3DTotal.com Ltd. - Character Production in Maya (2013)

5/25/2018 3DTotal.com Ltd. - Character Production in Maya (2013)

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Character Production Chapter 01 Low Poly Modeling

www.3dtotal.com Chapter 01

Chapter 01 Low PolyModelingSoftware used: Maya

Basic ModelingHello my name is Anto Juricic and I am a CG

artist specializing in the creation of believable

CG characters. In this series of tutorials I am

going to walk you through the numerous tasks

involved in creating a highly realistic render of

an old man. As a core application I have chosen

Autodesks Maya and I will use it for the majority

of tasks in this tutorial.

Although Maya is a powerful tool by itself and

capable of both geometry sculpting and texture

painting, it is capable of creating better results

when used in conjunction with applications like

Photoshop and ZBrush, which are going to be

our major texture creation tools. With that said

lets move on to the rst step.

Now, using the Crop tool and its transform

controls, extend the image size to the right so

you can t a side image in it. Place the side

image to the right of the front image and scale,

rotate and move it until you align all the facial

features with the guidelines matching the front

image. Dont worry if some parts dont line up

100% perfectly; its probable because of the lens

distortion of images.

If your models head is slightly tilted to one side

you can use the front on view to adjust and

correct the image. With this done remove the

guidelines and crop the images again, removing

the space around the images. Also create two

separate les, one for the front and one for the

side view, and save the les.

Now go into Maya. In the menu select a new

image plane and press Load Image. Select your

previously prepared front image. Repeat the

Setting up Image PlanesThe edge extrusion method is possibly the

easiest way to block out the basic shape of a

human head, and for that we will rely on a pair

of reference images that we are going to load as

image planes. I have provided you with a side

and front image of this character as a download

with this tutorial so you can use the images to

follow the tutorial (Fig.01).

You can use any reference image you like as

long as they come from the same person and

show a front and side view. Lets rst spend a

few minutes preparing the images so they align

perfectly once we load them into the Maya. Load

the front image into Photoshop and pull down a

few guides to mark the position of the eyebrows,

center of the eye, nose tip and bottom, upper lip,

center of the mouth, bottom lip, tip of the chin

and bottom of the chin. Also place a guideline

along the center of the face.


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responsible for thickness so you are left with

just a plane circle. Select the boundary loop

from this circle and extrude it outwards. Delete

the inside so you have a ring shape. Also make

sure that you have your normals facing the

right direction. Now roughly align the vertices,

following the front and side reference images, to

trace out the shape of the eye. These rst few

steps are illustrated in Fig.02.

Now select the outer border edge once again

and repeat the extruding process, shaping it

roughly to mark out the shape of an eye socket.

Make sure you align the newly created geometry

from the side view as well as the front view.

Select the two edges that separate the upper

and lower eye lid, and extrude them towards

same process with the side view. Image planes,

by default, are created at the origin of the

scene and crossing each other. To get image

planes away from the center and make some

space you will need to adjust the attributes for

the image plane. Select the front image plane

from the perspective view, go to the Attribute

Editor and pick the Image Plane1 tab. Search

for the Placement Extras options and center

the parameter. Set the third number box, which

represents the Z position, to 40. Repeat the

same process for the side image plane and type

in 40 in the rst box for the X axis offset.

Poly ModelingNow we have our preparation done its time

to lay out some polygons, so lets start with a

temporary eyeball. You can nd all your poly

editing tools in the Edit Mesh menu, and you

can add those you use most to your custom

shelf by selecting a tool while holding the Shift

and Ctrl keys.

Create a polygonal sphere and adjust it to match

the position of the eyes from your image planes

(both front and side). From the front view create

a cylinder with 12 sides, which is slightly bigger

than the eyeball, then place it in front of the eye.

We will use this cylinder to shape the rst row

of polygons for the eyelids. Delete the polygons

the center of the nose bridge. Align this from

the side view too. Now select the border edges,

except ones at the center, and extrude them

once again to circle the cheek and eyebrow.

This is a good time to duplicate this piece of

geometry to the other side of the face. Select

the geometry and go to Edit > Duplicate Special

and in the Scale option type - 1.000 to X axis

only.

Move the duplicate to the other side of the face.

Cut the bridge of the nose vertically by inserting

an edge loop. Dont forget to always realign

the new geometry from the side view. Now lets

block out a nose shape by extruding down the

nose bridge to the base of the nose (Fig.03).
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to dene the mouth line. To nish the basic

mouth shape, extrude the inside loop to form

the mouths thickness. Split the long polygon

that bridges the mouth and nose by adding two

edges, and extrude one more circle around the

mouth. Now extrude two edges at the corner

of the mouth toward the cheek. Split these two

faces twice near the mouths corner. Align these

Make seven extrusions along the nose and then

one more for the nostril. Select the second,

third and forth edge from the noses bridge and

extrude them towards the edge of the nostril.Insert three edge loops vertically to the new

geometry and adjust it using the front and side

view as a reference. Dont be afraid to go to

the perspective view from time to time to check

your progress in 3D and maybe make some

adjustments. Select the last edge from the

base of the nose and last edge from the nostril,

and bridge them to close the shape. Select six

edges starting from base of the nose all the way

around the nostril and extrude them out. Merge

the last vertex with the corresponding vertex on

the nostril, as illustrated in Fig.04.

Split the edge at the center of the long polygon

that bridges the nostril and nose base, and

reshape it to a circular opening. Bridge the

polygons to ll the gap between the nose tip and

the mask shape.

Select the nostrils opening edges, extrude

them a few times and translate them upwards to

shape the inside of the nose. With this complete

lets move on to the mouth.

Extrude two lines from the base of the nose to

the mouth, then make ten extrusions circling the

mouth. Split the newly created ring by inserting

a edge loop at the center. Add one more loop

edges to the nasolabial fold using the front and

side references. Bridge the two faces from the

laugh line to the nostril, as illustrated in the last

step of Fig.05.

From the base of the mouth make ve

extrusions to outline the chin, and bridge the

laugh line with chin, as illustrated in Fig.06.


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Chapter 01 Low Poly ModelingCharacter Production


Cut along the polygon three times and ll in the

gap. Add two edges to cut along the laugh line

polygon, and ll the gap by bridging the mouth

and the base of the nose.

Bridge the two polygons from the nostril to

the corresponding polygons on the eye mask.

Extrude two edges from the side of the mask

to create a temporal area. Do the same for the

cheek and add a few extrusions from the cheek

to the neck. Add one more edge to the cheek

polys and connect it to the last polygon from the

chin extrusion. Select ve edges from the top

of the mask and extrude them twice to form a

forehead shape (Fig.07).

Split the long temporal poly and bridge it to

the forehead. Continue extruding the forehead

all around the head, all the way to the neck.

Reshape the new geometry to form a smooth

shape. Insert another edge loop to the cheek

geometry right behind the laugh line and

connect the cheek to the eye geometry. Do the

same to connect the cheek and chin. Dont be

afraid to reposition some parts of the geometry

at any time, and add or remove some of it if you

feel its necessary. Make additional splits to the

cheek geometry to match the edges of the jaw

geometry. Fill the gap between the cheek and

jaw by bridging between faces. Use the same

technique to ll in the rest of the gaps, as shown

in Fig.08.

Also connect the remaining opened faces,

as illustrated in Fig.09. Select an open face

from the back of the neck and make enough


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extrusion to match the jaw line and ll the gap.

Select the open loop on the neck and extrude

down as many times as necessary to ensure

equal distribution of geometry. Also make sure

you delete the history from time to time.

Now go to vertex mode and press B on the

keyboard to adjust the falloff radius, which is

going to help us do some proportional editing.

Go to perspective view and have some fun with

this tool until you are happy with your model. I

hope you have enjoyed this tutorial; see you in

the next chapter where we will be adding some

detailed facial features. Check out Fig.10for my

result after some proportional editing.

Anto JuricicWeb:http://anto-toni.cgsociety.org/gallery/

Email:[email protected]
http://anto-toni.cgsociety.org/gallery/mailto:[email protected]:[email protected]://anto-toni.cgsociety.org/gallery/


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Character Production Chapter 02 Modeling the Features


Chapter 02 Modelingthe FeaturesSoftware used: Maya

Hello! In the last chapter we used some very

simple techniques to block out the main form

of our character and establish a well organized

edge loop structure. The method I demonstrated

in the previous chapter will enable us to

continue adding more geometry, which will add

some details to specic facial features.

Perhaps the most important part of a face are

the eyes and the area around them. We are

so used to seeing peoples eyes that making

believable CG eyes is not an easy task. So lets

continue with that area.

The eyeball itself will consist of two parts: the

inner one with a slightly concave iris area and

a slightly bigger outer one with a bulge over the

iris beneath it.

As a starting point you can use the sphere that

we created at the beginning of the rst chapter

or create a new one from the front view. Make it

slightly bigger than the eye socket opening and

try to center it using a front image plane.

A default poly sphere comes with 20 triangles

at the pole, which makes an unwanted pinch

on the geometry. To get rid of these problems,

select every other edge radiating from the pole

and delete them.

Now instead of 20 triangles you have 10 quads

that will render much more smoothly.

Select those ten faces and grow the selection

twice, use the Scale Transform tool to scale

down selections on the Z axis to make it slightly

concave. Move it back into place on the Z axis.

Add one more edge loop at the edge of the iris

to straighten the edge.

To make the outer eye geometry, duplicate the

one you just created and scale it up just enough

any given time. Hide the eyeball to make some

room for the next few steps.

Select the border loop of the eye opening and

extrude the selection inwards to make the eyelid

thickness. Scale down the last selection slightly

to make an easier angle transition between the

eyelid shelf and the rest of the geometry.

Next extrude the opening edges once more

and scale outwards to make geometry that

will penetrate the eyeball and prevent us from

having any gaps between the head and the

eyeball.

Select and delete three faces at the inner corner

of the eyelid to make a place for the tear duct.

Bridge the open edges left over from the

deletion and, using the Cut tool, cut in a shape

as demonstrated in Fig.02.

to cover the inner part. Select all concave

polygons and this time scale them up on the Z

axis to make a bulge. Also use Move Transform

to get the bulge back into place.

Select the inner area and add the outer

geometry to the selection, then press P on the

keyboard to make a parent connection. The last

few steps are illustrated in Fig.01.

Lets continue by shaping the eyelids and area

around the eye. When we have the eyeball in

place we need to reposition the geometry of the

eye opening to conform to a spherical eye. Dont

expect to make it a perfect t at this point since

there is more geometry to be added. Also, if

necessary, rescale the eyeball. It is a good habit

to arrange objects in separate display layers so

you can easily hide and unhide any object at


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Chapter 02 Modeling the FeaturesCharacter Production


shape out most of the facial features and x the

proportions. Patience is your best route when

it comes to this task and it can often take a fair

amount of time to reach proportions that youre

satised with. Dont forget that you can always

come back to the proportioning at any time, so

its not a big deal if you dont get it right the rst

time.

Later in the process, if you think your mesh

is too dense, feel free to optimize it as you

like, but rst make sure every edge is serving

its purpose, and contributes to the form and

construction of the mesh.

Fig.04illustrates my result on the same mesh

after pulling and pushing the geometry, and

some mesh sculpting inside Maya.

Before we continue with more detailing its

important to have all of the head features

complete.

Now its a good time to add some more

geometry to both rings and the loop surrounding

the eye.

Lets start with cutting the rows radiating from

the eye. To add a complete edge loop all the

way, use the Insert Edge Loop tool. Newly

created edges are marked in Fig.03.

New edges are added linearly and need to

be repositioned to smooth out the surface.

To evade tedious vertex pulling and pushing,

the best strategy would be to use the Sculpt

Geometry tool.

Use the Pull brush with Auto Smooth checked

and the Smooth Strength set to 3. Set the

intensity down and swipe gently over a new

geometry.

Now we should add a few loops circling the

eye. Added loops are also illustrated in Fig.03.

Repeat the same geometry sculpting process

to smooth this area. Add more loops using

the same technique to even out the overall

geometry density.

Now things are getting more complicated and

at this point you should have more than enough

geometry to shape out all the major features of

the face.

At this point I am using the Move tool with Soft

Selection and the Sculpt Geometry tool to

Once we attach the ear to the head model we

will become completely ready for nal tweaking

and proportioning. So lets continue with the ear.

You can hide all objects at this time and leave

only the image planes visible. You can use the

same image plane as you used for the head, or

if you like you can make a new one with an ear

image of your own choice.

Modeling the ear is all about laying out correct

topology that will follow the major ear shapes.

The ear is a complex shape and to better

understand the shape I strongly recommend you

learn the Latin names of the ear features.

Use the Create Polygon tool from the Mesh

menu to create a single quad polygon, place

it at the start of the ear lobe and extrude it all

along the helix, as illustrated in Fig.05. Repeat

the same process for the inner part, which is

called the antihelix. Do your best to match the


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Character Production Chapter 02 Modeling the Features


You will nd that the two objects do not match

in terms of topology and edge placement, and

you might reduce some of the edges from the

back of the head or add some to the ear beforemerging an ear to the head. Start from the part

facing towards the front by selecting close-

matching edges and bridging between them.

This way all non-matching edges will stay at the

back of the ear, which is unlikely to be visible.

Do your best to keep the polygons four-sided.

After some tweaking, Ive got the result

illustrated in Fig.08.

After successfully attaching the ear to the head

lets move on to nalizing the rest of the mesh.

Grab the edge loop at the border of the mouth,

opening and extrude it as many times as

necessary to create a mouth bag. At this point

duplicate the eye mesh to the other side of

the head and, if you like, make a few more

extrusions to the base of the neck. You will most

certainly nd more edge loops than you need so

feel free to optimize the mesh as you like. You

can use the mesh I provided with this tutorial to

compare your result with mine. Lighter geometry

will be much easier to unwrap and prepare for

texturing, which is going to be our next step.

When you have all your geometry in place, once

again use the Sculpt Geometry tool and Soft

Selection to evaluate the shape and proportions.

number of polygons to the helix and the edge

placement. Try not to add too many polygons at

the beginning; keep it as simple as possible.

Select all the polygons and extrude them

twice; on the second time extrude with a

slight offset. Now delete the polygons marked

with red arrows from both shapes and all the

polygons from the back, and then bridge the

corresponding edges. Also add one more edge

loop to slice the inner shape. For the last few

steps, check Fig.05.

Select the loop in the ear hole and extrude it a

few times to shape that area. Using the same

technique, extrude the outer edge border to

shape the back of the ear.

Now use the same strategy as we did for the

face, reshape the existing geometry by using

Soft Selection with the Move tool and Sculpt

Geometry tools (Fig.06 07).

Now unhide the head geometry, select the

edge loop on the opening and extrude it twice

to prepare the head for connecting with the ear.

Select Average Vertices from the Mesh menu to

smooth out the newly created shape. Place the

ear in position and start to use Soft Selection

with Move Transform to reshape the opening on

the head to t the ear better. Combine the two

objects into one mesh.

Until the next tutorial, happy verts and polys!




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Character Production Chapter 03 Unwrapping


Chapter 03 UnwrappingSoftware used: Maya

In the last two tutorials we have covered the

creation of a head model, using some simple

modeling techniques in Maya. So the next step

is to prepare the model for texturing.

The most common way is UV mapping, so

before we start I will try to describe what UV

mapping is. UV mapping or unwrapping is a way

of representing a model in 2D space, so it can

be used as coordinates that will correspond to

the 3D version of the model.

In other words its a model unfolded and

attened onto 2D space. The simplest way to

understand this concept is to imagine a simple

paper box you want to unfold and atten onto

a desktop (Fig.01). The same concept can be

applied to geometry of almost any complexity.

seams will show as discontinued texture edges,

so the best approach is a good balance of both.

Its also important to say that UV space is 1:1

square ratio and in order to maximize texture

space, its important to keep UV chunks or

islands packed tightly and tted in that range.

Standard UV space ranges from 0-1 in a U

direction and 0-1 in a V direction, and its often

referred to as 0-1 space (Fig.02).

Every UV piece has to have its own space;

no overlapping is allowed, except two or more

pieces that are identical and destined to use

same texture.

In that space, U refers to horizontal coordinatesand V refers to vertical coordinates. In the same

way 3D is described by X, Y and Z.

With that being said, lets move on to

unwrapping the head we previously

modeled. The fact that we have built a model

symmetrically will pay off through every step of

creation, especially the process of laying out

UVs. Therefore we dont need a symmetrical

side of the head, and the rst step is to delete it.

Once we have completed the UVs for one half of

the head, we will mirror it over to the other side.

There are a few rules that need to be followed

during this process. To unfold any model, we

have to make cuts, or rather seams, in order to

produce less distortion on the attened model.

More seams can often lead to less distortion,

but the downside to that approach is that those


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Chapter 03 UnwrappingCharacter Production


To make the cut, go to the Polygons menu in

the UV Editor and choose the Cut UV Edges

option. The ear UVs are now separated into two

shells and to move the ear canal out of the way,

select one polygon from that shell and press

Select Shell, then Convert Selection to UVs.

Now you can move the separated piece to the

side (Fig.04).

With the ear canal shell selected, go to the

Tools menu and then select the Smooth UV

tool. From there you will be presented with two

on-screen menus, one called Unfold and the

other called Relax. Both of these are smoothing

options. My strategy is to apply Unfold, then

Relax, in small increments until I get rid of all the

overlapping.

Along with geometry, UVs will be copied too and

all thats left is to mirror the UVs and to stitch the

two UV shells together.

The second part of the plan is to separate some

parts in UV space, like the ears and the mouth

bag and unfold them separately. Keep in mind

that models in UV space can be in as many

pieces as necessary.

Lets start with the ear. Select the polygons of

the ear (Fig.03). The selected polygons are

mostly facing planar to the side view and we will

use planar projection as a starting point for this

part.

Go to the Create UVs menu and select Planar

mapping to make an initial projection. To

preview how your texture will be applied to these

coordinates, lets apply a checker texture to this

part.

Make a simple blinn material and connect

checker texture to color. Also, in a 2D placement

node, make it repeat ve times. You can select

unwrapped faces directly from the UV Editor and

apply the material to the selection.

As you can see, the squares on the checker are

a bit stretched because initial planar projection

has made the projection plane perfectly square.

To x this, select UVs from the UV Editor and

rescale it by simultaneously watching over a

texture in a 3D view, until you make the checker

texture on the ear almost perfectly square.

Planar projection has done a pretty good job,

except for a few areas that are overlapping or

facing away from the projection, so the texture is

stretched. So lets deal with those issues.

First lets detach the ear canal and move it out

of the way. In the UV Editor, select one edge

inside the ear canal and from the Select menu

press Convert Selection to UV Edge Loop. From

now on the Select menu will be used frequently,

so detach it to make it a oating menu.

You can also move vertices in UV space

one by one and help those two algorithms to

better understand what you are up to. After

unwrapping that part, rescale the shell to

approximately the same texture space as the

ear shell. In order to do so correctly, use 3D

View to match the checker size on both shells.

Now lets concentrate on the ear, which is the

much more complicated part. In order to use the

Unfold and Relax technique correctly, we need

to make some unfolding by simply moving some

vertices into the UV Editor. So lets start with

that parts that are most obviously overlapping,

such as the outer edge of the shell. To select

the shell border, select one of the outer vertices

and press Select Shell Border.


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Apply planar projection also on this part as a

starting point and apply a checker material also.

Select UV Shell and apply the Unfold option all

the way to the maximum. Use the UV Smudge

tool to deal with any overlapping remaining

(Fig.06).

Repeat the same process for the geometry

inside the nose and move the unwrapped parts

out of the way. Now we are left with the main

Deselect the inner border, since we will

concentrate on the outer edges of the shell rst.

To move selected points out of the way, we will

use the UV Smudge tool, which is essentially amove brush with a nice falloff. Once you move

these points to their own UV space, grow the

selection once (Shift >) and repeat the same

process again.

Now lets deal with the rest of the overlapping

vertices by selecting them in small groups and

relaxing. Make sure to constantly monitor the

behavior of the checker projection in 3D view, to

prevent any major texture distortions (Fig.05).

Since the ear is complicated in both topology

and shape, making perfect distortion free

coordinates is close to impossible and texture

stretching is tolerable on this part, since most

of its look in nal rendering will come from its

shape and sub surface scattering shading.

Once unwrapped, select both parts and move

them out of the way to make room for the

next piece. Now select all the polygons of the

mouths interior and make sure that no polygons

are selected that are visible from the outside.

That way we will prevent any visible seams.

part of the model. To easily select the remaining

part, go to the UV Editor and select all the

unwrapped pieces, then go to Edit and choose

Invert Selection. With this area selected, go to

the Create UVs menu and select Cylindrical

Mapping.

Since the shape of the head closely resembles

a cylindrical shape, this is the best starting

projection we can get.

Here comes a tricky part. Because we have

deleted half of the head its no longer fully

cylindrical, but half of it. This issue can be easily

xed by rotating and moving projection in 3D

view by using a projection gizmo (Fig.07).

Here is where the checker texture will be most

valuable because we will constantly refer to

it in a 3D view, while correcting distortion and

overlapping in the UV Editor.

Apply the checker texture to the whole model

and resize the checker size by setting up more

repetitions in a 2D texture placement node.

Between 30 and 50 repetitions would be a

good number of repetitions. Resize all the other

unwrapped parts to roughly match the checker

size with the head.


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Chapter 03 UnwrappingCharacter Production


If you have done everything right by now your

checker projection should look like this (Fig.08).

As you can see there is some obvious stretching

of texture in some places, so lets deal withthose major issues rst.

Stretching in general occurs at places where

the size of the polygons in the UV Editor doesnt

match the size of the same polygons in 3D view.

Our job is to make those differences as invisible

and as minor as possible.

Lets correct the most obvious part at the

neck. Use the UV Smudge tool to space out

overlapping vertices as much as possible, then

select points in small groups of up to 10, and

apply Unfold and Relax smoothing alternately.

Repeat the process for all of the neck area until

you remove most of the distortion. After that

select all points in the neck area, except ones at

the border, and repeat unwrapping and relaxing.

Similar to the neck area, the top of the head

will also have signicant distortion, but since its

not going to be visible at all, dont spend much

time on it. Just select the top vertices and apply

Unfold smoothing.

The next problematic area is the mouth, wherewe have some overlapping. The best approach

to this area is to move the points one by one,

since there are few of them.

Here is what I came up with after applying the

last few steps (Fig.09).

Using a similar approach, relax the areas on the

nose and eyes too. Detach the inner part of the

eyelid, as its not going to be visible and it will be

easier to unwrap the eye without that part. Try to

maintain the shape of the eye in the UV Editor;

it will be much easier to draw in 2D when you

have them similarly shaped in both 2D and 3D.

After completing UVs for half of the head, its

time to mirror all this work to the other side.

Before mirroring, align all the points at the

middle of the head in the UV Editor, so they are

aligned vertically.

Go to the Mesh menu and select options for

mirroring the geometry. Make sure that the

Merge with the Original option is unchecked and

Apply.


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Select the vertices at the middle of the head and

go to the Edit Mesh menu. From there select

the Merge Vertices option and set Threshold to

0.0010 and hit Apply.

Now you have the whole head unwrapped and

both of the sides are using the same UV space,

which means that the texture applied to the one

side will also be applied on the other side, but

it will be mirrored. That can be good in some

situations, like in game models, but for this

purpose we will make both of the sides use their

unique UV space (Fig.10).

Using a 3D view, select one polygon from the

mirrored side and in the UV Editor go to Select

Shell. With the mirrored shell selected, choose

Flip from the Polygons menu in the UV Editor

and nally, from the Select menu, use Convert

Selection To UVs. Now you have selected only

UVs for the mirrored side and you can move that

shell left to match the other side.

Select edges at the center of the head in the

UV Editor, and from the Polygons menu use

Move and Saw UV Edges to stitch the two

parts together (Fig.11). Also make sure to ip

the shells for the ears, mouth interior and rest

of the pieces. Stitching both sides together will

produce some stretching at the line where both

shells for the head are welded.

Before packing all the parts into 0-1 space,

invest some more time in relaxing those areas.

The last step is to arrange all the shells to t in

0-1 space nice and tightly.

I hope you enjoyed this tutorial and Ill see you

next time.

Anto Juricic

Web:http://anto-toni.cgsociety.org/gallery/



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Character Production Chapter 04 Texturing and Shaders


Chapter 04 Texturingand ShadersSoftware used: Maya, ZBrush

In the last tutorial we made all the necessary

preparations for texturing, by unwrapping the

model so that we have clean and readable UV

coordinates. That way we can be sure all the

details we draw in to texture will wrap around

the model properly.

The best way to start any texturing project is to

conduct a good search for reference images.

You can start with the well-known www.3d.sk

reference site or just browse Google for some

faces that you like. Sites like www.facity.com

can provide you with hundreds of useful face

images from all around the world. To use these

references easily, compose a collage of your

favorite images in one le.

There are many ways to achieve believable

surface details, but the most intuitive way for

me is by sculpting surface details in ZBrush.

Although we have nished modeling, shaping

and even UV mapping, its never too late to

review your model once again, so feel free to do

so if you think it needs any improvements.

I could share with you some standard ZBrush

brushes I use on a daily basis, but lets see how

you can make one all by yourself. In the next

few steps I will describe how you can make a

realistic skin pore brush, so lets jump to ZBrush.

wrinkles and folds. Now would be a good time to

study the references you gathered earlier.

Loading images in Spotlight is the easiest way

to use references side by side with the model.

All you need to do is load the image using the

Texture menu and press Add To Spotlight.

Spotlight is very easy to use and all the options

will be self-explanatory. Lastly, go to the brush

settings and under the Samples tab, turn off

Spotlight Projection.

Now its time to load the object le exported

from Maya. Go to the Tools menu and import it,

then drop it onto the canvas and press T.

In order to start adding details, we have to

subdivide the model a few times to get a denser

mesh. The dividing process tends to smooth

the mesh signicantly and to prevent losing any

mesh volume you must store a morph target

before adding divisions. After achieving the

wanted level of divisions, press Switch in the

morph target tab to regain the original volume.

The next task is to emphasize the shapes you

already modeled in the mesh and add new

shapes like skin fold and wrinkles. I like to use

the ClayBuildup brush with alpha 48, and for

ne wrinkles I use the same brush with the

LazyMouse option.

The best advice I can give you at this stage

is to be patient and dont rush to the highest

Make a new ZBrush document with a size of

1024 x 1024.

In ZBrush 3D meshes you will nd a simple

polygonal plain. Drop it on to the canvas and

press Make Polymesh 3D, then subdivide the

plane six or seven times to ensure theyll be

enough mesh density to receive pore details.

From the Brush palette choose Standard brush.

Change the stroke to spray, and pick alpha 47.

Frame the model to ll in the canvas. You can

frame in any spot on the plane or the entire

plane, its up to you. Press Alt and swipe the

whole visible area of the plane with this brush to

make it look really noisy (Fig.01).

Now go to the ZBrush Lightbox menu and from

the brushes folder, scroll right to the Smooth

brushes where you will nd the Smooth Peaks

brush. Use the Smooth Peaks brush and swipe

all over the noisy area once again. The surface

that you achieve this way should look a lot like

orange peel or cheek skin.

In the Alpha menu, choose Grab Doc and save

the captured alpha as a PSD le. The saved

alpha image stores depth information and once

loaded to the Standard brush with a rectangular

stroke, it will be valuable in detailing the skin.

Before applying all these high frequency details,

lets concentrate on some larger forms, like


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Chapter 04 Texturing and ShadersCharacter Production


step up one division. The subdividing mesh will

most certainly wash out some of the lines, so

you will have to go over all the mesh and dene

those details once again, by using the same

techniques as before.

As you can see by now, sculpting details is all

about layering through subdivision and the best

subdivision level, as long as your current level

has enough resolution to describe your strokes.

Also keep your eyes on the references. You

dont have to invent new skin folds or wrinkle

patterns nature has done it for you. All you

have to do is to copy what you see. Observation

is the key.

Fig.02illustrates my result after half an hour of

doodling with the ClayBuildup brush on the third

subdivision.

As you can see there are not any major changes

to the volume of the model and all added details

are a thin layer on the surface. The wrinkles

you add at this stage will guide you through

the rest of the process, so step up to the next

subdivision and continue dening those details.

Dont neglect any part of your model and make

sure all your details are at the same stage of

development on all areas of the model. You

should have enough resolution at this time to

start cutting in wrinkles and the best brush for

that task is the Dam_Standard brush, an brush

that pushes and pinches geometry at the same

time. Fig.03illustrates detail cuts achieved with

the Dam_Standard brush.

All of these details so far are on the fourth

subdivision and since I feel like the mesh

resolution does not support any ner details, I

advice I can give you is to stay cool and dont

rush for the multimillion polygon count too soon.

Now its time to use that skin pores alpha we

prepared at the beginning of this tutorial and

set up a pore brush. Select the Standard brush

from the Brush palette and change the Stroke

to DragRect. Go to the Alpha palette and import


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add more variety by adding individual pores

in some places. Its a good idea to keep these

details on a layer in ZBrush, so if you at any

point feel like your surface is looking too rough,

the earlier prepared alpha. In the Alpha Modify

menu change RF (Radial Fade) from 0 to 15

and the pore brush is ready. As a last step,

change the Smooth brush to Smooth Peaks.

You can start adding pores at the fth

subdivision level, with subtle Z Intensity (about

10) and cover your entire model. Dragging the

pore brush on the surface will give you direct

control over the location and size of pores. You

can also use it with Alt pressed to achieve the

opposite effect. If you feel like youve overdone

it on some areas, use the Smooth Peaks brush.

Fig.04shows my result on the fth subdivision.

For the nal detail, divide the geometry once

more to get a nal, sixth level of subdivision

with approx 3-4 million polygons. You can go for

an even higher poly count if you have enough

RAM, but since the nal goal is to project all

these details on 4096 x 4096 Displacement and

Normal map textures, I am sure those extra

details will not show up on a 4K texture.

Proceed with adding skin pores on level six,

using same technique as before. You can even

you can come back, adjust the layer opacity

and generate a new Displacement or Normal

map. Keep in mind that once rendered with the

subsurface scattering shader, most of the high

frequency details will get washed out, so dont

be afraid to make those details a bit stronger

than you perceive them, by looking at some

photos of faces.

Fig.05illustrates the nal detail level on the

sixth subdivision.

Finally its time to transfer all of this hard work

into a Displacement and Normal map. We will

use both maps as a guide for texture painting in

Photoshop and we will also extract some details

out of both maps and use them in a mixture with

other color layers.

To generate a Displacement map, rst you have

to go to the rst subdivision level. The next step

is to choose the image size under the UV Map

tab the 4096 preset should be enough for this

tutorial.


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Chapter 04 Texturing and ShadersCharacter Production


Go to the Displacement map tab and apply

the following settings: Adaptive, Smooth UV,

and DPSubPix 2. Press Create Displacement

and once its created press Clone Disp and

save it from the Alpha menu as a TIF le. The

generated map will be vertically ipped and you

can ip it right away from the Alpha menu or in

Photoshop.

Go to the Normal map tab and create normals

with the following settings: Tangent, Adaptive,

Smooth UV and SNormals. Export the Normal

map in a similar way as the Displacement.

Generating maps with these settings can take

some time to render, so it can be a great time to

take a break.

Before you export the geometry too, you can

use the Move brush to break up the symmetry

or make some facial expressions.

Now lets move to Photoshop to draw a Color

map. Open a new document, with a size of 4096

x 4096 pixels. I usually start with a big chunk of

skin taken from a photographic reference. On

top of that, add the Displacement map. With

the displacement layer selected go to the Filter

menu > Other > High Pass. Set the High Pass

radius to 10 pixels.

Change the blending mode for the displacement

layer to Linear Light. Now we have darkened

cavities and have also laid down the road map

for the rest of the texture. To make this layer

blend more naturally with the skin, use Curves

adjustment and change the parameters on the

red channel only, as illustrated in Fig.06.

Lets add some ne details we are going to

extract from the Normal map. Open the Normal

map as a separate le, go to Channels and

select the green channel only. Press Ctrl + A to

select all the pixels from that channel and copy

them. Now go to the texture le and paste to a

new layer. Lets repeat the same process with

the High Pass, but this time set the radius to 2

pixels.

Overlay this layer in Soft Light blending mode.

This will be a base for a color texture, so before

moving on to other layers, group these layers

together.

Here is a quick setup method for making a

spray color brush for adding skin variation and

blemishes. Press F5 to get to the Brush Setup

menu and under Brush Tip Shape, choose a

5 pixels dot and adjust Spacing to 50%. Next

check the Shape Dynamics and set the following

parameters: Size Jitter to 100%, Minimum

Diameter to 10%, Angle and Roundness Jitter to

100% and Minimum Roundness to 50%.

Now move to the Scatter options and set Scatter

to 1000%, Count to 2 and Count Jitter to 50%.

Once again its time to pull out some of those

gathered references and start spraying some

variation over the skin.

I like to start with the red color and spray it all

over the place, and later concentrate one more

pass on the areas like the cheeks and nose.

Repeat the same process with a white color

on a separate layer. After adding some white

pigmentation, open a new layer and do the

same with a blue color, but more subtle and on

localized areas like under the eye area, nose

and cheeks.

After you nish all these color variations you can

atten the noise layers and apply a Gaussian

Blur with 0,3 px radius to make it look more

softened. See Fig.07for a small patch of the

skin texture achieved this way.


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At this point its a good idea to check the texture

on the model, so go to Maya, load the model

and assign a Blinn material to it. Load the Blinn

material with the PSD color texture and Normal

map to have a better representation of your

texture in Mayas viewport. Fig.08shows how

your model and texture should look in the Maya

viewport.

Keep on coloring the texture with more color

variations, skin blemishes and spots. Once you

are satised with the result, add a color balance

on top so you can control the overall skin tone.

Now we have all the necessary assets for

setting up realistic skin shading in Maya using

the V-Ray render and its powerful SS2 shader.

First we have to make some lighting, properly

set up the Displacement map, make a new

Maya scene, load a base model exported from

ZBrush and apply a V-Ray material. Lets set up

a three-point lighting scheme by adding three

V-Ray lights: one key, one ll and one back

light. Use the V-Ray rectangular light and place

them as shown in Fig.09. To see an almost

instant effect of your lighting, use the V-Ray RT

engine.

To set up a displacement for the mesh, select

the object, go to the Attribute Editor and from

the V-Ray menu use the Subdivision option. The

rst thing you will notice if you make a render at

this time is that the model renders smoothly.

Go to your Shading Group Attributes of the

V-Ray material applied to the model and

connect the displacement node to Displacement

Mat. Load the Displacement map you earlier

exported from ZBrush. In the File attributes of

the loaded map, set Filter Type to Off to avoid

any image processing and loss of details. Now

go to the Color Balance, set the Alpha Offset to

-0, 5 and check Alpha is Luminance.

Now you can make a test render. The reason I

am doing this with a V-Ray material instead of a

SS2 material is because subsurface scattering

tends to soften details, so it would be hard to

make the right decision on the displacement

strength. If you feel like you should have a

stronger displacement, amp the Alpha Gain

number and make sure that Alpha Offset is

always negative half of that number. See Fig.10

for my result after applying displacement.

Now, when we have a proper displacement

setup, lets apply the Fast SSS2 shader to the

model and drop the same displacement in the

Displacement Mat. slot of this material. V-Ray

Fast SSS2 is really easy to set up and it has

already prepared presets for a few different

subsurface models like skin, milk, marble and

so on. For our purpose the skin preset will work

perfectly and the rst thing you should do is set

the Prepass rate to 1 and load the Color map to

Sub-surface Color.

You can also plug in a grayscale map to control

the specular reection and glossiness. You

can also use the V-Ray Texture Input Gamma

attribute. For an in-depth look at the material

parameters, refer to Fig.11.

That would be all for this tutorial and I hope you

have enjoyed it.




26


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Character Production Chapter 05 Hair and Clothing


Chapter 05 Hair andClothingSoftware used: Maya, ZBrush

In this fth tutorial, we will look at some poly

modeling techniques, very similar to ones we

have used to block out the basic head shape,

but this time well model some cloth for our

character.

After that, to nally complete all the assets for

this work, well add some hairs to the characters

head using a few different techniques such as

Paint Effects and Maya Fur.

Lets start with blocking out a basic shape for

the shirt.

As opposed to the edge extrusion method we

used on the head, now well use box modeling.

Instead of gradually building up a volume box,

modeling usually starts with the volume. So

to reshape the model until it looks similar to

what is shown in Fig.02.

If you like to use a more intuitive way for

reshaping, I strongly recommend that you

download the Diamant Modeling plugin by the

very talented Richard Scott Diamant. Besides a

handful of amazing features, you will nd a grab

brush similar to one you can use in Mudbox.

Delete six faces next to the shoulder area to

prepare some room for adding a sleeve. Add

one more edge loop between the shoulder and

collar area. Select the sleeves opening loops

and make one extrusion. Use the Average

Vertices function from the Mesh menu to

smooth the newly created geometry. Again, use

Soft Select transform to reshape the geometry.

At this point you can duplicate this part of the

geometry and save it as a starting point mesh

for the vest, which well concentrate on after

the shirt. The last few steps are illustrated in a

Fig.03.

lets start with a simple polygonal cube, roughly

shaped to the volume of the characters torso,

as illustrated in Fig.01.

Split each face by adding a vertical and

horizontal edge loop to one of the faces, and

delete the top and bottom faces. Select the

open edge loop on top and extrude to form a

loop of faces around the neck. With this basic

shape blocked out its time to add some more

geometry. Go to the Mesh menu and choose the

Smooth option to divide the geometry once and

smooth the shape. After that use Soft Selection


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Chapter 05 Hair and ClothingCharacter Production


Add a loop around the collar and the middle of

the shirt, as illustrated in Fig.04, and extrude the

sleeve from the opening that we prepared for it

earlier. Mirror the geometry to the other side andweld the vertices on the back of the shirt. Use

the Soft Selection transform to overlap one side

of the shirt over the other.

Next select all the faces and use the Extrude

function to add a thickness to the shirt. Then

delete all the inside faces that are not going to

be visible.

Now lets prepare the geometry for the collar.

Select the loops on the faces surrounding the

neck area and duplicate the faces. See Fig.04

for a step-by-step illustration.

Select the edge loop from the upper side of

the new geometry and extrude once out on

the X and Z axis. Reposition the extruded

edges to roughly shape out the collar shape.

Add a couple more edge loops to even out the

geometry distribution and reshape the geometry

to the nal collar shape.

When we have a basic shirt shape modeled, it

is time to add some detail to the cloth seams.

Before going into detailing, add edge loops

to the collar and shirt edges to strengthen

the edges, then add appropriate loops in the

shoulders to add seams, as shown in Fig.05.

Now when we have got all the geometry in place

its pretty easy to ne-tune the overall shape and

add more details.

After unwrapping this model I have separated

the sleeves from the shirt to get a more

pronounced seam. To make the shirt look more

natural, add a few more divisions to the mesh

with the Smooth function from the Mesh menu,

and use Mayas sculpting tools to add a few

wrinkles. You can see my nal shirt in Fig.06.

To start with the vest, lets get back to the basic

shirt model and reshape it to roughly the shape


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of the vest with the V opening. Note the marked

polygons in Fig.07, which are important for

adding seams to the vest.

If you have successfully nished the shirt

part you wont have any trouble with the vest,

because its pretty much the same in terms

of modeling techniques. After blocking out a

basic shape, add thickness to the geometry

and delete all the unnecessary faces. Add edge

loops at the seams and open areas to sharpen

up the details.

Dont forget to unwrap the model before moving

on to the sculpting, where you will add some

looseness to the model to make it look more

natural, as Ive done in Fig.08.

Finally, we reach the last piece of the clothes

the cap. This part will be straightforward

because of its very simple shape. To start

with, make a simple box and apply the Smooth

function to add two more subdivisions. With this

method you will get a poly sphere and you need

to delete the bottom half. After that place the

newly created cap shape on the models head

and reshape it to t properly. These few steps

are illustrated in Fig.09.

After adding a few loops and reshaping to a nal

shape, Ive come up with the result shown in

Fig.10.


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Chapter 05 Hair and ClothingCharacter Production


In the second part of this tutorial, we will

concentrate on making facial hair using several

different techniques available in Maya and

V-Ray. Lets start with Paint Effects, which welluse to make the brows and hair. Paint Effects

is a very powerful system that will enable us, in

this case, to grow geometry instances on top of

the polygonal surface and much more.

We will start with the brows. You can choose

Paint Effects either from the Shelf menu or from

the Rendering sub-menu > Paint Effects. Select

your head mesh and from the Paint Effects

menu, choose Make Paintable. Now all strokes

that we apply to the mesh will be snapped on

the surface. Choose Get Brush from the Paint

Effects menu, and from the Hairs folder choose

EyeBrowBlack preset.

This preset will serve as a good starting point,

so make a stroke in the shape of the brow on

the surface to generate the eyebrow. As you can

see from this rst stroke, the brow doesnt look

like something that would t the size and type of

our character so lets do some tuning.

Go to the attributes of the created stroke called

eyeBrowBlack1 and lets start with the Scale

attribute. Ive found that a scale of 4, 5 works

ne for me as a starting point. Now move down

to the Tubes menu and under the Creation

options adjust Tubes Per Step to control the

number of hairs generated on the stroke. I have

set mine to 0, 7, which is quite a small number

of hairs, but it will get much denser and more

natural once I apply multiple strokes. The next

parameter is Segments, which controls the

number of segments along each hair. The more

segments you have, the more sensitive the hair

will get to displacement and deformations, which

well address later.

The next one is the hair length. Default values

are looking ne to me in this case, but you can

play with those to get any desired results. This

is the same with the Tube Width 1 and 2, which

stands for the root and the tip width. Values of


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0.004 and 0.003 work ne for me. Now lets play

with some displacement.

There are quite a few options there, but I wouldlike to keep it as simple as possible so I will

only use the bend parameter for the sake of

this tutorial. Feel free to experiment and maybe

youll get more interesting results.

I have set Bend to - 0.500 and Bend Bias to

-0.300. It would be a good idea to save this

preset at this time, so go to Presets in the

Attribute Editor and save the brush preset. To

apply this setting to every stroke you are going

to make, choose Get Setting from Selected

Stroke from the Paint Effects menu.

Now you are ready to make some brows, you

can delete that starting point stroke and apply

several new ones to make it look really natural.

You can also adjust all settings individually to

each stroke you make. You can use the same

brush to make some hairs in the nostrils and ear

hole. Every stroke has its own material and to

use V-Ray materials you have to convert thosestrokes to polygons from the Modify > Convert

menu. Now you can apply different V-Ray

materials to each stroke. Later on we will deal

with the shading of hairs. You can see my result

in Fig.11.

We will use the same technique for the hair, but

this time we will use a brow preset as a starting

point. First change the brush with the parameter

to a higher value, because it will be much easier

to generate hair with the wide stroke. I set my

value to 0.500. After that move down to the

Creation menu and adjust the hair length. I am

going for a more bushy hair style, so Ill set mine

to 1 for the max and 0.500 for the min length.

Ill also add a few more Tubes per step; a value

of 5.000 works ne for me. The last thing Ill

address is the Displacement menu, where Ill

play with some noise and wiggle options. Note

that since the hair is now much longer, you will

also need to increase the number of segments.

Once you are satised with your settings, dont

forget to save out the preset. Youre now ready

to lay down a couple of strokes to populate the

hair area, as I did in Fig.12. You can use the

same approach to generate hairs for the beard.

That would be all for this tutorial, I hope you

found it useful and enjoyed it. In the next and

nal tutorial we will polish the whole scene and

try some different lighting techniques.




32
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Character Production Chapter 06 Rendering and Lighting


Chapter 06 Renderingand LightingSoftware used: Maya, ZBrush

In this sixth and nal chapter of the series, we

will put together everything weve done so far

in a nice and realistic render. Unfortunately we

didnt have room to cover every single step in

the process, but the things I chose to leave

out are more or less self-explanatory, like the

texturing of the clothes and modeling eyelashes.

Once you explore the downloadable content

from this tutorial any missing parts will t in to

place. So without further a do, lets move on to

the assembling of the nal scene.

Instead of recreating the image you can see at

the beginning of every tutorial, this time I will use

the actual scene to describe the rendering and

lighting process.

The good thing is that the content that you

can download with this tutorial will give you an

identical result to my nal image. You can use

it to follow this tutorial or as a scene preset for

your own character. You will nd some slight

differences in the scene assets, but that will not

affect the course of this tutorial.

Over years of work, Ive found that the strategy

that works best for me is to start with lighting a

gray-shaded model, because its much easier

to read shape without all different colors and

strongly encourage you to try a few other HDRis

as well.

At the top of the lights attributes you will nd a

small box named Sample, which will show you

the approximation of the lights color intensity

and you can use it for setting up the initial

intensity for this light.

Once you load such an image into the dome

light, Maya will automatically create an image

placement node, where you can make some

additional settings, such as rotating a light or

choosing a type of mapping.

A Rotation setting of 126.00 units and Intensity

of 0.800 works ne for me and you can see my

rst render with this setup in Fig.01.

To gain more control of your lighting, you can

experiment further with the light probe dynamic

range by shifting settings like Alpha Offset and

Alpha Gain. In Fig.01an Alpha Offset of 0,500

gave me the best result. Image-based lighting

does not have to stand all by itself; you can

always add some additional lights to better

frame your character.

In Fig.02you can see another example of the

image-based lighting; this time Ive used an

image probe called campus probe, which is an

image of an outdoor scene with a little bit of low

sunlight and a yellowish color tint on the side.

materials. Once I am satised with the result,

I will make it more interesting with different

materials and textures.

Load all the assets you made so far for this

scene and assign a new V-Ray material to

all objects. Leave the material on its default

settings and name it something like test

material. This would be a great opportunity for

you to use the V-Ray RT render, which will give

you almost instant feedback.

For the easiest setup and most realistic result

Ive decided to use IBL (image based lighting).

V-Ray can utilize IBL in a couple of different

ways, but the easiest to set up is a dome light,

which is an innite big light that surrounds

everything in your scene. The default dome light

is white in color, which is a great way for adding

ambient light to your renders. Instead of a clean

white light we will color the light with a HDR

image. The effect of using light in this way will

result in very realistic environment lighting.

From the Create menu choose Lights and

create a V_Ray_Dome_light. Under the light

shape attributes scroll down to Texture menu

and upload a HDR image. For this example Im

using the kitchen_probe HDR image, which I

downloaded for free from www.pauldebevec.

com/Probes/. You will nd there are many other

examples of so-called light probes that also

work well with this or any other scene, and I
http://www.pauldebevec.com/Probes/http://www.pauldebevec.com/Probes/http://www.pauldebevec.com/Probes/http://www.pauldebevec.com/Probes/


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Chapter 06 Rendering and LightingCharacter Production


simple rules, its quite easy to do the surface

details by repeating a weaving pattern across

the whole mesh without actual additional texture

painting.

As you can see you can get some really

interesting results with image-based lighting and

change complete scene lighting with one le.

Since dome light emits from all sides aroundyour model, it almost looks like the scene has

been lit with global illumination techniques,

adding a great sense of realism to the render.

Another good way of lighting your scene is with

another type of light, such as V-Ray rect. lights.

For the next example I will construct a basic

studio lighting setup, arranged with four V-Ray

rectangular lights. I will have two key lights (one

for each side of the face, placed on the left and

right), one ll light in front to lighten up dark

areas and a rim light for the back to give the

character some outline for better framing.

You can see the placement and colors of the

lights illustrated in Fig.03.

Just by tweaking the intensity you can get a few

different and interesting results, as shown in

Fig.04. Another good idea would be to parent

all light to a locator placed at the center of the

scene. By rotating a locator on a Y axis you will

be able to rotate the whole light rig around the

model.

Now, when you have your favorite light setup

blocked, its time to turn our attention to

materials. Since we have already covered skin

material shading in one of the previous chapters,

lets say a couple of words about shading the

clothes.

All of the cloth pieces have some sort of

repeating pattern and naturally those patterns

are placed from seam to seam. To achieve

that kind of look with a small repeating pattern,

its essential to model cloth with the topology

following those seams.

Another important step in the process is to make

cuts in the UV shells along the seams. Once you

have constructed the clothes following those

You can see how a few simple seamless

patterns repeated across the whole vest work in

Fig.05. The same process can also be applied

to the cap.


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Character Production Chapter 06 Rendering and Lighting


To set up the V-Ray fur, select the object you

wish to grow fur from and go to Create > V-Ray

and Add VrayFur to your selection. You will

instantly get feedback of the created fur in the

viewport and can quickly set up a desired look.

Note that V-Ray fur will inherit material from

its base surface. If you want to have V-Ray

fur with different materials you can copy the

object, assign it to the other material and turn

off the objects visibility in the shape node

object display. Fig.07illustrates the detailed cap

surface with V-Ray fur.

Another important part of achieving a realistic

CG model is the creation of the characters

Further cloth realism is achieved with the

addition of some surface hairs. To make this

process as simple as possible I will work with

Maya Fur, which comes with some presets that

can be used as a starting point. After making

a few changes to the selected preset, I render

hairs with the Maya software renderer on a

cloth model with a black surface shader. Maya

Fur renders extremely fast with the software

render, and after less than three minutes I have

a fur pass to composite over a beautiful render

(Fig.06).

You can also experiment with V-Ray fur, which

is also great and very easy to set up.

eyes. There are a couple of important things

worth mentioning when it comes to eye creation.

An eye model can be constructed out of many

parts if you are going for an anatomically correct

model, but the easiest way would be to use two

models, one for the outer transparent layer with

the cornea and another for the layer with the iris

and sclera. These separated models are shown

in Fig.08.

The inner part should be shaded with

subsurface scattering and the outer part with a

fully transparent material with the index of the

refraction set to 1.3 or more.

After assembling everything together, the last

thing to do is to set up a render resolution and

sampling.


36

page 36

Chapter 06 Rendering and LightingCharacter Production


Note that more image resolution requires less

precise image sampling. V-Ray offers us three

types of image sampling: Fixed, Adaptive

Subdivision and Adaptive DMC. Image sampling

could be a whole tutorial in itself, so lets skip

the complicated stuff and cut to the basics.

I often use the Adaptive DMC method because

it works best with the small details, like hairs or

skin pores, which are important for achieving

a realistic image. If you are using low samples

you will have probably lost many ne details you

sculpted in your models face, so you have to

use xed or low adaptive subdivision; only for

testing or if you are rendering a big resolution.

If you are going for a 1080 px video render or

similar resolutions I would denitely recommend

DMC with minimum 1 and maximum 6 samples.

You can see a couple of frames captured from

the turntable video in Fig.09 10.

Threshold parameter also plays a big role in

image sampling and you will get more precision

and less noise with a lower threshold.

If you are rendering big resolution stills, like

3000 px or above, you can probably get away

with default V-Ray settings, but I would denitely

recommend using a DMC for those who are

looking for more details and have enough

rendering power.

If you encounter a long rendering hang, make

sure to increase the Dynamic Memory limit to

more than its default 500 MB.

If you are looking for some more control over

your renderings, make sure to explore V-Rays

Render Elements, which will provide you with

the ability to render different passes like Diffuse,

Reections, SSS and so on.

After you render all the necessary passes you

still have some room for improvement in post-

processing. One of the most obvious additions

in post-processing is a background and its

very important to match the background with

the lighting. If you have used an image to light

your character, then you could use the same

image as the back plate to perfectly match the

background with the lighting mood.

Also using the same color correction

adjustments for both the character and the

background will help you to marry the two

elements together better.

I hope you have enjoyed these tutorials and that

you will nd them useful for your future realistic

portrait creations. Thanks for reading!


37




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