escaping the lab - *.obj for download added

[Abyssis]

hooooh, this skin is awsome, Tim

[Tim Leydecker]

Hi folks,

thanks for the kind words. Actually, my model is awning to reach
anywhere near the quality of Joe_Seig's Melanin dude :-)

I´ve been doing a cheesy comp of some seperate layers instead.

Next step is doing displacement and setting up the XSI shaders
with Normalmaps accordingly. Then redo everything from scratch,
then do another dozen of models, then maybe...

Cheers

tim

[joe_seig]

Hi Tim nice work, for such pale skin you may appreciate the photos of Loretta Lux.
If you're not familiar with her work, she digitally manipulates them, so where's the cheese in that?
Love your last image, subtle translucency seems just right.
Hope to see more!

[Tim Leydecker]

Hey Joe,

cool link you´ve got there. Seems Loretta set a trend.
The latest KoRn release also has a freaky, paleish kid
on it´s cover (Example links to a german mailorder):

KoRn limited edition coverimage//See you on the other side

The way it´s painted comes close to how I tried to paint
my diffuse layer. It´s just quite a bit better:-)

Cheers

tim

P.S: Do you have a portfolio page or something? I understand
you don´t post much usually, but I´d still like to see some more
of your stuff. Really admire your edgeloops and resulting volumes.

[Tim Leydecker]

Hi there,

cut the mesh into seperate parts, slapped a 1024px GUV map
on each, and´ll later move each UV set to a seperate space,
then scale everything down to fit the 0-1 range of the 4096px
map resulting of arranging the texturemaps accordingly.

Currently start to nail down the luminance values and desired
scattering of the skin compared to the clothing stuff, mixing
two or three passes created in XSI with the textures painted
in ZBrush piped into all sorts of channels. XSI ambient occlusion
added in to tone down cavities for the mouth area and such.

No bump or specular maps yet, just a painted compositing mask
to get an idea how the shadows and shattering should look like.


Cheers


tim

[billrobertson42]

Wow. Looking good.

Do you like XSI for rendering?

[Tim Leydecker]

Hi Bill,

I´ve just started using XSI with version 5.01, still have quite a
few problems with the rendertree and generally in getting around
the interface but allready dig the quality of the mR implementation.

It´s really easy to plug together complex shading networks,
disconnect snippets and the re-open the rendertree to find
those parts auto-optimized away...ouch. It´s not Maya Hypershade...

Also expirience frequent lock-ups and crashes when using SSS nodes
and rendering regions alot while having additional programs open,
maybe not too good an idea to have ZBrush, Maya, XSI and else
open simultaneously...ahem, but most of the time it works anyway:-)


Cheers

tim

[Tim Leydecker]

O.k.

althought I *really* should be doing some other things first
I got carried away by the greatXSI modeling toolset. [+]

Also slowly start to get in touch with ZBrush more often.
The below image bascically is my testing ground for ZBrush
and XSI. be it Normalmaps or displacement, *.obj I/O.
All the bells and whistles are tested on this.

Admittedly, it´s also a great way to work on something
different without the pressure that comes with (post)grad.
*neverending short* still not finished.

So, I´m still trying to escape the *.lab...

[MrJames]

Hi Tim,

I read at the top that you have added XSI to your toolset. I'm a Maya user and was thinking of doing the same thing for modelling purposes. How are you finding XSI and would you recommend learning it? Has it improved your workflow?

Slightly off topic I know

[Tim Leydecker]

Hi MrJames,

I can definitely recommend the polygon modeling toolset, the selection
modes and the simplified subdivision display. The felt speedimprovement in
workflow for me - coming from Maya - is at around 250-300%.

This is mostly due to redraw still being very fast even with loads subdivided
meshes. So I´m not neccessarily saying the tools are better, it´s just
faster and more WYSWYG to work on subdivision surfaces using the tools XSI offers.


I had some Softimage 3.8/3.9 experience, but never touched XSI before, a
long time Maya user...well, I don´t quite like every thing the XSI guys have
or don´t have implemented but I start to get along well enough to reliably
find a way to get out what I need. Roughly spend 3 months (part-time)
poking the modeling toolset to get this far. Including the mR settings.

So, I´d say download the trial foundation from Softimage, if you like it
for modeling, get a copy. It´s definitely worth it´s $ 500,- .
(I have an edu Advanced currently but that´s exactly what I´ll do...)


Cheers

tim

[MrJames]

Thanks for the reply m8,

Yeah, its something that I have been toying with the idea of learning for the past month and I think I'll have to give it a go now The only thing that has been stopping me is just learning another 3d package... I'll get the trail and see how it goes

[Tim Leydecker]

I´ve put together some more files someone may find helpful.
It´s a good example of the simplified subdivsion display of
XSI (or modo or silo or whatever) helping in building a light
and efficient mesh. I started that Guard character by his
boots actually...

The boot isn´t ideal in terms of proportion but should be
quite a good start to create your own one from by adding
or deleting loops and such, 53 KB, all quads:

http://www.hafenlola.com/downloads/genericbootobj.zip




Cheers


tim

[Pride]

Thanks for the boot model Tim , I will see how it looks on one of the figures
I printed in 3D.

[Tim Leydecker]

Hi Pride,

go ahead. Post a result if you like the outcome.

Cheers

tim

[Tim Leydecker]

Here´s some more files, showing a simple way of using SyflexCloth
(in the downloadable file) or even the FoundationCloth and pins
as constraints to solve clothfolding as an inspiration for modeling.



(XSI 5.01 adv required for the files _underscore! 345kB,- edu!)
http://www.hafenlola.com/downloads/L...thmodeling.zip

Basically, you model a somewhat simplified shape for the trousers,
add a pinconstraint to the toprow vertices around the waist and
the bottomrow vertices for the ankle and just push the controller
objects up and down a little, you can also scale and rotate the
pinconstraint (boxes) to get twist, kind of sculpting the cloth.

Once this is satisfactory, you freeze and use a polygonreduction
(and maybe a quadrangulate operation) on the mesh and can start
creating a cleaned-up version including the details like pockets and
seams that would be too difficult to *real-time* solve.



This is where the *topology brush/Zsphere* of ZBrush2.5 will come in
really handy I hope, I expect to be able to intuitively preserve alot more
of the details solved compared to the meshes I get through semiautomated
reduction as a base for tweaking the look now:




I hope you guys find this useful,

Cheers


tim