Four: Skin and Colour

  With the model's rig just about ready I moved on to working out the textures. When making the normal map I found that the some regions were divided by seams. These seams were blended over in Mudbox, a technique I also plan to use to clean up the divides between the texture meshes, giving much cleaner result that's faster than trying to fix the seams in Photoshop.

However the normal map appears to be a little faint, but it is there and on more extreme areas such as the throat, it is visible. I am considering going back into Mudbox to bring the shapes out it might just be I need some more time working out what could be defined by its shape and what would be defined by patterns. The possibility exists of also using a displacement map so any minor changes to the geometry do not require restructuring the corrective poses.

  With the above picture I tried combining a greyscale of the normal map with the texture map to bring out the features. I consider it a bit of a mixed success though, as it has also ended up making poor Four look like she has severe sunburn. Beyond that, some greenish tint to coincide with her environment and some wrinkles and she's almost good to go skinwise.

Don't mind her lack of eyes. For efficiency's sake I decided to create the texture map on a copy of Four's geometry that matches the geometry on the rigged model. All the eyes really need are a texture map with the pupil stretched across the top edge of the image file.

The teeth and claws could easily be a shader at this stage. I just need to revise how to give the transparency of the edges. The idea that I believe will work is to give a mock rim highlight. The texture files are so far somewhat large - 8192 pixels square which I will likely keep for extreme closeup shots. Smaller files can be easily created for more distant or full-body shots.

  In fact I will probably need to do this, such size extends to the normal and specular maps which will eat processing power during rendering. Understanding my shots will be important in working out the correct resolution required. the current size might be too large for what I'm doing save for extreme closeups.

Maya Tutorials: Completing the Model Pipeline

Spent time this afternoon finishing part three of Pipeline 2, which completes the primary model-making part of the game assets pipeline.

Colo Colo: Diffuse and Normals Done

  Much of today's priority was finishing the textures. And at this stage I believe the only thing left is a specular map. When I completed the textures I imported the model into Mudbox, using the clone tool to clean up the seams between the various parts of the core body. While I think this has certainly helped the quality of the model, I ended up hitting a stumbling block with painting the textures in Mudbox as I was using two textures on a single body. I compromised by tiling a sample of the skin from aroudn the feet and transferred it to the body UV where I copied it, blended the copies using the clone tool and then used an eraser to blend the layer to the base of the legs.

  In the right light, the normal maps really define the roughness of the skin. The addition of specular maps may be what is needed to make the skin definition pop out and give it some moisture.

  There's still an issue with the line running down the leg. But cleaning up the model I think cut it down slightly, I attempted a clean projection on an alternate file to find that this version (planar projection, cut at the same point as on the main model) looped its edges around as well. Fortunately it seems ot be just the edge, if I move the cut-line down the model, the seam moves.

  I didn't get to shape him in Mudbox like I initially aspired to but I'm not disappointed. The texturing works out fairly decently and given the inspirations were cats and rats, whose skin tends to be loose enough to hide a lot of the muscle definition. I added some definition where it might be seen though.

  I feel certain a specular shader would really make the tongue pop. Something is needed to give it some nice, slimy gloss to sell it as an organic object, same goes for the skin itself. I'm sure with the right diffuse map I can make the tongue glossier than the body. The completion of the texture maps done however (aside from the eye but this is simple compared to the other skins) means I can put priority on the specular maps. Which might not take too long given the current state of the texture and normal maps.

Pipeline Two: Normal Maps and Diffusion Maps Part One

   When I started this phase of the pipeline, I wondered about how I could make the normal maps required for this stage. The introduction of Xnormal however was a solid comfort. Overall I enjoyed the process that was put through in these tutorials but I also like how this has given me some practice in painting techniques in Photoshop, particularly a familiarisation with the burn, dodge, stamp and heal brush tools. to create a convincing texture for the stone platform. These techniques have given me a few thoughts on how to progress with the next stages of my current projects as well as thoughts back on previous work such as The What-If Metropolis.

Maya Tutorials: Pipeline 2: High-Poly Models and Normal Maps

  I needed to perform some catching up today so I looked  int continuing Pipeline 2 and modelling the game asset. One thing I have learned in the first half is that in Maya 2016 the extract tool can be a little temperamental, but when it doesn't work the use of "separate then extract" works the same.

  The technique for creating these normal maps was rather enjoyable and the result has been .something I like the look of. Since for the past year I have discovered a personal adoration for detail modeling. Combined with Mudbox lessons, I could find definite use for these techniques to turn high-detail models into much more manageable designs during render sessions.

Mudbox Workshop: Modeling Techniques, Masks and Exporting Normals

  Today's Mudbox workshop session provided a selection of techniques designed to help with modeling and texturing, particularly sculpting masks, layers and exporting high polys as normal maps - very handy for giving human or animal skin some realism without an intense polygon count in Maya. The main drawback, as shown below, is the exported normal map can be a little intense at a bump intensity of 1 (From my previous experiences this is somewhat normal; for a lot of previous models an intensity level of around 0.1 has worked very well).

This is still quite intense as it is about 0.3 in the column where the eye is. The below image is what the high-polygon model looked like in Mudbox before it was transformed into a reference for a normal map.