours of fun..:-)

[morph106]

this is a comp of sum of the layers i rendered out of maya. I'm a lot happier with this texture detail wise but still plugin away at getting the right combo once all the layers are comped. i still have a long way to go..

adahycomp11ox5.jpg

c&c's and paintovers welcome

[morph106]

last image adjusted..

adahycomp13vf0.jpg

[morph106]

This is the final look of my character. The bump is prolly a little too much but Im happy with it overall. Less the fact that this render has him with no hair, this is how i want him to look once I animate him. And I will...just don't know when..:o

rmantitlerender01eu0.jpg