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Features | |
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Last Airbender |
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Grey's Anatomy Promo VFX |
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Interview with Bobby Chiu |
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License to dream |
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Focus : Gears Of War 3 |
News Headlines | |
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Dragon Age 2 |
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Bioshock Infinite |
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Time travellers Comic |
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Envirometer |
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Thelma and Louise Remake |
Other Features | |
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Interview With Nick Harris |
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Making Art for Ipad |
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Making VFX for Ben Hur Remake |
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Interview : Mike winkelmann |
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Baby Data |
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I did the feet first because I had a good idea of what I wanted them to look like. It wasn’t until they were mostly roughed in that I felt comfortable doing the hands. I also did not attach the head until I had defined the edge loops and begun to shape the major muscles. At this point I was able to start refining the shape and identifying parts of the model that didn’t look the way I wanted... Like the neck.
Once I had ironed out the major issues I finally started focusing on the tiny details. I firmed up the defining edges of his pecs, leg, and arm muscles, and started adding in edges to define creases where his limbs bend. I find that adding the extra loops in these areas not only makes for more realistic looking skin, but also provides the necessary geo for the model to stretch when it is being animated. These extra wrinkles went a long way towards making the body look like it belonged to the head.
When I had him looking the way I wanted, I did several more test renders to get a better understanding of how the character felt as a whole. I hoped that seeing the flat grey model well lit would help me to figure out what his skin should look like and what colors would fit him best.
The next step was UV mapping. Now, I know people who are excellent at UV mapping. They can project, relax and sew UVs like they are tying their shoes. I am not one of these people. I don’t like fiddling with UVs. I want to jump straight into texturing. Unfortunately it doesn’t work like that. Instead of gritting my teeth and just doing it I decided to try out Sunit Parekh’s absolutely mind blowing Pelting Tools plugin. Although it took me a while to figure out, his website has several How To movies and does an excellent job of explaining how the tools work. In no time at all I was staring in awe at my wonderfully pelted gremlin and was able to get right into texturing him.
Another admission: My painting skills are not so hot. I tend to start from photo or texture references and clone stamp, cut, and paste my way into a finished texture. One of the most powerful resources I have is a near complete collection of the Total Textures cds. They are absolutely filled to the brim with every imaginable texture, bump, spec, and dirt map, as well as other useful background and reference images, not to mention tutorials. I like to use many of their textures because of those accompanying maps. Every texture on my model, excluding the teeth and claws, is a combination of several total texture images, stamped and tweaked to fit my UVs.
I knew from the beginning that I wanted to use sub-surface scattering materials for my gremlin’s head and body. They provide amazing results for surfaces like skin and for their render times can generally not be beat. But beyond that I didn’t have a particularly decent idea of where I wanted to go. I began by simply browsing through several total textures cds looking for images that caught my eye. My initial selections, while neat looking, did not end up working. That, as well, is part of the journey.
