So i thought i would post a WIP of a character i have been working on/off recently.

Sculpted n Zbrush and now in the texturing/rendering phase. Going to be using H to render of course, along with using fur for his hair and will doing some facial rigging stuff also.

Here a few tests,




ZBrush Screenshot

Textures arent finished and are still being worked on. Need to find a balance between sharpness/detail of the texture and SSS.




Hair is being completely redone, although im having some major slowdown with the new hair_model shader.



A semi-procedural eye setup

You are certainly the undisputed king of SSS with Mantra, time for a master class !

Rob

Wow….really nice!

circusmonkey
You are certainly the undisputed king of SSS with Mantra, time for a master class !

Rob

hehe Thanks. But it is I who needs the Masterclass on SSS. I will be using an Edited Mantra Surface shader for the final version, but I have tried to recreate the SSS component of the original shader and i still don't quite fully understand how to correctly implement/integrate fresnel.

Have a look at this thread. http://www.sidefx.com/index.php?option=com_forum&Itemid=172&page=viewtopic&p=119076 [sidefx.com]

Chris: Thank mate, after spending so much time in Zbrush/Bodypaint/Photoshop etc its fun to really play in Houdini.

lil update, he now has eyebrows.



Unfortunately there are some model changes left (so its back to zbrush for a little stint) and i need to finalize the colour map.

Im gonna do a spec map but i think in the end i will use a reflection map along with a low res gloss map.

There are some obvious texture corrections needed like part of the lips and scalp and some saturation errors (he is a little young looking) to name but a few but i have felt i have made some decent progress shading wise.

Its a different lighting setup but the settings now work no matter the enviroment.

More stuff soon.

Like !

if you dont mind a suggestion here it is :

maybe you can reduce the specularity somehow .

not too much . just following the big shapes .

actually it looks is limited to bump ‘s mask .

or maybe just add another specular layer with a greater cone angle and mix’n'fade with the actual one .

–

hope you 'd share your shader setup with us when you feel it is OK ..



.cheers

Hi zarti

Thanks for taking the time to comment.

Yes the spec is something that needs to be altered heavily. I am unsing the Mantra shader as a base for this project and have altered a few sections to give the user (me) a little more flexibility especially in the areas of colour corrections of maps (diff, atten col., sub surf color. etc)

I need to do a lil more editing for the spec. I want to change it show an image can be mapped to spec intensity and then one for gloss (not a massive change but a necessary one).

But everytime i feel i have broken new ground there is something that i still dont quite get or something that seems counter intuitive. I have a few old papers on Skin render from previous siggraph and plan to go through them and understand as much as possible because right now attenuation color sill baffles me. Using colours i think are logical dont yield the right effect while using ill-logical colours like blues and purples give effects that seem more natural. Needless to say I still have alot of playing to do (mainly with the sss effect).

Maybe you should push this thread to cover sss shaders . Maybe put up a default head up for people to test with. Ive never looked into SSS with mantra but it would be good to “up” the level on knowledge about it.

Rob

I have seen and used quite a few sss color maps where you take the diffuse map and hue it blueish. I first saw that on a tech demo that I do not remember what it was for but started using that technique. I think it has to do with what color the skin absorbs and what color it reflects. Skin tends to be more on the red/green side and it would make sense that it would absorb more blue.

Just a thought…

sl0throp yeah i think i remember reading a paper where they had blueish/purple colour maps. Wish i could find it again.

Im going through a ton of papers on the topic just to find out how to approach this but every sss shader is different so cant just mimic what someone else has done in some siggraph paper.

In the end im probably gonna have to create every type of map possible and then find the best combination. I really want to nail this workflow down so i can move on but its tough :?

I haven't revisited this project until i bought new ram. So the other day i picked up 24gb and its oh so nice to do fast iterations of renders, sims etc.

Since then i haven't stopped tweaking and adjusting the shader, lighting and fur setup. Right now im still working on the hair, with Houd's standard fur toolkit but i think as far as the skin is concerned, the shader is done. Texture maps, bump etc can still be worked out but i feel i have a solid base to continue.



I've edited the skin shader a touch to accommodate for a few controls, and the next thing i need to put in is multi-uv support since this character has about 6 tiles to him.

HIP anytime soon? I'd love to see how you've done it, just upload the shader on a sphere, I'm sure everyone would agree.

I will, still need to fix certain things. As you might see in this blendshape test there is some wierdness with the displacement i need to fix.



Obviously lots more to do.

Amazing.. so realistic.

HI I HAVE A PROBLEM ..IM WORKING WHITH A mantrasurface SHADERAD I HAVE AN SSS MAP
WHEN I RENDER SSS/SINGLE SSS/MULTI + DISPLACEMENT MY MAP CHANGE COLOR TO GREEN , WHEN I RENDER WHITHOUT DISPLACEMENT EVERYSING IS OK…?

A really great set of work

WOW!
how are you doing the eye? is it geometry with a shader?
or everything is done in a sphere with a shader?

pelos
WOW!
how are you doing the eye? is it geometry with a shader?
or everything is done in a sphere with a shader?

Wow i should check back in this sub-forum more often, didnt realise it was still going kinda.

In this project i did the eye with two pieces of geometry. One shader controlled the opacity of the outer eye (sclera) and another shader for the iris.

But this project is quite old (i have pretty much finished it). I am working on another character at the moment And a different eye setup (have yet to post it yet though).

If you want to keep update with the hitchcock project you can check it out here http://forums.odforce.net/index.php?/topic/16305-hitchcock/page__st__12#entry110977 [forums.odforce.net]

Amazing ,Impressive ,Any things !!!

That's outstanding! :shock: