Character: head study

[Beholder]

The lighting and character design are cool. Not sure about the eyelashes, they're a little intense.

Wires please.

[Jake]

Thanks for the reply!
Here are some wireframes.

[Jake]

sideview:

[Nightwing]

That's really good :thumbsup:

I agree, the lighting is excellent, any chance you could tell us about your setup? Nice character, excellent skin but the eyelashes do look a bit heavy. Hair is also a bit strange, perhaps it's that I've just never seen a hairstyle like that :D

Hat could use a bit of detail and perhaps a bump map, but I'm sure your focus was the face.

[Jake]

Nightwing--

Thanks for the reply!
I don't know what software you use for rendering. In Lightwave, the radiosity can be done using the luminosity attribute in the surface editor. So, the basis for the lighting in this scene is a sphere with the normals flipped to face inward and the object and camera placed inside the sphere. In addition, I used a flat luminous square on one side to indicate a light source.

This approach can produce very realistic results, but it still looked a little too even and flat to me. So I added an area light on one side and a point light on the other. The area light had a slight yellow tinge, the point light was slightly blue. The area light was set to only affect specular.

There are two problems with mixing the luminous sphere and actual lights:
1. the image gets washed out very quickly from too much light. I had to ramp everything down.
2. mixing an area light with the radiosity gave me a very grainy image so I had to use a much higher rays per evaluation setting than I normally would.

The settings I used did not work well with the saslite hair plugin. So even the way it appears in this image involved some compositing and touch-up in Photoshop. You're right about about the hat needing something more. I fooled around with some procedurals but they didn't look good with the lighting so I finally just said "screw it" and just rendered it as is. Eventually, if I keep working on this piece, I'll need to come up with some actual texture maps.

[Nightwing]

Thanks for sharing tips on your setup Jake...much appreciated :)

I'm learning lightwave at the mo, been a maxer for a year or so, but am *really* enjoying the workflow in LW. Reason I asked about your setup is because I am experimenting with different configs for my new character project.

The hat's got potential, I think if you push the materials a bit it'll integrate nicely into the scene.

About your setup....I've experimented with the skydome idea, but as you say it results in a rather flat render....I'll try mixing the dome with some area lights though.

Cheers, and do post the updated image once you've had a go at the hat :)

[Jagger]

Like your model and textures. Theres 3 things that stand out to me.

1. the eye lashes as others have noted seem to thick

2. I originally though your skin colour looked a lot on the grey side till i covered your background. I belive the warm colour of you bg is taking away from your head texture ( making it seem duller then it is) but that could just be me.

3. Also the cresent moon on your hat and to a lesser extent the stripes on the hat, dont seem to fit in well, perhaps their to bright.

Other than that looks good.

I wish I could make meshes that clean :applause:

[Jake]

Jagger--

Thanks for the crits.

I've already changed the hair and the eyelashes a bit. I'm working on the hat and coat right now, but it will take a while to render out the image again so the update won't be ready until tomorrow.

The bands and ornament on the hat were supposed to be luminous, but it doesn't read well in the current lighting scheme so I'll probably change it.

I changed the background color to help seperate the coat and hat from the sphere. The sphere was originally white so they kind of blended in. That's a good point about the color, though. I'll try playing with it.

[wildsheepchase]

Cool character! I pretty much agree with the previous crits about the eyelashes and such. Also, I think that the skin looks a little too blotchy in parts, especially in between the eyebrows. Another thing that's bothering me a bit is her upper lip...I'm not completely sure why. I think the two peaks(sorry, don't know the official name) of the upper lip could be a little closer together and more detail added to the upper lip structure in general. Hope that made sense. The bottom lip looks really good.
I like the start on the costume, I'm sure you'll get around to adding more detail and texture.
Rock on:buttrock:

[Jake]

Well, you see the blotchiness of the piece is part of the expressionistic style. My birthday came and went and a certain someone didn't call or anything so I was feeling blotchy. So I projected the blotchiness of my subjectivity into the work.

Actually, I had to compress the crap out of the thing to get it small enough to post here. So I think the blotchiness is a problem with the jpeg, not the render.

[BnE]

yoooooooo i didn't see you had a thread... it's a cool head... i like the render, the ambiance... hair are strange... i would say that eye lashes are very strong, but i like the skin and the face itself... i like the hat and the cloth. and by the way, your wire is very clean... it's great head i think. :applause:

[Jake]

Thanks BnE!

[Green Grass]

Wow. Good lighting indeed. You've heard enough about the eyelashes....I like the hat except for the moonish type thing on there....GOOD WORK!
:buttrock:

[Jake]

Here's an update:

[wildsheepchase]

Well, you see the blotchiness of the piece is part of the expressionistic style. My birthday came and went and a certain someone didn't call or anything so I was feeling blotchy. So I projected the blotchiness of my subjectivity into the work.
:blush:Sorry! I remembered, but I was out of town...and didn't have your phone number...:banghead:

The update looks like it's suffering from compression even more, especially in the cheek area. The eyelashes look better, I think there could be more of a crease on her upper eyelid. I liked the funky moon symbol on her hat...are you getting rid of it?

[wildsheepchase]

Actually, the skin does look less blotchy....but, I'm noticing a lot of pixellated areas I hadn't seen before....which the previous version had as well. So, I think it looks better than before:D

[Jake]

Yeah, this jpeg is pretty crappy. To do a large render, with these radiosity settings, took my machine about 11 hours. So after the initial posting, a lot of the changes I made were either done through compositing or re-rendering the frame at a more manageable size.
I'm trying to improve the elements sufficiently to warrant another long render, but at this point I'm thinking I might not even bother.
It's just a head, and the main element is the face, so it doesn't seem worth the effort. Actually, I think it looks pretty good in black and white.

I liked the moon thingy but a lot of people were asking me "what is that thing on her/his hat?" so I figured it was too much of a distraction. Initially, the scene was going to be a lot darker and that symbol was going to be one of the primary light sources. But things changed a lot once I started tinkering with the settings.

I got real crap results from the hair plugin I was using, so I had to use compositing and some painting in Photoshop just to get it to look like this.

[eLm0]

nice ne chance u can post a close up front view so i can check out the topology?

[Jake]

Here you go:

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