Compositing and adjusting layer passes in photoshop
Use of cavity masking as a texturing tool
This video runs 42 mins in total and covers the process from texturing to final render using render passes and compostiing them in photoshop. My intention with these two videos was to outline the main concepts in an easy to understand way.
Nah its completely free mate, took me a while to work out how to customise the look, but isn’t too bad. Its got some good options for letting you upload to otehr sites like youtube automatically (I haven’t tried that bit yet myself though.)
I used camtasia for recording the sessions, it can eat up a fair bit of resources but does a good job.
‘Eventally’ I’l be uploading the rest of my free vids to it in a seperate section, mainly as it saves bloody space on my site…I’m not short of it, but if to many people download at the same time server gets slow.
i watched the first video… gonna watch the 2nd one now… is it possible to include the materials u used on the head? in particular the skin shaders u were switching back and forth with! all of them looked very interesting
Update crit~lol. Hey can you translate from the Geordish tones to Southern git for me! Just kidden,you sound like Sir Alan Shearer(hope your not from sunderland)!I wanted to ask if you have anything else on layers ? I enjoyed your methods and was wondering how come so many layers ? I need to freeze frame your video to remember the layer types for each pass.With photoshop they are to hard to see apart from when you select the type of style at first which threw me a little due to you looking through several outcomes .Could I ask if there are any golden rules when setting down layers . I have seen a few other artists show around 4 layers on average but the opacity and styles (in general ?) for each layer seem to be the part Im missing . I appreciate that each image will be different and will use differing settings but its the basis Im trying to find instead of my add randomly n see method .A little opacity slide here and there.etc etc .Thats about my method summed up!
Giving all that help and I come and bombard you with questions.Im sorry Wayne,I learn everything from you guys and tutorial Dvd’s ! I hope to help others when Im able to also . How did you learn about layering in photoshop with characters in mind ?Is there a resource anywhere or was it college.
I cant find what Im looking for as yet…
Well,just a final note agin of THANKS .Your time spent doing what you do is greatly appreciated and I hope you dont mind me asking those questions.They may benefit others reading on this thread too.Maybe Im the only one that missed some basic stuff at birth into 3d.(probally).
Nope not from Sunderland, in fact if someone wanted to be REALLY technical as I was born in south west Durham I dont qualify as a ‘true geordie’ as I wasnt born in sight of the river Tyne…but anyway I digress.
My approach to layer compositing may be a little different to some peoples. Although using multiple and screen modes are my usual choices I do often try other ones as well to see if I get a more interesting effect in post. I’ll drag out the photoshop document tomorrow and attach it here so everyone can get a better feeling for things.
I’ll also if I have time knock out a quick word document with some basic guidelines etc. (Been a long day and my mouth feels like hell …had an extraction at the dentists today.) I am entirely self taught and this whole thing basically came from some composting theory I absorded into my head along my ‘travels’ in 3D.
One day I was sitting thinking how it can sometimes be a pain to have to tweak a shader for example to get the specularity you need. It just seemed to make the most sense to use a compositing technque as its both flexable and saves time in the long run I find.
I use as many render passes as I feel I need at the time (currently I working on a workflow for better quality subsurface shader effects for human skin…something more rocksolid and predictible than my current methods). Sometimes it can be a good idea to try and think outside the rules of things, works for me at least.
I’ll do my best to track them down as soon as I have time, the main base skin shader I used was one of ralph stumfs. Although its worth remembering that I’m somewhat infamous for my incredibly bad filling system so I can’t gaurentee I can still find them, although I promise you I’ll do my best.
I think there still a heck of a lot of mileage still left in the zbrush render engine that we haven’t covered as yet as I mentined to Ryan a few days ago. I’ve got a gut feeling that the results of renders using layer compostites will get both better and more flexible as time goes on.
Of course once Zmapper is back we could then also add a ambient occlusion pass to the mix…which opens up a whole new world again. There’s still alot to try out with this technque that I’ve not had time to as yet.
OK here’s the document (with some dead unused layers removed) and clearly named layers. I’ve knocked out a very quick word document as a basic guide to what each layer does.
As yet I’m unable to track down the skin shaders, but I’l keep my eye out on my machine for them. I also added an extra fake sss layer in the document to show one quick way to get some sort of a subsurface effect. (You’ll also see why I am trying to find another way when you open the document, I find this way not as satisfactory as others I’m trying at the moment.)