Alice Cooper

[DarthWayne]

I've given up on the whole maya hair things....talk about it not being intuative! So now I've got shave and a haircut I'm trying to work that out. (at least with this it the hair actually looks like hair!) All going well I should have a 1st draft of the hair soon.

Wayne...

[tgraupmann]

Alice needs to stick out his tongue. I don't recognize him without that...

[DarthWayne]

At the moment Alice is without a tounge, teeth or side of the mouth. I'll add those if needed later. Damn this hair is giving me probs, actually tow of them. I can get it looking great tecture wise in shave and a haircut for maya but it takes about 2 hours to render at photorealistic qwuality. So I'm probably doing something wrong. Plus I sort of messed up my 1st go at it so it's back to the drawing board.

Wayne...

[tgraupmann]

Need a haircut?
http://orange.blender.org/blog/get-a-haircut#more-60

[DarthWayne]

http://www.dashdotslash.net/animation.php << Turntable
http://www.dashdotslash.net/animatio...ed_sm-lite.mov << untextured version(1.5mb)

Due to a HD format (Brought on by a nasty virus) I've lost lots of the stuff I was working on. I do have this head however so I knocked up a quick turntable animation of the work done so far. There's a nasty grey streak on the top of the head that I've got to sort out and I want to go for the next layer of the skin texturing.

Having a few probs with maya 'forgetting' to displace any geometry and taking hours even for simple stuff. So until I work that out I can't do a full render with the hair.
Enjoy

Wayne...

[DarthWayne]

THIS IS A MOCK UP ONLY!

As I'm having a whole shed load of problems getting this head to render in maya with displacement maps (meaning I can start doing the hair before going back to the texture map and details), I thought I'd do a mock up of the hair in photoshop. Sorry for bad quality render but was a bit of a rough job and meant only as a guide for the final head image....oh and the glowing eyes were added only as fun they won't be on the final image.

Wayne...

[DarthWayne]

Mental Ray displacement and Sub Surface Shader with new texture


I've been trying tpretty hard of late to get displacemtn working in maya with Zbrush maps. Finally with some serious help I managed to find where teh problem lay, so here's a render done in Mental Ray using a sub surface shader (Fast Skin).

Now as I've never had cvause to use a SSS shader before I'm pretty sure this is rough as hell so any tips are greatfully recieved. Also I'm aware teh texture needs alot of work as thers some banding and stretching going on. This was due to a bit of a test at using a displacement map as a cavity type shading for my colour map. Obviously I'll be going back to this to get it better.

Hair for Alice is still not turning out like I want it to...so it may be a little while till I work out the whole 'hair' issue.
C & C welcome.

Wayne...

[Moochie]

The work on the skin makes a lot of difference. Def going the right way .. sounds like quite a battle, though. Best of luck

[DarthWayne]

[edit]Oops I had texture on earlier verion of the model![/edit]


More Texture Work - Zbrush render

Yeah it has been a bit of a fight to get this model to do what I want it to so far. I'm hoping this is easing a little now (fingers crossed). I did some more work on the texture last night in ZB and so far I'm pretty happy with it. This renders not a mental ray one , its zbrush. I find this gives me an idea of what I want the mental ray ones to look like. It's a fine line to cross texturing the alice cooper head, as you don't want it to look like the makeup has been painted on with black ink. But neither do you want it to look too shiney.

So far there's no spec or bump maps on it, I've really got to get these done pretty soon if I get the chance. The hair is driving me crazy at the moment. I'd spent ages getting it right on a low poly model and imported it thinking 'hey at least that's sorted now'..... How wrong I was, shave and a haircut didn't like this one bit and flat refused to render the hair at all. So looks like I'll have to start the hair all over again. Ah well it's good practice.

I was a bit unsure last night whether to stay with the more 'hand drawn' looking styleof texture or this one thats more realistic. So what do you think? Realistic or more stylistic?

Wayne...

[Moochie]

"So what do you think? Realistic or more stylistic?"

Sometimes we all get bogged down in the technical aspects of modelling and texturing and rendering. But, in the end, it's an artistic endeavour. I think that's a question for you, the artist, to decide.

It's looking good, though.

Do you like the way I side-stepped that one, with a graceful little twirl? Heh heh.

[DarthWayne]

Something I knocked up in a few mins for Newbie challenge 08 (Wirez) over in the challenmges forum. I liked it so much I thought I'd link to it here. What annoys me is the fact that I spent over an hour last night lighting my model and wasn't really happy with the way it showed off the modelling and texture. Then tonight I wack together a lighting in 2 mins and it looks miles better...........go figure!

Wayne...

[DarthWayne]

Mental Ray Skin Shader test with HDRI (DT3DskinShader)

I've not managed to do alot with this model the last few days due to my son teething (parents know what I mean lol). I have done a first pass at the hair but unfortunatly the scene is so heavy with mental ray as a renderer using shave and a haircut that it runs out of RAM and virtual memory. So I'm going to have to find a work around.

I really need some crits on this skin shader I'm using. I'm not sure whether I should turn back the specularity a bit or not. I find this shader (although more complex) easier to set up and the Simple Skin SSS shader in mental ray. It's probably about time I gave him some teeth and eyes as well lol.

I used some normal and HDRI lights to help make this render a little more realistic. I stil have to sort out the bump map for the pores etc. Plus my spec map ruins the render, (he ends up looking like he's been varnished) so I'll have to go back to that as well.

Wayne...

[DarthWayne]

WOAH BAD HAIR DAY ALERT!!!!


Hair Test #1 - Shave and a Haircut (hair is default maya render).

I must have been a bit slow this morning as I didn't realise all i had to do was render the hair as a seperate layer and composite in photoshop using the alpha channel.

yeah I know the style is wrong, and it looks like he's got a damn afro (or extremely bad hair day). But I really need some critisism about the texture and shading of the hair. More shine or finer hair do you think? At least he's not bald anymore

Wayne...

[ReplicA]

Whoah! That hair is something else, welcome to my nightmare, indeed.

Great modeling, and great likeness. The texture is a little bit too red in places like the cheeks, and chin. And the spec doens't have enough variation in it, but overall, still pretty good. The hair I can't really comment on, as I've never done good hair.

It is great work, anyway.

[DarthWayne]

Here's a couple of options that I have for the eyes. Both are eye textures that I've been working on today, suggestions as to which one would be great. Personally I favour the 1st one.

Wayne...