ZBrushCentral

Skinshader - MPR Tutorial

Some people have asked how I did create the skin and shaders in my previous image as it looked somehow painted (Irish Skin Disease). I promised to give answers and to do a tutorial but I didn’t have much time. Anyway…

The reason is that I’ve tried to use Zbrush to do some Multi Pass Rendering in order to shape and composite all the shader layers elements separately in photoshop.

In the picture before that I used Sokar’s Skin shader and rendered straight in Zbrush (Tattoo Galore #1) and while the result is fine I wanted to do something different.

I’m used to doing all my renders in MPR with Mental Ray or Maya and others that do it straight out of the box but I was kind of stuck in Zbrush where I had to find tricks to generate the most basic layers possible.

In other packages I would also have sampled a lot of other aspects of the model like ambient occlusion, light direction but starting from Zbrush I had to start with two layers… For the purpose of the demonstration, I recreated the image for you guys (i didn’t keep the history of the full blown initial image) and made a step by step tutorial to explain the process.

[![SkinTut_00.jpg|354x384](upload://8VsUfxF0xu9eeOK1ea0XrUV8A7X.jpeg)] Just note that I didn't render the cavities. However, if you want to, you can render them in the Diffuse Light Layer.

For some reason I was unable to upload the last image of the tutorial. However, I made a little archive that contains both the tutorial and a sample PSD file showing the final results and the layers. Here is the link.

[http://www.savefile.com/files/5394034](http://www.savefile.com/files/5394034) Hope this is useful for you guys.

and finally the missing last part of the tutorial for those who can’t reach the archive:

Attachments

SkinTut_01.jpg

SkinTut_02.jpg

SkinTut_03.jpg

SkinTut_04.jpg

the last image skin tut 05 cant be displayed:cry: i can see it in small but cant open it.

very maniatical and sadistic image! wow I love the texture and expressions thank you for the tuts and demos :smiley:

thats was Good.
i know you couldn’t get into full detail because it would be time consuming
and i don’t know PS that well
is there any chance you make a tutorial with this
http://www.zbrushcentral.com/zbc/showthread.php?t=28069&highlight=screen+capture
it would save you time and plus it would be more detail:+1:

Thanks you very much for this tutorial. This helps alot down the line when I start my renderings. Best luck.

fantastic!!
your way to create the scatter in PS makes me astonished !!
really great stuff, man. I hope to see other your work soon !!
keep it up :sunglasses: :+1:

Thanks baz :smiley: cool tutorial ill have to test it, once i finish somesort of human like model :smiley:

Thanks for sharing …but the link is failing. Any chance of uploading somewhere else?

Cheers
El-d

Hi all,

thanks for your nice feedback.
Since yesterday, I’ve tried a thousand times to upload the remaining file without any success.

Howver, I’ve just checked the site where the archive is uploaded and it seems to be working fine.
If further people are havin the same issues, please let me know.

Finally, I can’t really afford to create a timelapse video as it will take me ages and I’m living under heavy time constraints ATM. However there is no secret to how it’s done and the method is really straightforward and doesn’t require any photoshop specific features nor painting skills, any decent painting program is able to do the same.

Sorry :frowning:

Thanks a lot! The archive is fine! This is the best intro to multi pass rendering I saw. Is there a book/papers which expand on that? I see all sorts of great renders and all claim multi pass technique for their greatness but I seem to be unable to find a good reference to the background. In the meantime I am getting the hang of quite a few ‘tricks’ but feel that there must be more about the theory about the channels…

Cheers
LemonNado

Yes lemmonado… actually, this tutorial is more about achieving shaping functions without using high end renderers. To be honest, this was just for fun as this really is more or less like re-inventing the wheel since most of the high-end packages allow you to shade using ramps and other image/tangent/lighting or physical based features except they are obviously automated. There’s a whole DVD that was released on the subject recently by Gnomon I think.

However, to make it clear once again, this tutorial is intended for fun only but it should allow you to understand the very basics.

143 downloads until now, not bad eh. Glad you guys like it :smiley:

PS: I’m sorry for the horrible presentation and all the spelling mistakes, I didn’t re-read myself.

It’s not so much about reinventing the wheel. It’s about awareness… I already see a lot of ‘challenges’ I missed in my previous works because I have learned so much in so little time. And being aware of the different lighting,shadow, ssss, and all the other little tweakable effects makes ones results SO much better. Not only for photo realism but in general. A lit ‘belly’ of a sphere sitting on a non reflective floor is just an example of a detail which can spoil the effect of an otherwise brilliant scene in a very subtle and subconscious way. Recently I read about plaster balls and tried it out instantly. I was blown away by the simplistic way I can set light colors correctly for composit work. I’ll check out the Gnomon Site.

Thanks again for sharing! I learned something!
LemonNado

PS:I am getting more and more into multi pass rendering with Mental Ray and XSI. The results and the abilty to fiddle with the images later on is amazing. However… that flexibility comes with an absolutely maddening amount of disk space useage…

Excellent post and tutorial :slight_smile: Can’t get to the last file though…can you try posting it again may be at http://www.imagevenue.com/host.php

Thanks man

Yong

Que buen modelado y que buena textura. :+1: :+1:

Yong: http://www.savefile.com/files.php?fid=5394034

yes the file is corrupted :frowning:

its not! works fine here.

Just checked (again) and the file works fine. I’ll anyway try and put it somewhere else tomorrow…

however, here is the last part of the tutorial hosted somewhere else.