Sculptris compositing maps

[sculptrisnewb]

Hello everyone

I don't know if i am the 1st to try this so i apologize if you already knew how to do this.

I was interested in compositing my image to try to make the most realistic
skin texture i could, I found this video very helpful
http://www.veoh.com/search/videos/q/...808080dNJARWPa and thought to try it out with Sculptris and after a bit of experimenting i found it to be possible here are the render passes i made with four different Materials, If anyone is interested i will post the materials on the material share thread.



and the end result

[dreamz]

Very interesting! I enjoyed watching the video, I learned a lot, and the guy sounds like a top bloke.

[DrPetter]

The thing with Sculptris though is that all materials are rendered according to the same rules - that colors are determined only by the surface normal/direction. As a result of this, any compositing you do with different render passes can be "pre-baked" into a single material sphere to give the exact same result with one render (or live while editing). You could try this by placing a sphere in the same field of view as the model, then do your renders+compositing, and finally cut and paste that sphere into a new material image. A higher-quality method (but harder to control) would be to do the compositing on material spheres directly.

Drawback of this is that you can't really get any complex volumetric effects like actual shadows/occlusion/sss, which would require a more advanced rendering system. To some extent, you may be able to mimic these effects using some image manipulation, but then you start getting into painting territory.

[sculptrisnewb]

I think i understand what your saying Dr forgive my basic understanding of the way models are rendered i am still trying to get to grips with this form of art, I was trying to achieve a sub surface scattering affect to give him that underlying glow and thought i may have stumbled onto something others had not. So these maps i thought i had created are actually doing nothing to enhance my image only to confuse what is already there in the render itself?

While i have some of your attention guys is there a way of moving the light source to a different position?

[SporkFuMaster]

The light source is all in the material. If you rotate the image it will basically change the direction where the light is seemingly coming from. You can always download Taron's Macrea for a really easy way to make your own materials with light sources placed where you want them.