Head - Page 4 - Simply Maya User Community

# 46 03-01-2009 , 12:55 PM

Subscriber
Join Date: Nov 2002

Location: Made in Spain

Posts: 422

Thx for the suggestions, the IBL is the light source as well, you think mapping all the reflection colors on all shaders will result in faster rendering than just having every shader feeding off the IBL?

I did find the problem as to why the reflections were not showing up. I also added a wet layer and fine tuned the inner corner of the eye. I am pretty happy with how its looking. That whole rendering at 1024 reslution took 4 minutes. Now I need to do the eye lashes, and then off to hair.

I'll update this image once I finish with the eyelashes.

Attached Thumbnails

Click image for larger version

Name: render file ibl 3.jpg
Views: 248
Size: 140.3 KB
ID: 41182

Quote

# 47 04-01-2009 , 02:46 AM

Lead Modeler - Framestore
Join Date: Feb 2003

Location: UK

Posts: 6,287

Yeah IBL is a slow rendering light source, it doesnt do it for me thats for sure, you are better off with a sphere and then add a map to it. you only want it for color values and intensity so just do a real small file in pS and blur it. the reflections in the eyes can be done easier thru the reflected color channel for the shader, far less expensive on renders to especially on a final when all the settings are cranked up

Jay

Quote

# 48 06-01-2009 , 07:51 AM

Subscriber
Join Date: Nov 2002

Location: Made in Spain

Posts: 422

Hi Guys, here are the eyelashes. I would appreciate some feedback on that. Are they too dark?

Attached Thumbnails

Click image for larger version

Name: result.jpg
Views: 230
Size: 144.7 KB
ID: 41199

Last edited by Minstrel; 06-01-2009 at 09:36 AM.

Quote

# 49 16-01-2009 , 01:32 PM

Subscriber
Join Date: Nov 2002

Location: Made in Spain

Posts: 422

Hi All, I am working on the hair and have been trying for a while to do the hair on a separate pass so as to composite it with the other layers in PS. I am having a really hard time in PS because the alpha channel I get from Maya (from saving the file as tiff) has gray values and when I use the load selection using the alpha channel feature to create the layer mask it leaves those non white areas out. I have tried different techniques to make those gray areas completely white by playing with levels or creating copies of the alpha channel and using "screen"/"overlay" on them, but the results are not good around the edges where the fine detail was. I have looked into all kinds of places to try different techniques such as blurring the alpha channel, or reducing the selection by 1 pixel and then blurr that, but nothing.

I am using an old version of PS so I am wondering whether the load selection feature is what is sucking here and a new version of PS does a better job, or whether I should go look for after effects or some other compositing tool. If you know of any that has a trial version please let me know.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

Quote

# 50 04-02-2009 , 02:49 AM

Subscriber
Join Date: Nov 2002

Location: Made in Spain

Posts: 422

Hi All, I've been playing a lot with hair and figuring out the best way of rendering in mental ray and after much work got to some parameters that give me pretty decent results. This image took about 2 and half minutes to render (fur and all) using mental ray. Anyways, I'm done with the hair for now. I'm going to work on a couple more details on the armor, put a nicer background, and maybe move the head or something. But this is certainly coming to an end pretty soon.

Attached Thumbnails

Click image for larger version

Name: result 640.jpg
Views: 187
Size: 195.1 KB
ID: 41351

Quote

# 51 04-02-2009 , 04:47 AM

Registered User
Join Date: Oct 2007

Location: IL

Posts: 738

It looks amazing so far!
Just one thing I noticed is that he is almost perfectly shaved...
I don't think there were good enough razor blades back then user added image

.
Definitely my favorite project in a long time
Keep it up,
Benny

When in doubt, delete history and freeze transformations.

My latest snake game
(Requires DirectX9 SDK and Framework)

Quote

# 52 04-02-2009 , 12:17 PM

Subscriber
Join Date: Jan 2004

Location: Bolton - UK

Posts: 2,457

Any chance you sharing the fur setting with metal ray - as it looks alwsome - well done

Quote

# 53 04-02-2009 , 03:27 PM

Subscriber
Join Date: Nov 2002

Location: Made in Spain

Posts: 422

hey, thx guys!.

The mental ray set up is like this. Select the Fur setting from the presets, and then instead of resterizer click on scanline. Also, change the number of reflections/refractions to something greater than 1, because if you have transparent objects they may not render correctly. With resterizer as the main renderer I was getting nice hair, but the textures on the face were coming up weird. When I left all the settings as per the preset but change the rendered to scanline I still got nice hair, not as fast, but the textures and everthing else rendered the way I wanted. Also, I did not use raytracing on any lights (even though I still had raytracing as my secondary rendered). All the lights had dmap shadows on, and only 3 of them had fur attributes activated (shadow maps selected). Also, very important is that in the mental ray section you have details shadow maps turned on and click on the "take from..." botton. The shadow map I used was 2048 and the bias was 0.003. I used 20 samples.

Use fur maps for base width and base opacity to make sure the areas on the edges of the hair close to the camera are soft but the rest is still thick to create volume. You must use a baldness map, and use noise on the polar section under details to make the hair look natural. I used something like 0.14. Also, I decided for creating a scalp surface rather than doing it on the head surface. The scalp is missing a big part of the skull, the part you can't see on the image and it was hidden at render time. I created all the maps using artisan "edit fur attributes", and the baldness map using the 3D texturing feature.

Crazy thing is that once you figure out how to set this up you can crank up a decent looking hair very fast.

As to the laser shave this guy has...you are correct. there is some hair detail from the texture, but you can't really see it with this resolution. Lets see if I have the energy.

I want to spend more time on the armor again. The reflections seem to be too bright. Also, I need to do something with the under shirt beneath the chain mail on the neck.

Quote