Goblin texturing

[diazgl]

nice bit dave!! Like it!! The model needs to be defined just a bit more though (the ears look too smooth and simple), but I like the character.

[Stevo]

Very nice, I like your style...

[digones]

Hi Dave,

Your work is awesome! It has unique style.

I'll be glad if you show us the entire mapping process (mainly the texture creation process)

regards from Brazil,

rodrigo.ribeiro

[Dragon]

Thanks guys,
I'll post more as I get it done... I'm working on some hair now.

[Ripley]

Very cool design! He's creepy. Looks like a shifty character. Your modeling and textures are awesome.

[Dragon]

I worked on some hair last night... it was really hard to come up w/ a style for this guy... I think I'm gonna end up giving him a pony tail too. Let me know what you think.
Thanx,

[RDK]

Very nice but addition of some poors or whatever so it looks like the hair is actualy attached to the head, that would complete the awsome work

[Dragon]

Thanx RDK,
Oh yeah, without a doubt. I still have to finish the rest of the hair then I'm gonna work on blending it in w/ the texture map a little better. Thanx.

[RDK]

yay he said my name ;D
heh without ur tutorial I wouldn't be able to make heads like i can now (still learning tho) my new wip demon thread is in WIP forum and my low poly head is in game dev forum here in cgtalk.

[Pancreas]

This is strange: when he´s bald it seems to me like an evil goblin, but with hair it looks like a bad tempered gnome.
This is obvious my own opinion (with all the solid and well-based knowledge of mystic and magic races of years living in a non magic world, of course ;) )

Both faces are great, nice ears!

[Wancieho]

Dude I dig your style, cool character. I'm assuming a bump map cometh?

[Dragon]

Thanx Guys,
Still have to do the bump map along with a million and one other little fixes... but the bump map does cometh :).
Yeah... it's funny how a little hair will completely change a character... wait till put the eyebrows on.. he'll probably look completely different.
I'll post again when I get more done.
Thanx again.

[tobalno3]

i think he's too clean for a goblin..

unless he likes to wash??

[Ant4d]

I think this guy is just great. !!! Hair fits him so perfectly.

NIIiiceee!!!

[diazgl]

oh yeah!! This is a very big change!! One little touch, and BANG!! I like the now and before look, both very nice. The hair needs a better blending with the head though. Keep it up!!

[Dragon]

Thanx for the replies. I'm not sure if I'm gonna dirty him up or not... I kinda like the pail/never seen the sun look... I do plan on throwing some age spots and fixing up the hairline... but.... it's a wip... so we'll see where it ends up.

[Dmitry]

I'd say, if you could sketch him full view with cloth and all, then it be easier to deside the styles.
Great work btw

[Meka]

this is just personal taste, but it looks like you made the junction between the upper lip and the skin just a bit too diffused in your color map or maybe its the compression that is parasiting it and giving it a leaky feel.

Excellent modeling and texturing :thumbsup: :thumbsup:
can't wait to see more :bounce:

[VictorMartins]

That is a very good texture work, with a bump map and a litle gloss it will become pretty realistic, but i guess i would put a darker skin tone, and a few facial hair, maybe some nose hair?
Hehe good work Mr Hobbit :)

[Dragon]

Thanx for all the good feedback guys. I'm gonna hit him hard over the weekend (I don't get too much time on the weekdays.. so It's hard to post new updates). and will post the results on monday.

Dmitry,
Yeah... I'll probably have to do that, although I haven't even thought of a design for the rest of him yet :). Kind of a "on-the-fly" design I guess.

Meka,
You hit the nail on the head... this is one of the million and one problems I'm gonna try and get fixed by Monday. Thanx.

HellRender,
I'm posting a couple picks of how the eyes were done below... btw I already tried the red eye thing. It just wasn't across right. Thanx.

Victor Martins,
Oh yes... All that nasty stuff is yet to come :).

Thanx again guys.
Here is how the eyes were created...

[Dragon]

and here is the second pic....

[Julez4001]

Do you post photoshop your images or are they raw renders from Maya?

Nice work, Love the hair.

[Dmitry]

must admit tho, a very nice work. How long did it take you to model and texture so far?
One of these days Im gon sit down and ummm, model a killer face aswel, blah blah blah....:applause:
great work

[Dragon]

Julez4001,
The image is a straight up render in maya no tweaking... the only thing I used photoshop for was the glow around him.

Dmitry,
I did the model a little while back and I'm just getting around to texturing him now. So far I've spent about a solid day on modeling and about a day and a half on texturing... getting to this point is the easy part... it's all the endless tweaks and fixes that seems to take forever :).

Thanx,

[JacquesD]

Nice work, really.

I prefer him with his hair, that's my opinion though. :)

I don' know why but he looks a bit young to have that kind of gray hair, maybe the skin or his eyes make me feel about it...
I dont know, I'm tired so I must probably be mistaken.

Keep on.

[Spirit2029]

Dragon I wanted to complement you on WICKED TEXTURING. oh yah the models good too. this is going to be great when hes moving, he is going to move right?!!!

Spirit2029

[cmortier]

Wow great work, like usual. I like a lot the look of your characters. I've also learn a lot from your tutorial. :)

[Dragon]

Thanx everybody,
I did some work on him this morning... things like tightening the upper lip, adding age spots and moles and stuble, but the changes are so subtle that I won't post yet... I'll wait till the weekend is over, by then you should see a drastic change, and if everything goes as planned I should have some animation tests by the following weekend :).

[Stephen Vyas]

Hey Dave!!!
Woo, almost missed your thread entirely.. Kickass job once again on the character modeling bit.. Are you thinking about adding any facial hair to him? A lil goat all knotted and such? Just an idea.. there plans for a body or is it just a head model?

Keep us updated

-Steve Vyas

[Dragon]

Hey Steve,
Thanx. I 'm not sure if I'll ever get to a body for this guy... we'll see though. Right now I'm finishing up the textures then I'm gonna' do some facial stuff.
Here's a little update on him. I still have to finish off the ear and the inside of the mouth but he's coming along...

[Dragon]

and here's another one....

[Ant4d]

He Looks sooooooooooo FINE!!!!
I love the character. He has something in his face, something that gives him " I am alive " look. That is what CG characters must be about. :thumbsup:

[ivanimal]

Funtastic :bounce: Funtastic:airguitar Funtastic:buttrock: and again:beer: and again:buttrock:

[gaggle]

Wow hell yeah nice. I quite agree with Ant4d that he has a certain sparkle in his eyes..or..whatever it is, that makes him "there".

I think the transition to his lips are too blurry, it seems to me it's usually better defined..

Much less important is that I think the whole head has a sort of blurryness to it..it's nothing bad per sé, but some smaller details could be quite useful to attain a more..sort of..photorealistic thing. I think.

..oh and he's kinda..saturated, colorwise, as it is. Redish. It's not really a crit though, I just notice it..I'm thinking it's more of a stylechoice.

Great work though, very nice.

[diazgl]

man, great job! the blending is a lot better now, and hair is very nice. I agree with the others on the lips, and i stand my ground on the ears...

Eyes are too shiney? Dont know, too damn defined compared to the age he depicts...

[Dmitry]

Hay Dragon, Im amaized....what kind of technique(spelling?) you are using for the hair? they look so good!!!
it seems to be texture mapping. cuz not fur nor paint effects can produce that kind of fine result. not sure tho
Lemme know.
And oo yeah, can you post some wires...the ultimate!

[Dragon]

Thanx everyone :).
Ant4d,
Thanx, I hope it all comes through when he gets animated.
ivanimal,
You probably could have used a couple more icons if you really tried :).
gaggle,
I probably gonna darken the lip a hair to help w/ the seperation, and I agree w/ you about the saturation... for some reason my it doesn't look so red on my home computer.... hmmm... I'm gonna take a look at this, thanx.
diazgl,
I'm gonna finish the textures on the ears and I was debating whether or not to put some earings on... hmmm... hopefully this should take care of the smooth look. Thanx.
Dmitry,
Thanx. The hair is basically just a bunch of nurbs planes w/ a procedural texture (consisting mainly of ramps) applied. The brows are fur though. Here is an old render I did a while back of the wireframe... you can barely tell it's the same guy :).

[Dmitry]

wow Im amaized even more. Could you post like a small tutorial on how to make procedural ramps for the hair like that>??
Thanks:bounce: :applause:

[diazgl]

oh, yeah a crit i forgot to mention
the antialising on the hair is kinda bad, prolly due to the way you made the hair....?

[zeroeefx]

I'm sure you say it already, but how was the hair done , paint effect or modeled, fur??? just reply back or email me at zerobelowken@hotmail.com
:bounce: :bounce:

[Oscar]

Great work. How do you texture it so that you get all the dark crevaces like that?
Thanx,
Oscar

[Dmitry]

also I was wondering if you gon add some facial hairs?
i think he needs some more wrinkles as well...
but keep em comming.
are you gon crate blends for him and add expressions?
that be cool

[VictorMartins]

Damn he is looking so good , :applause: that is a very very nice job. I love the texture and the hair, but i still think a darker skin tone could be better. I guess that we must thing on were he lives and what he does on life, to imagine how it looks. And i look at him and i thing of a almost rich merchant ( vendor ) that owns a shop with many things, like weapons and potions and sometimes travels to other lands in a funny looking vehicle with a huge animal puching a strange wagon. And he has a bossy personalit.
ok ok im carrying my self away.

Just one thing, the way o talk about the hair, the ramps on the nurbs planes.... that seams so easy and i still don't get it :| Can you make a tutorial on that? I know you are a very busy hobbit but it would help ppl like me making beter hair :)

Yes it's true you have a new fan :) :wavey:

[diazgl]

well, only by guessing, Victor, i would say that he used splines to make patches that conform to the head. He applied a UV on the patches, and then made hair textures in ps...?

[Dragon]

Thanx everyone,

A lot of people are asking how the hair was done so I'll try and post something up a little later (probably during lunch) explaining the process.

Dmitry,
I don't know about facial hair... but I'm working on adding some more wrinkles... the bump map I had was too subtle.

diazgl,
Yeah, I noticed that too... right now I'm rendering w/ the default settings and it's taking about 10 minutes a frame (due to all the transperency & shadows on the hair) but on the final I'll jack the anti-alias settings up. It'll take longer to render... but should fix the problem.

HellRender,
Yeah... that's pretty much my workflow for poly's (plus a lot of artisan). I guess... just keep on trying... eventually you'll get something that works for you?

zeroeefx.
It was modeled in nurbs w/ a procedural shader applied... I'll post aomething a little more elaborate later.

Victor Martins,
Thanx. I desaturated and darkened him up a bit this mornin'.. the changes are real subtle though so I didn't post... matbe tomorrow or the day after.... anyway... I'll post the hair thing a little later... It actually is pretty easy... but takes a lot of tweaking to get a good look.

diazgl,
Almost right on the nose... except you don't need to worry about uv's w/ nurbs (you get them for free w/ patches :)) and it's not a ps file... the texture is actually procedural.

Thanx,

[Julez4001]

Hey if the hair is procedural, how did you get it fade off in the end and where it touches his forehead. Alphamaps?

[diazgl]

nice Dragon!! Damn, a little more and i had you there!!!! Hmmm, procedural conforming to UV hey? Nice. BTW, you prolly already mentioned this, but, what is your working enviroment, LW? If yes, how do you conform a procedural to a UV map?

[Dragon]

Ok... some of you have asked how I did the hair, and, as promised I wrote up a

mini-tutorial. Since I can only post one image per post... I'll span this over a few posts.
Ok here we go. Start out by modeling your planes. Make that they are rounded at the sides so

that they catch light correctly (fig. A). Next create an anisotropic shader and pump a ramp

into the transperency. Create a balck and white pattern on the ramp (fig. B). Black will be

transperent and white will be opaque. Add a little noise to the ramp and adjust the

frequency to give it a wavy feel to it. Next go to your 2d placement node and repeat it a

few times in the V direction. Apply it to your plane and test render. It should look similar

to fig. C.

[Dragon]

Notice that although the transperency is broken up, the specular is not. To fix this run

your ramp into the specular color as well. If you do a test render you'll notice that the

spec is the exact opposite of what you want (fig. D). The transperent spot has the spec and

the the opaque spot doesn't. To fix this all you have to do is create a reverse node and

pump the out color of the ramp into the input of the reverse note then pump the output of

the reverse node into the transperency of your anisotropic shader (fig. E). It should now

look somethong like fig. F.

[Dragon]

The next thing to do is make the ends less perfect and more scraggled. To do this you will

need to create another ramp, but instead of a V ramp change it into a U ramp in the ramp

attributes section. Make it black at both ends and white in the middle (similar to fig.

G).Then pump it into the color gain of your other ramp. This will control the transperency

at the ends and you can lengthen or shorten your hair depending on where you place the white

on this ramp. Give it a test render, it should look something like fig. H.
From here try playing around with the noise attributes on both ramps to get the look you

want (fig. I).
The only thing you did so far is the trans and spec, try applying the same technique to both

the color and bump. It will take a lot of tweaking to get just the right look... but there

you have it... procedural hair in maya.

[Dmitry]

nice, im writing this down...

[Dragon]

diazgl,
I use Maya mainly.
Nurbs objects, since they are a square grid by nature and can consist of only 4 sides, have texture placement built into them. This is a both blessing and a nightmare at the same time. It works cool for things like this, but if you need to paint on a face or something a bit more complex... forget about it w/out a 3d paint package to help you find your way around the surface.

[diazgl]

hmmmm, great man, it's a nice way to go about it. I got one question though; why model it with curvature near the edges? I dont really get that part.

[Dragon]

hey diazgl,
The reason for the curve at the sides is so that when you rotate around it it's never 2 dimensional. This way no one will ever see the planes, plus it gives more volume to the hair.

[mastering3d]

Cool model and textureing man..I love it .I have been doing a lot of thinking and testing of late with textures,Just would like to no how you go about makeing yours.I no that you most be useing photoshop.So what I am saying is in what odder do you have you layers set in photoshop.Do you make the bump map and then use detail from that to add to colour map with the overlay.Is there any way of seeing the maps unwraped..

[Julez4001]

Dammit -trying to duplicate this in Lightwave but i can't tie the parametric gradients into the uvs (needs an image and then it fails). Still nice tutorials. Just notice you are from Atlanta too...




Okay I got it now.
Had to use Object to Pivot - x axis as the input node for the gradients. Mine is kind aof blurry but its a nice start.

[Bezerker75]

thanks for the lesson....I will have to try it out.....I never thought to do hair like that but it deffinately works! great character too!! can't wait to see some facial expressions!

[diazgl]

point taken!! Yeap, right on that one....didn't cross my mind!

[stunna]

Originally posted by Dmitry
nice, im writing this down...

why dont you just save this page.
file, save as

[WAVK]

Thanks for the hair tutorial! Great model and great texturing. I really like the soft look of your characters, especially the mini you! You rock :airguitar

Have fun,

WAVK

[VictorMartins]

This is so great, nice tutorial, it's great you must have it on your homepage Mr Hobbit :) I will try to make some nice new hair to my she devil. You are so great Thank you for teaching us.
:bounce: :bounce: :applause: :applause:

[gaggle]

procedural hair..who'dthunkit

cool. And mighty praise for the tutorialness :bowdown:

[UrbanFuturistic]

Seen it done similarly in Realsoft3D :D Takes a bloody age to render though. I'm about to try and use the same technique on my own character as soon as I get a 3D card that can handle the realtime geometry.

Has to be said, stellar work, got a nice illustrative feel to it.

Any chance of showing us how many layers it took for the hair? ...and how it's all controlled?
regards, Paulhttp://homepage.ntlworld.com/odubtaig/smilies/coffee.gif

[Dragon]

Cool, glad everybody likes the hair technique.
mastering3d,
I usually try to paint as many black and white masks (typically painted in deep paint 3d) as possible and composite them together in photoshop. This allows me a lot of control over each map (bumo, spec, and color). For instance... if I create a black and white "wart" layer, I can bring that into my color psd and adjust the color using hsv and layer blending to composite it together... I can bring the same mask into my spec psd and use it to matte them out or make them shiny,...then I can bring the same mask into my bump psd and invert it to raise them up.
Here is a sample I did of a different sreature I painted recently.

[Dmitry]

wow....so many maps.....tell me whats the shadow map, spot map, and color separation map is used for?
its very unlike...i never seen this kind of methods before...cant wait to see the final results. and also what kind of projection did u use?

[Dragon]

Julez4001,
cool glad you got it to work... I'm not too familair w/ lw... sorry I can't offer any assistance.
Atlanta huh? Do you work for Turner? There's not much CG down here that's for sure :).


Bezerker75,
Thanx. I'm gonna try and get some facial stuff done this weekend (the only time I really get to work on this guy)

Victor Martins,
Cool. I hope it works for you. I'm probably gonna throw up a more ellaborate version of it on my website when I get some free time.

odubtaig,
Thanx.
This will take a little while to render as well once you get multiple layers and shadows turned on... right now I'm pushin' about 5-10 minutes a frame (640x480) on a p4 1.8gz... but it's worth the wait :).
Here is an opengl shot of the character w/ his nurbs hair.

[Bezerker75]

I was just wondering how you flatten the mesh? In your samples it shows the uv's and the mesh is flattened perfect...is there an easy way to do this or is it always time consuming? Thanks in advance!

[diazgl]

wow man!! great job with the UV's. And great flattening! LW UV is like hell for me, but then again, i AM unexperienced!

[mastering3d]

@Dragon

Thanks for uploading the images .I have never tryed it that way be for..Still its good that every one dont do it the same..Me and deep paint dont get on so I am not a big fan of it really but every one to there owen a..Keep it up man great work so far..

P.S The mesh is very very high as that got meshsmooth on it...

[UrbanFuturistic]

Thanks for that :thumbsup: I'm learning a lot here.

Last question, do all the hair 'leafs' start at the hair line or was it neccesary to layer some?

Again, stellar stuff. If only my meshes were so clean :D
regards, Paulhttp://homepage.ntlworld.com/odubtaig/smilies/coffee.gif

[misterboogie]

Damn! You rock!
Awesome hair tutorial.

I've never seen anyone make procedural hair look so good!

5 stars!!

[Julez4001]

I work for a small multimedia house in Gwinnett. We had a need for a lot character animation work so I use P:messiah for that and Lightwave to render it out of.

I got the techique down perfect..Had to REALLY play without using UV maps as it needed LW'sinterpation of "directional axis" to drive the gradients.

Love your work ...very subtle.
I try to use Maya when I can
too but it wasn't what I learned on.

When I have free time I work on my avatar, just click on WEB to see full pic.

[Dragon]

Dmitry,
All of these are simply layers that I combine in photoshop to get my maps. For instance I would tweak the spot mask w/ hsv and composite it onto the rest of the map w/ multiply blending to get some dark spots on the character. These are just a few of the layers, I actually use a lot more than that by the time it's all done. Check the bottom of this page (http://www.cgtalk.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=10052&pagenumber=1 ) to see the results.
I used a bunch of planar maps and sewed them together to get the uv's.

Bezerker75,
there is no easy way to do this as far as I know... just one of those thankless jobs that has to be done :). sorry.

diazgl,
Thanx. Maya has some pretty good uv tools. I'm not too familiar w/ lw so I don't know if there is anything comparable, but, the way I created his in maya was to take planar projections from the top, side, front, bottom, and back, then sew them together. Maya also has a cool feature called relax uv's which smooths them out and removes overlapping uv's.

[Dragon]

mastering3d,
Yeah some of the tools aren't as good as photoshop (I do all my finessing in photoshop) but it's great for getting placement for your textures.
Yeah, I took a snapshot after I smoothed the mesh... I actually did the layout in lores though.

odubtaig,
Not sure what you mean... the strands are tucked into the skull a little then blended w/ a combonation of transperency (on the strands) and painted texture (on the head).

miyamoto,
Thanx. I took a look at your site... your pumpkinhead rocks :).

Julez4001,
Ah... Gwinnett is a nice area :). I was gonna move there but the comute (sp?) into the city is just too much... love that Atlanta traffic :).
Cool... glad you got it to work... I'm curious at how it's affecting render times in lw.
Your avatar is awsome. Very original :thumbsup: :thumbsup:

[Dragon]

Here is an updated version of the goblin...

[Dragon]

and another one...

[diazgl]

looking great man!! Nice overall look! Man, your texturing is soooooo kick ass!! Only thing is that the skin looks quite blurry, and takes away that hard and old feel from it. Also, i think that the skin around the eyes could use some darkening...it looks like it's just really soft at the moment, whereas he looks more like an older man...keep it up dude!

Oh, and the UV map..ehhee....i tried posting to get an answer for UV smoothing, but no answer yet...:)

[Rain3danimator]

first of: really nice model! really nice texture! just great! the hair technique is used really good(I never got it to work this nice) all in all the model looks just solid!

congrats!
oh and nice anims on your site !


diazgl wrote:
Oh, and the UV map..ehhee....i tried posting to get an answer for UV smoothing, but no answer yet...

I think you mean flattening the uvw........right?

I don't know maya but it should be some kind of uvw unwrapper :S

Roderick

[diazgl]

well, if I understood correctly, he smoothed up the UV maps, which is something I was trying to do, like apply a metaNURBS to the UV map polygons, cos in LW, when you have already applied a UV map to your low polygon model, the UV map polygons don't smooth up, but instead, uhm, have a look:

Left image is UV map. Right Image is the UV map, but after I apply metaNURBS. Below is the how I would LIKE the UV to become after applying metanurbs. It's a simple example, k?

[Rain3danimator]

hmmm I see what you mean.. I think it then just depends on the complexity of the model right? the uvw is basicly a "projection of the mesh" so the more complex the model, the uvw "image" gets more complex.

just my thought :D

[j3st3r]

The goblin looks cool, although in my imagination goblins are greyish coloured, with lotta wrinkles...

According to LW`s implementation, there is a good workoaround on one site. It says, when you want to UV your model, do as follows:
1. Set your SubPatch Display in Modeler to 1. There will be NO subdivisions, but the vertices will be averaged
2. Create a copy of your subpatch model, then freeze it.
3. UV your frozen model
4. Create a morphmap, with the original (unfrozen) model
5. Apply the Morph with 100%
6. Delete morphmap

You`ll have a smoothed UV on your subpatch model

Jester

[Dragon]

Again... I can't speak for lw but what I was talking about in maya was actually relaxing the uv's w/out increasing the complexity of the mesh. Take a look at fig.A. It's basically a snapshot of 2 planar projections on a deformed polysphere. In fig.B I sewed the 2 halves together to get one seamless projection, but there are still a lot of overlapping uv's. In fig.C is where I apply the relax function. What this does basically is pin the border edges and relax the points inside of them to relieve any overlapping (an extremely useful tool when doing this stuff).
So I can layout my uv's on my low poly mesh then apply a smooth (similar to using metanurbs) w/out having to worry about my uv's, it simply subdivides them as it would the mesh (see fig. D)

[underdog]

I just have to say this is excellent work. I love the model, and your doing an awesome job on the texturing. I do hope you do some animation with it. I would love to see him talk.

[trebor]

This is my first post on this forum so hopefully it will all work out.

Dave,

How did you deal with the fur brows? I take it that you used NURBS geometry and will wrap deform this onto the poly head.

Have you used multiple fur descriptions?

Did you manage to mirror one eyebrow to make the other or did you have to do each one from scratch?

The reason I ask is that I have tried several times to get fur eyebrows working but have never reached a satisfactory result. A few tips on this would be greatly appreciated.


Stuart.

[Kaos]

Dave, i love your work, can i buy your brain off you please??

dave, are you planning on making a short?? looking at your site, you have the hbbit, golum, this guy, the beast (george??)....
and they all look like they would fit into a short really nicely together?? just wondering...........

[Dmitry]

Dave great work. I got some more add ons or suggestions towards your model/texture.
First I think you should paint an under layer of eyebrows on the texture map color, where the eye brows are, so that it doesnt look like they just stik out from blank skin. Or have you used fur shadow lights? that should solve that issue.
Second, I belive that he has no eye lashes. If you at all deside to give him some.

[diazgl]

ok j3st3r, call me stupid, but me no get!! I don't really have all LW features on the tip of my finger, so,

4. Create a morphmap, with the original (unfrozen) model
5. Apply the Morph with 100%
6. Delete morphmap

??

Is there a page with this little trick?

[Phrank]

I love him man! truly one of the best characters ive seen so far - and he has so much character :cool: ! Ur techniques are also very interesting and helpful (even for non-maya people!).
Cant wait for the next one..

[Capt.Jackass]

I don't suppose you guys have converted all this texturing skills conversations into something max users can familiarize with =)

great work though,

one question: is deep paint a good program to use for this kind of texturing?

[anticz]

Dragon,
Wow, I'm stunned. Fantastic work. Very insightful post. Thanks for sharing some your techniques. I'm inspired to work harder.

[Wilson]

Ok, you've inspired a lurker to post. I can't decide if seeing stuff is incredibly inspiring or dreadfully demoralizing. Every day I log on and see work that absolutely shames mine, but at the same time makes me want to improve.

Anyway, I just wanted to say thank you so much for having the patience to answer all these questions, I've learned a lot. I work in Maya too, but have been avoiding texturing because I'm lost and confused about UV's. [\insert dumb question] Are you saying that you applied multiple planar projections to the head? I thought you could only apply one projection to a model? And does attaching the head to a body screw everything up? [\end dumb question].

How are subd's in Maya for texturing? When you add the finer levels of detail, will the UV's subdivide like you it does with the poly smooth?

Thanks again, and great work mon frere!

[boonet]

Hi dragon! Awesome work.I'm not sure if you already tried this (maybe it's a bit too subtle), but I think a little bit of translucence would add even more realism to your character. I usually go with full translucence and a texture on the translucence focus channel and it really does a lot.

Keep up the great work! :)

(Oh: I had your 'hobbit guy with computer' picture as a wallpaper, 'cause I look almost exactly like him eheheheh...)

[kandyman]

boonet: maybe you and dragon are brothers? cos AFAIK the hobbit pic is a self-portrait... :)

[Julez4001]

I am over at the BillY batson thread
http://www.cgtalk.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=11442


Thanks Dragon...I try to up date him when I can but I am working on multiple projects. Heres a Close up (http://64.225.100.82/julez/animz/diggz_Jan2002.jpg)

hey when is the next Maya user group, I was at te May one at Macquarium, but i wa sthinking they would have one more before Siggraph.


Heres a LW tutorials link

http://members.shaw.ca/lightwavetutorials/Advanced_Surfacing.htm

[Dragon]

underdog,
Thanx. I'm starting on facial this weekend... hopefully if everything goes well I'll have some animation tests next weekend.

trebor,
He's polys, not nurbs. You can put fur on polys as long as you have good uv's. I used only one fur description for him and theye were created seperately not mirrored... Its a pain but I haven't found a good way to mirror them yet. The only thing I actually did mirror was the baldness map for placement. I created a b/w mask in photoshop and imported into the details section of the fur description.

Kaos,
"Dave, i love your work, can i buy your brain off you please??"
thanx... but I think someone else took it a long time ago :).
I'm not planning a short.... I just just like the genre :).

Dmitry,
I did paint them In the texture as well... but they're probably just a little too light... I'll darken them up a bit. I try and stay away from having them cast shadows to avoid flickering... they are self-shadowed right now. Also I tried putting lashes on him... but wasn't happy w/ the results... it made him look a drag queen :).

Phrank,
Thanx. I'll post more as I get it done.

Thanx,

[Dragon]

Capt.Jackass,
Sorry about the max thing but I haven't used it since 2.5... I doesn't even look like the same program anymore :). As far as Deep paint goes though... I like it a lot, but I guess it's a matter of pesonal tast cause I've met a lot of people that only use photoshop. Some of the main reasons I like it are the fact that you can actually see what your'e working on in real time, it also has real time bump mapping so you can see them as you paint and also you can paint over seams in projection mode. It's not a replacement for photoshop (I still use use thet extensively)... just an add on.

anticz,
Thanx. I love your "Nyxies" characters. Youve created a really nice mood to your scenes.

Wilson,
Thanx.
You can take projections of faces to get multiple projection. Each face can belong to only one projection... so the faces at the top of the head get a top projection, the ones at the side get a side projection and so on.
Attaching the geometry of head to the body is not an issue unless you sew the uv's together. Just make seperate uv's for the body.

boonet,
Are you my long lost brother? :). cause as kandyman said... it is a self portrait (xcept I have more hair on my feet and am a little shorter in real life :))
I tried the translucence trick you mentioned but it totally blew out my character... However it does warrant some further tinkiring around with.. cause I do want something like that for the ear.

Thanx,

[Dragon]

Julez4001,
Not sure about the next user group meeting they're kinda wierd about those... I wasn't able to make the last one, but since I work there I guess I didn't miss much (xcept the free pizza :) ).
Your BillY batson character looks great you have some nice subtleties going on...hey... is that procedural hair? :). Looks good, You might want to throw some noise in the tips though... right now it kinda fades off.

Take Care,

[DigitalCritters]

Dave, Great work man! Your consistency and quality is really stable across all of your works. Very solid thread too; it's nice to see you share your techniques. Keep it up!

[Sama3d]

great stuff, keep it up

[nick_hiatt]

very impressive - and a unique style
love the hair and teh textures

[Jacobo]

Hi there dave;

I just love your work... It is just so very sincere and your style most definitely has that distinct ability to speak for itself... Guess I'll be meeting you in person in about a month in Atlanta, I'll shake your hand then :)

a lil' suggestion if I may tho, are u planning to put a spec map on that guy? His skin seems it could use a little diffused specularity here and there, it looks dry a bit... Other than that, cool ass work dude...

aj

[iLL]

Very nice work lad. I like your style and the newest renders looks great. I think I speak for everybody when I say that your work is truely original and an inspiration to us all. Keep up the bloody good work.

[Silmarillion]

The model was very nice , now with texture he looks even better
Great work Dave i loved it ..

[sean_G]

i really like your work. ive been checking you out since you got the spot on CGchannel for the "george" tutorial. i scoped your site
and it really looks like youve made a quantum leap in skill over the last year, especially with the form in your poly modelling skills.

youre an awsome modeler, clean texture artist. . . do you do any shader creation? just curious. but then again i guess using maya there are PLENTY of other people doing that all the time huh? i just think his ears would look great with some sub-surface light scattering.

good luck. great work

[rsalonen]

This is great Dave! Really love it, it got personality.
And thank you very much for both eye tutorial and hair, I always wondered how hair could be made, I know you can use pain(t) effects in maya but they are so slow.
This is a really great wat to create hair, thanks allot!!

Oh, and just wondering, if you would animate it, the hair wouldn't lay flat, it would move, how could you animate hair like that? Moving CVs and keyframe? add a field effect or maybe make it to a softbody or cloths?

[Dragon]

Thanx for all the positive feedback everybody. I'm more or less done with the texturing of him... I've made a few tweaks since the last post but they're to subtle to be worth posting. I'm working on some facial stuff right now, and if everything goes according to plans (which.. it seems.. never does :) ) I'll post some new stuff on Monday.
Thanx again,

[AroundTheFur]

how the heck did you unwrap that mesh man? great work and i hope one day i can texture like you :buttrock:

[scene215]

Hey Dragon great work!

I use Maya 3 right now and was wondering if and how do you get your UVs into photoshop. Right now I stuck using the screensnap and pasting it into photoshop and then matching it up to my temporary texture I have open.

Another question is how big is your texture maps example 1200 by 1200. Thanks

[Dragon]

Hey scene215,
I don't remember if it's in 3 or not (I've been using 4 for a while now) but there is a uv snapshot command in the texture editor. It will export an image of your uv's... anti-aliased and w/ alpha (this is also very useful to do wireframe renders).
Also... I probably could go a little bigger... but his texture is at 1k.

Take care,

[Dragon]

Geeez... this thread is getting really long. I hope people have the patience to sift through it so they can see the latest posts.
Anyway.... I've been playing around w/ facial shapes for this guy. I still have a long way to go and there is no animation yet... but here a few pics so far.

[Dragon]

and another one....

[leigh]

Wow that really is quite superb! :applause: :applause:
I think the eys are so eerie, they really seem to be looking out at me :surprised You did such an excellent job of them :thumbsup:

Really really inspiring work :D

[diazgl]

great man loving it!! Only thing are those teeth, they need some dirtying up, some bump perhaps. And the hair, well the hair looks perfect (in both ways) only looks that he spent the entire week at the hair-dressers'. Perhaps making the hair more sharp as in almost each individual hair being visible?

[SDIT]

:airguitar

It's looking great Dragon!! I agree with Leigh, he does look like he's watching you!!. By the way Leigh, thanx for your EXCELLENT tutorials on texturing!!
Later.

SDIT.

[BCSimpson]

Super sweet!!!!! like ninjas!

[PAL]

:buttrock: :eek: :buttrock: :buttrock: :eek:

INCREDIBLE!!! I LIKE IT!

KEEP IT UP!!

[fellah]

really good model and textures!
the expressions need more work though imo. maybe exaggerate them more, and try to change the eyes a bit to fit the expression(s) more.
keep it up! :thumbsup:

[Fred Heys]

wicked texturing...good model...overall great...keep it up

[VictorMartins]

Jesus, it's so good it hurts :D

Congratulations, you are amazing. Thank you for sharing your knolege with us mortals. :wavey:

[Dragon]

Thanx everyone.
I think I'm finally seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. I'm almost done creating the blend shapes. I still have a few shader tweaks (teeth and the red of the eyes mainly), and have yet to throw a tounge in him.... but I might actually be done by the end of the weekend :). If everything goes as planned my next post will be to the gallery for finished work.
Thanx again,

[nibo]

I can almost smell that horrible breath com'n out of his mouth...
(hmmm maybe it's my armpits...)
Anyway

FRECK'N COOL!!

Love your style!
Great work.

[alganon]

Really like the way the eye area looks, Nice painted texture all together man.

[S E D A H]

nice modeling and texturing .....really like the expression do you use wire deformer for blendshape or just tweak the face with lattice and vertex.........and the hair is looking good but l want to know how you move your hair if you have a special technic..........

[Dragon]

Hry everyone I posted a link to an animated version of him in the gallery section click here (http://www.cgtalk.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=12623) . Check it out :)


nibo,
If only they would make a media type with "smell-o-rama" :)

alganon,
Thanx... they are the most important part of any character, I think.

S E D A H ,
No wore deformers.... mainly blend shapes, but joints were used for the eye blinks and jaw rotation to give them radial instead of linear movement.
I didn't do much w/ the hair movement... meaning no soft bodies or things of that nature... what I did was latticed the strands I wanted to move then created a skeleton and bound the lattice to those joints. Then I put a locator at the bottom of the neck and aim constrained all those joints to it. This way I can manually key the locator to control the hair movement.

[dddMan]

Super :thumbsup: if you want to sell it visit my site (we'll start soon...)

[Julez4001]

heck its worth just seeing it all again.
BUMP***

[Snakeman]

hobbitguy!!!!....i'm a huge fan....u basically taught me how to model with that tut you did....but i swear this cant be a recent WIP i've seen all of these textures a long timeago in a head animation you did with this character.........its still awesome tho U THA MAN

[Dragon]

hehe... that's funny... I was looking through the wips and I saw a thread on goblin texturing so... being the fantasy fan that I am.... I checked it out..... It's my own!
Boy this is an old one...your right snakeman... but thanx for thinking it's worthy to be bumped up Julez4001.


On a side note... I do get a lot of people asking me how to do the hair on this guy, and I wrote a little mini-tutorial of how to do it on page 4 of this thread. If it's your first time looking at this you might want to check it out.

Take care,

[KingMob]

he looks so great, man you are one of my favorte 3d modelers, I love your style.

can't wait to see another tutorial! your troll was awesome!

Love the goblin to man

[Julez4001]

I'm Lookingfor a better way to model my hair.
I modeling a wizard and am not going the way of hair plugin.
You got any tips for this...

[Dragon]

Thanx Kingmob. I've been really busy lately w/ side projects, but I promise more when I get some breathing room.

Jules4001,
To model hair in Maya (I'm not sure if there's something similar in Lightwave though) I draw a bunch of curves in 3d space and manipulate them into position, then create a "C" shaped curve loft it using those curves as a path. If it need to adjust it later I can either edit the original curve for single patches or put a lattice on it for moving the hair as a whole. Then apply a shader like on page 4 of this thread.

Take care,

[Maximus Groff]

Hey guys ... check this out!!!

http://www.web3dservice.com/tutorials/Maya/Composing_FX/maya_tut_compfx_13.htm

Man... really... i know its the other way but.. look at this:

http://www.cse.unsw.edu.au/%7Edwyi124/pfxtut/pfxtut13.jpg

[Xell]

woohhoooaaa !!!?! this goblin is amazing work ....great :eek:

[oracrest]

really nice work man! I also checked out your site, and have to admit that you are a fantastic computer artist. You are no doubt a rankin/bass fan. If you have the time, I would love to see you do one of the trolls from the cartoon......:buttrock: :airguitar

[the_zed_axis]

this has got to b d bestest and the longest thread yet i learnt sooo much thank u all :beer: :thumbsup:

[fast4ry]

its great,no crits.here you have a minitutorial but you use maya,now im traying to reproduce this on max.the problem is im a max begginer,someone can help?? pliz :shrug:
i am making a modell of a woman and a long time i want add hair
,this is the best method than i see.
sorry for my bad english

.........................................................................................................

alonso champion F1

[santosLord]

Great stuff Dragon... Just wanted to know if you will posting more tutorials on your website? Your models are looking really good. I really like George. That is one monster that I would like to be friends with.

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